SCANDALS KEEP BELICHICK FROM THE HALL, FOR NOW, WHILE BASEBALL BANS LIARS
Rather than hounding voters, fans must remember Spygate and Deflategate. And realize Belichick will be in the Hall someday, unlike ballplayers — Bonds, Clemens, Rodriguez — who are outlawed for life
Bill Belichick is Alex Rodriguez, a cheater twice. Pro football is more lenient with villains than baseball, meaning a man who won eight Super Bowls eventually will make the Hall of Fame — while A-Rod sees his therapist. Too many people were out of sorts Tuesday night, forgetting about Spygate and Deflategate and the misshapen ways of the Patriots.
Of course, more than 10 of 50 voters will make Belichick wait in guilt. Are they wrong, recalling massive fines, draft-pick forfeitures and questions about why the all-time greatest coach would videotape the Jets and allow Tom Brady to deflate balls? When Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rodriguez sit for life because of steroids abuse, why not understand the NFL also has firm directives? Credit the people who said no, for now.
“Six Super Bowls isn’t enough?” said Belichick, according to ESPN, quoting his number as New England’s head coach. “What does a guy have to do?”
Will 2027 be his year? He’ll be in a pool with Mike Shanahan, Mike Holmgren and Tom Coughlin, and they will be joined by Pete Carroll. Is he a lock? Or will he keep waiting, year after year, wondering if 11 more voters will keep denying him?
At least he rests next to Jordon Hudson, a half-century younger, while coaching North Carolina. He will watch the cultural world go bonkers again, wondering why Bill Polian led a charge to dismiss him. Or if Bob Kraft — his former owner, now an adversary — will reach Canton first with his latest Super Bowl team. The tempest only leads to doubts about why so many working media members, including 32 who represent league cities and 12 others in an at-large category, are involved in making the news. They are here to break the news and comment on the news, but Americans who love Belichick want human hide.
Among those stepping out was Jimmy Johnson, the Hall of Fame coach, who said, “I would like to know the names of the assholes who did not vote for him. They are too cowardly to identify themselves.” ESPN identified Polian, who opposed the Patriots with the Indianapolis Colts, among voters who asked colleagues to wait a year on Belichick.
“That’s totally and categorically untrue. I voted for him,” Polian told Sports Illustrated.
Let the football people raise hell. Media should not be on the firing line and should not be involved in voting. Patrick Mahomes defended Belichick, saying, “Insane … I don’t even understand how this could be possible.”
“I can’t be reading this right. This has to be some knock-off Hall of Fame or something,” J.J. Watt said. “It can’t be the actual Hall of Fame. There is not a single world whatsoever in which Bill Belichick should not be a First-Ballot Hall of Famer.”
“A disappointing day for the Pro Football Hall of Fame,” Troy Aikman said.
But a 333-178 record, second only to Don Shula’s 347, fades because of the scandals. Baseball numbers are dependent on day-to-day compliance with rules. Football seems to lose them through the grunts, which is why LeBron James said, “Man there’s no way I read that right! Right? Ain’t no WAY Bill Belichick ain’t 1st Ballot HOF!! That’s IMPOSSIBLE, EGREGIOUS, and quite frankly DISRESPECTFUL!”
The media people will pile on each other. Said Gary Myers: “As a @ProFootballHOF voter, I believe in full transparency: I voted for Bill Belichick and I am embarrassed for our 50-member committee that the greatest coach in NFL history is not a first ballot HOFer and some voters apparently felt he deserved to be punished for Spygate.”
Embarrassed? Would Myers vote for Bonds, Clemens and Rodriguez? The stories about voting sessions are creepy, with some reporters taking sides for local players when posing shames credibility. A good sports editor would say no to the practice, but here we are anyway, wondering if Belichick was screwed when you know this as well as I do:
He deserved to be screwed.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.