I think it’s more about the new way they’re voting. Five candidates, vote for three, and spend a week arguing, and courting votes, and trading notes, rather than the baseball HoF where they just get a ballot and send it in.
Maybe Belichik and Kraft stole votes from each other so neither got over the 40 required, or maybe the voters decided to send a message rather than vote on who strictly belonged, or maybe they felt the other candidates also belonged and there just wasn’t enough room for all of them, or whatever. In either case and for whatever reason this is the result, it’s silly that both Kraft and Belichik weren’t first ballot selections.
In addition to the cheating, Kraft also has the rub-n-tug scandal under his belt. While not directly football related, he broke the NFL’s golden rule, thou shalt not embarrass the Shield.
Look at the personal lives of a lot of the other members of the HoF. Ray Lewis faced murder chargers, and pled to what was at best obstruction of justice in a murder case. He was a first ballot inductee.
Holding up Kraft for personal behavior would be a joke.
Wonder if the outcome would be different if voters just sent in a ballot?
Also wonder how important the HoF is to these guys? If so, do they have their agent(?) campaigning on their behalf behind the scenes? Kraft is a successful business guy. I imagine he’s good at doing the behind the scenes work and ahead of time, etc. to get the outcomes he wants. If it was me, and it mattered, I’d have my “team” working the reporters based on the process, and doing this well in advance of their voting. I doubt guys like Kraft are surprised about something not going their way.
Am I wrong in thinking “who gives a shit! It’s a museum, not the Vatican?”
That gold jacket doesn’t bestow magical powers or anything - Jerry has one, and look what it’s done for The Cowgirls
They’ll get in next year, and perhaps the HOF adds an extra spot for the guys who have to wait 12 months past their “due date” because they now have to squeeze in Belichick & Kraft
I think the deflate-gate controversy was a bunch of hooey. A lot of the science behind the NFL’s report was either debunked or considered inconclusive. Also zero direct evidence anything happened.
To hold that against Brady, Belichick, or Kraft is fucking nonsense. Brady is first eligible for HoF consideration in 2028. If Brady isn’t voted in unanimously on the first ballot, anyone not voting for him should be stripped of their ability to ever vote again. Dude pretty much owns the QB record book, and his playoff success is literally in another universe compared to every other QB who ever played.
What about Spygate? I’m guessing a decent starting QB in the NFL can have really good stats if he knows what the defense is doing. That’s what Brady had.
As for the Superbowl - only Jim Kelly lost more times than Tom.
The people involved think it’s an important honor (or dishonor, depending on how the voting goes). That is true of all sorts of sports votes: MVP, All-Star, Cy Young, etc.
I would guess the magnitude of the honor depends in part on your place in history. If you’re LeBron, who knows he is widely considered one of the all-time greats, getting voted in probably does not change much of anything. But, if you’re L.C. Greenwood, maybe it means a lot more.
Even if you discount everything he achieved before the Spygate scandal broke — which way overstates the advantages from the cheating — Brady’s subsequent record in the Super Bowl was 4-2. That’s more than a little better than Jim Kelly’s record.
OK - then lets look at Bonds before his cheating. He also had HOF numbers and didn’t get into his HOF. We shall see, but based on baseball, the voters don’t like cheaters.
One issue is the ethics. If someone says I won’t vote for a cheater no matter how successful they were in their non-cheating years, that’s understandable.
But, you seemed to be making a different point: that Brady actually got a huge benefit from the Spygate cheating. We don’t know that’s true. In trying to analyze it, it’s relevant to see how Brady and the Pats did in non-cheating years. One can agree that cheating is wrong without also conceding that the particular form of cheating had huge benefits on the field.
In the case of Bonds, we know that certain forms of doping have huge benefits to hitters. We see that with many players’ stats. In Bonds’ case if you drew a line measuring his pre-doping performance and extrapolated it given normal effects of aging, you’d see a massive divergence compared to what actually happened. By contrast, Brady’s performance didn’t suddenly turn massively downward after the Spygate scandal.
Your comparison to Kelly and Bonds is, frankly, ridiculous.
Would you rather be 7-3 as a starting QB in the Super Bowl or 0-4?
Bonds was using performance enhancing drugs. Brady wasn’t. Not to mention the Spygate thing was Belichick and the coaching staff’s issue. There’s zero evidence Brady knew anything about it. Yes, he potentially, and unknowingly, benefitted from it. That stated, numerous coaches said it wasn’t really an advantage, including the Jets’ head coach who started it all.