Pro Football Hall of Fame Voter Changes

The Pro Football Hall of Fame voting process has always been a controversial thing. Debating the greatness of a football career will always be a controversial thing. When several voters decided during the 2026 vote that Bill Belichick wasn’t deserving of first-ballot induction, the voting process was deemed flawed and some of the voters were revealed as petty, vindictive, and unqualified. I’ve long thought that football historians were far more qualified than most, if not all, of the media honks. All of the historians I know have an unbiased appreciation of every player and moment of football history. Sure, they have their favorite teams and players but they also have an honest view of their place in history. Among the media honks with a vote, too many only know of the players they covered and the era they lived. As a result, those voters would only consider the players they actually watched. So much for honoring and preserving the history of the game. It’s only the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s mission statement. After the mess of the Belichick vote, the process and the voters had to change and changes have now been made. Perhaps it needs to play out but the Hall’s shot-callers might’ve made things even worse. 

The Changes:

- reducing the number of voters

- eliminating the senior category 

- enshrining between three and seven candidates each year from a 15-player pool

  (13 players, one coach, and one contributor)

- scrapping the system that tasked the market-based selector to present the case for candidates

In regards to reducing the number of voters, 50 voters always felt like a reasonable number. In recent years, several voters have expressed little interest in voting on players before their time. Those individuals shouldn’t be part of the process. With that in mind, the 50 voters could use some trimming. After seeing the new roster of voters, some of the wrong voters were trimmed. 

The 28 Voters

• Jared Allen, Hall of Famer
• Howard Balzer, CardsWire, SiriusXM NFL Radio
• Jarrett Bell, USA Today
• David Birkett, Detroit Free Press
• Vic Carucci, WGRZ-TV
• Mike Chappell, CBS4/Fox59TV
• Peter Dougherty, Green Bay Press-Gazette
• Jeff Duncan, Times-Picayune
• Dan Fouts, Broadcaster, Hall of Famer
• Scott Garceau, 105.7 The Fan/WMAR-TV
• Bob Glauber, Author
• Vahe Gregorian, Kansas City Star
• Nicki Jhabvala, Pro Football Writers of America
• Lindsay Jones, The Ringer
• Ira Kaufman, JoeBucsFan.com 
• Ross Ketover, NFL Films
• Sam Kouvaris, SamSportsLine.com
• Jeff Legwold, ESPN
• Rob Maaddi, Associated Press
• Gary Myers, Author
• Sal Paolantonio, Senior National Correspondent, ESPN
• Dan Pompei, The Athletic
• Mike Sando, The Athletic
• Will Shields, Hall of Famer
• Jim Trotter, Retired, The Athletic & NFL Network
• Calvin Watkins, Dallas Morning News
• Eric Williams, Sports Illustrated
• Charean Williams, Pro Football Talk

Rick Gosselin and Ron Borges were two of the greatest advocates for deserving senior candidates. They were cut. Perhaps they were cut because they were so supportive of the players lost to ignorance. Seeing as the changes include eliminating the senior category, it’s pretty clear the current Pro Football Hall of Fame shot-callers do not care about football’s past and forgotten deserving senior players. Also, I like Dan Pompei but a flight to Canton in for the 2013 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductions had me questioning his knowledge of football history. I was sitting behind Pompei on the flight and overheard him chatting with another passenger. They were discussing senior inductee Curley Culp. Despite being on the senior committee that selected Culp, Pompei couldn’t recall if he’d won a Super Bowl. Anyway, as much as I love Jared Allen, I’d rather see Gosselin and Borges voting on the Hall of Famers. Or John McClain. Or Clark Judge. I also believe that any voter that kept Bill Belichick from being the first-ballot inductee his career demanded should’ve been eliminated. That includes Vahe Gregorian. It’s horseshit that he made the cut. 

We’ll see how the 2027 vote plays out but I have very little faith in these changes. Pro Football Hall of Fame president Jim Porter and the Hall’s board have made major changes to the process in their five years of running the show. Those changes are creating a pattern of addressing a mistake with a bigger mistake. For the sake of the Hall and football history, I hope I’m wrong.