Dirty politics in Hall voting
What’s it say about America when there are more qualified candidates for the Pro Football Hall of Fame than president of the United States?
Not only is John Lynch far better at playing cover-2 than Hillary Clinton, he might be better equipped to sit in the Oval Office than Donald Trump.
Please forgive me. I know your beef: Stick to sports. Right?
But on the eve of the Super Bowl, football becomes all about politics, when 47 Hall of Fame electors debate in a room for eight hours to decide which of your favorite players are deemed immortal, as opposed to merely darn good.
Then, for weeks on end, NFL fans across the country complain about the inane outcome of the vote and how the voting system is rigged. It’s a pretty fair summation of the current state of politics in America, don’t you think?
The Hall’s induction Class of 2018 is an amazing collection of talent, including Ray Lewis, Randy Moss and Brian Dawkins, who delivered the last 188 soul-rattling tackles of his brilliant career for the Broncos. So what’s there to be upset about?
Plenty. In Denver, we’re 100 percent convinced it’s a football injustice that Broncos owner Pat Bowlen has yet to be enshrined in Canton, Ohio, just as in Washington, D.C., there are folks demanding a recount because offensive tackle Joe Jacoby can’t kick down the door to the Hall.
We the people … are aggrieved. We like football. But we love to gripe.
As best I understand it, they are holding the Super Bowl in Minneapolis, where the high temperature Sunday is predicted to be a balmy 6 degrees, so Sports Illustrated writer extraordinaire Peter King could go ice fishing before he messed over your favorite gridiron giant in the Hall of Fame voting.
The New England Patriots, who are less popular with U.S. citizens than the president, have been invited to smear the Philadelphia Eagles in the big game, primarily so Tom Brady can vanquish Nick Foles (who?), after beating Marcus Mariota (what?) and Blake Bortles (why?), thus proving Handsome Tom is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most talented quarterback ever to throw a football, whether it’s
inflated to regulation size or not.
Broncos Country had the great displeasure this season of watching both the Patriots and Eagles trounce Denver with our own eyes, by a cumulative score of 92-39. Philadelphia was the best NFL team I saw in person. If quarterback Carson Wentz had not gone down with a knee injury, I’d say the Eagles were a lock to win, but … oh, what the heck, let’s call it Philadelphia 27, New England 24.
Lynch owns one championship ring, while Brady celebrated last season by taking home his fifth ring, which gleamed with 283 snarky diamonds. So am I to assume Brady is five, maybe six times the football player that Lynch ever was? That’s absurd. Yet we look to the Super Bowl to prop up our Hall of Fame arguments, perhaps because it’s easier than slogging through hours of video from all those regular-season games in September, October, November and December.
In my book, Terrell Davis was a nodoubter for the Hall of Fame from the time he carried John Elway and the Broncos to victories in the Super Bowl that had previously been out of the strong-armed quarterback’s grasp. Yes, Davis is a member of the NFL’S exclusive 2,000-yard rushing club, but I’m convinced what pushed his candidacy for the Hall over the top in 2017 was his visibility on the NFL Network, with a television career that’s now longer than his previous, injuryshortened life as a pro running back.
The moral of the story? Get enough meaningful face time in front of the voters on TV, and you can get elected to the Hall of Fame or the White House. That’s politics.