The first known Bill Belichick dissenter has been revealed.
The Kansas City Star’s Vahe Gregorian came out as one of at least 11 Pro Football Hall of Fame voters who didn’t put Belichick on their ballots after the shocking news that the eight-time Super Bowl champion failed to make the cut during his first time up for induction.
In a column for the Star on Wednesday, Gregorian, who has covered the NFL for nearly four decades, wrote that the snubbing had nothing to do with Spygate, Deflategate or Belichick’s infamous testiness with the media.
Instead, the longtime sports columnist said, the Hall’s “curious selection dynamics” led him to put his votes elsewhere.
Separate from the 15-man modern-era ballot, voters are tasked with selecting candidates from a special, five-person pool made up of three categories consisting of three senior candidates, a contributor, and a coach.
Belichick, this year’s coaching candidate, was competing with senior nominees Ken Anderson, Roger Craig and L.C. Greenwood and the contributor nominee, who happened to be longtime Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
Voters were allowed to pick just three candidates from this field, with the nominees needing 80 percent (40 out of 50) of the votes to make it into Canton, Ohio.
Despite only having three votes, all five men, Gregorian stated, were deserving of the Hall in his eyes, and he had initially assumed he would be voting for Belichick on his first ballot.
But when it came time to vote, Gregorian said he felt “duty-bound” to vote for the three “richly deserving” senior candidates — Anderson, Craig and Greenwood — who could be staring at one of their final chances at the notoriously tough-to-get-into HOF.
“All three have been long deserving of induction in the Hall. All three have been, well, snubbed for decades.”
Gregorian cited NFL greats like Albert Lewis, Otis Taylor and Jim Tyrer, who all fell short of the Hall during their turn as senior candidates, as players he didn’t want this year’s trio to suffer the same fate.
Belichick’s induction, Gregorian wrote, “is inevitable soon,” and he stated that he understood why the football world was so outraged at the results.
“At the risk of contradicting my own vote, really, [Belichick] shouldn’t even have to wait,” he wrote. “I understand why people are offended that he isn’t going in the first moment he can. … I felt more compelled by what I perceive to be last chances and looming lost causes within the system as we have it — a system I hope the Hall will see fit to change now.”
