Pro Football Hall of Fame

History

The community of Canton, Ohio successfully lobbied the NFL to have the Hall of Fame built in their city for two reasons: first, the NFL was founded in Canton in 1920 (at that time it was known as the American Professional Football Association); second, the now-defunct Canton Bulldogs were a successful NFL team based in Canton during the first few years of the league. Groundbreaking for the building was held on August 11, 1962. The original building contained just two rooms, and 19,000 square feet (1,800 m²) of interior space.

In April 1970, ground was broken for the first of many expansions. This first expansion cost $620,000, and was completed in May 1971. The size was increased to 34,000 square feet (3,200 m²) by adding another room. The pro shop opened with this expansion. This was also an important milestone for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, as yearly attendance passed the 200,000 mark for the first time. This was at least in some part due to the increase in popularity of professional football caused by the advent of the American Football League and its success in the final two AFL-NFL World Championship games.

In November 1977, work began on another expansion project, costing US$1,200,000. It was completed in November 1978, enlarging the gift shop and research library, while doubling the size of the theater. The total size of the hall was now 50,500 square feet (4,690 m²), more than 2.5 times the original size.

The building remained largely unchanged until July 1993. The Hall then announced yet another expansion, costing US$9,200,000, and adding a fifth room. This expansion was completed in October 1995. The building's size was increased to 82,307 square feet (7,647 m²). The most notable addition was the GameDay Stadium, which shows an NFL Films production on a 20-foot (6.1 m) by 42-foot (13 m) Cinemascope screen.

Inductees

Through 2017, all inductees except one, played some part of their professional career in the NFL (the lone exception is Buffalo Bills guard Billy Shaw, who played his entire career in the American Football League (AFL) prior to the 1970 AFL–NFL merger). Though several Hall of Famers have had AFL, Canadian Football League, World Football League, United States Football League and Arena Football League experience, and there is a division of the Hall devoted to alternative leagues such as this, to this point no players have made the Hall without having made significant contributions to either the NFL, AFL or All-America Football Conference. For CFL stars, there is a parallel Canadian Football Hall of Fame; only one player (Warren Moon) and one coach (Bud Grant) are in both halls.

The Chicago Bears have the most Hall of Famers among the league's franchises with 32 enshrinees.

Selection Committee

Enshrinees are selected by a 46-person committee, largely made up of media members, officially known as the Selection Committee.

Each city that has a current NFL team sends one representative from the local media to the committee. A city with more than one franchise sends a representative for each franchise. Usually, the representative is a beat writer for the major newspaper in that city, even though this isn't always the case; for instance, the Atlanta Falcons are represented by Len Pasquarelli (who no longer writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution), and the Jacksonville Jaguars are represented by WJXT sports director Sam Kouvaris.

There are also 13 at-large delegates (usually cities that lose NFL teams keep representation on the board; St. Louis is one of such; the city is the only post-merger era city to have won a championship (1999) but not currently have a NFL team), and one representative from the Pro Football Writers Association. Except for the PFWA representative, who is appointed to a two-year term, all other appointments are open-ended and terminated only by death, incapacitation, retirement, or resignation.

Voting procedure

To be eligible for the nominating process, a player or coach must have been retired for at least five years. Any other contributor such as a team owner or executive can be voted in at any time.

Fans may nominate any player, coach or contributor by simply writing to the Pro Football Hall of Fame via letter or email. The Selection Committee is then polled three times by mail to eventually narrow the list to 25 semifinalists: once in March, once in September, and once in October. In November, the committee then selects 15 finalists by mail balloting. Nine members of the Selection Committee also serve as a subcommittee known as the Seniors Committee to screen candidates who finished their careers more than 25 years prior. The Seniors Committee then adds two finalists from that group which makes a final ballot of 17 nominees.

The Selection Committee then meets the day before each Super Bowl game to elect a new class. To be elected, a finalist must receive at least 80 percent support from the Board, with at least four, but no more than eight, candidates being elected annually.

According to staff, 46 members of the hall have been voted in with 100% of the vote; the most recent one being Brett Favre of the Green Bay Packers.

Enshrinement ceremony

The enshrinement ceremony is usually held during the first full weekend in August. An enshrinement festival is held throughout the week in Canton leading up to the enshrinement ceremony.

Enshrinees do not go into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a member of a certain team. Rather, all of an enshrinee's affiliations are listed equally. While the Baseball Hall of Fame plaques generally depict each of their inductees wearing a particular club's cap (with a few exceptions, such as Catfish Hunter and Greg Maddux), the bust sculptures of each Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee make no reference to any specific team. In addition to the bust that goes on permanent display at the Hall of Fame, inductees receive a distinctive Gold Jacket and previous inductees nearly always wear theirs when participating at new inductee ceremonies.

Previous induction ceremonies were held during the next day (Sunday from 1999–2005, Saturday in 2006), situated on the steps of the Hall of Fame building. Starting in 2002, the ceremony was moved to Fawcett Stadium where it was held in 1963-65. Since 2007 the enshrinement ceremony has been held on the Saturday night before the Hall of Fame Game.

Pro Football Hall of Fame Game

The Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, an annual NFL preseason opener is held the day after the enshrinement ceremony and officially kicks off the NFL Preseason.

Criticism

The Pro Football Hall of Fame uses only media representatives to select inductees. This, along with its policy of inducting only a maximum of seven players a year (six in certain years past), with a current maximum of two "senior" candidates and five "non-seniors," has been criticized by sports columnists, former players, and football fans. Such critics would like to see solutions such as expanding the number of selectors, rotating panel members on and off the selection committee, and allowing former players to participate in the voting. The small number of candidates elected each year has helped foster what some perceive as an inequality of representation at certain positions or in certain categories of player, with defensive players in general and defensive backs and outside linebackers in particular, special teams players, wide receivers, deserving players who primarily played on bad teams, and those from the "seniors" category, being slighted. This has included a 2009 New York Times article which criticized the Hall for not including punter Ray Guy on its ballot, also noting that the Hall did not have an inductee at the time representing the position. (While inductee Sammy Baugh played regularly as a punter, as well as defensive back, he is most widely known as a quarterback.) Guy was eventually inducted as part of the 2014 class for the Hall of Fame. There has also been criticism that certain players get overlooked because their team underproduced during their careers.

The Hall has also recently been the object of complaints by retired players from both the NFL and AFL, who claim that the Hall has not helped injured, disabled and mentally distressed retirees, including numerous members of the Hall of Fame, obtain a reasonable care and retirement package from the NFL and the players' union, the NFLPA.

The selectors have also been criticized for their unwillingness to acknowledge Canadian Football League (CFL) experience as a factor in qualifying potential inductees. For example, Cookie Gilchrist's six straight CFL All-Star selections (followed by four consecutive AFL All-Star picks) appear to bear no weight on his consideration (Gilchrist also had antisocial tendencies stemming from the onset of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which led him to decline most Hall of Fame honors during his lifetime). The most commonly cited reason for this is because there is already a Canadian Football Hall of Fame for that purpose. This, of course, puts players who played for a shorter time in both leagues, and had success in both (such as Gilchrist and Doug Flutie), at a significant disadvantage. As of 2016, only one player (Warren Moon) and one coach (Bud Grant) are in both the Canadian and American Halls.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame is unique among North American major league sports halls of fame in that officials have generally been excluded from the Hall; only one, 1966 inductee Hugh "Shorty" Ray, has been enshrined. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and Hockey Hall of Fame have each inducted game officials as members. In part to rectify the lack of officials and other off-field contributors, the Hall of Fame added a “Contributors” committee beginning with the class of 2015, which will nominate officials, general managers, owners and other positions that have historically been overlooked by the committee at large.

Another prominent absence from the Hall is sports-journalist Howard Cosell, who has yet to be awarded the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award despite his well-known association with Monday Night Football. An August 2010 Sports Illustrated article hints that Cosell may have even been "blacklisted" by the NFL.

Kurt Warner, who is set to be inducted in 2017, is the only player to have reached the Hall of Fame who has played a substantial portion of their career in indoor or arena football; Warner played three seasons with the Iowa Barnstormers of the Arena Football League (Joe DeLamielleure had a very short tenure in that sport in 1992, seven years after retiring from the NFL).

In 2015, the exclusion of Marvin Harrison from the yearly induction caused some to question the effect politics has on the induction process. Harrison ranks 3rd all-time in receptions, was selected to the Pro Bowl eight times among many other individual records. He was also named as the hardest receiver to cover by veteran corner backs Champ Bailey and Charles Tillman. The duo of Harrison and quarterback Peyton Manning also hold the record for most receptions, touchdowns, and yards between any quarterback and wide receiver combo. Critics argue the induction committee is allowing age and wait time to overshadow production. Harrison would be inducted into the Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2016.