🏆 Behind the Bronze: How Football Historians Are Influencing Hall of Fame Selections

Every year, after the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committees complete their tedious assignment of narrowing down the fields of legendary players that have been nominated to a select few for Enshrinement, a plethora of posts, articles, and videos come out in support of multiple deserving former players who people feel were slighted in getting a bronze bust.

How The Pro Football Hall of Fame Makes Its Selections

The three committees that the Canton museum uses are now staffed by former players, journalists, and, more recently, renowned historians, who are tasked with adhering to stringent rules of order to select a small handful of deserving recipients from a pool of many to receive the Gold Jacket the following summer.

For those unfamiliar with the process, the Pro Football Hall of Fame streamlines its selection process by utilizing three distinct committees to nominate candidates: the Modern-Era Committee, which considers players who last played within the last 25 years; the Seniors Committee, which focuses on players whose careers ended more than 25 years ago; and the Coach/Contributor Committee, which evaluates coaches and non-player personnel whose contributions significantly impacted the sport. This structure ensures that candidates from across football history, including various eras and roles, receive focused consideration, leading to a diverse and comprehensive class of annual enshrinees.

Behind the Scenes: A Historian’s View on Pro Football Hall of Fame Selections

Our friends Jack Silverstein and Clark Judge have recently tried to help the HOF Selection Committees with some nominations. The process of selecting the most outstanding individuals for the Pro Football Hall of Fame (PFHOF) is rigorous, and this past summer, a dedicated group of historians undertook a significant initiative to help shape the conversation around future enshrinees.

This effort involved several stages of meetings and votes designed to provide robust, informed recommendations for the Hall’s committees. First, the historians focused on creating recommendations for two unique, special classes dedicated to pivotal eras in football history: one class for the 1920-1949 era and another for the 1950-1979 era.

Following these specific era classes, the historians were presented with a larger, combined list of potential candidates, including players who fall under the Seniors category, as well as Coaches and Contributors. For this comprehensive list, the historians were tasked with voting “yes,” “no,” or “no preference” for each individual regarding their potential Enshrinement. The results of these votes were later published by Clark Judge on Talk of Fame, providing the public with an early look at the consensus among experts.

Now that the Pro Football Hall of Fame has officially released its preliminary list of candidates—34 Seniors, 12 Coaches, and 21 Contributors—a wider group of historians is being assembled. Their new task is to evaluate this official list and produce formal recommendations for each candidate. These final recommendations will be compiled and published on Jack Silverstein’s personal site (Read.Jack), with the data also made available for other websites to publish, ensuring that the historical perspective is widely shared as the official PFHOF selection process moves forward.

We were excited to participate in this endeavor, as Darin Hayes of Pigskin Dispatch joined forces with the Who’s Who in the football history community, including 18 esteemed voters such as Upton Bell, Timothy Brown, George Bozeka, Ken Crippen, Bill Carroll, and Chris Willis.

The Results and Suggestions of Our Expert Group

We won’t give all of the results here, but you can check them out on Jack’s site (Read.Jack).

For the Seniors’ list, the esteemed group has placed Lavvie Dilweg and Al Wistert as the preferred candidates for Enshrinement.

Bill Belichick deservedly led the pack of coaches to receive a Gold Jacket, and in the next year or two, he will deliver his acceptance speech on Enshrinement weekend.

The Contributor list included Ralph Hay and Bucko Kilroy as the historians’ suggested selections.

Whether the HOF Committees will agree with us or not will be revealed early next year, around Super Bowl time. Hopefully, the Pro Football Hall of Fame will find our efforts and opinions as a valuable resource from folks in the know about the history, rather than a popularity contest, as has happened in the past.