The Pro Football Hall of Fame announced that Bill Belichick didn’t make the Class of 2025 cut, leaving football fans stunned. The most successful head coach of the Super Bowl era was widely considered a lock by voters and media members alike.
The shocking outcome wasn’t a fluke. It’s the result of a broken system.
Multiple Hall of Fame voters have confirmed they supported Belichick’s candidacy. The issue isn’t his résumé or voter resistance. It’s the math.
The Hall of Fame changed its voting rules beginning last year, creating an impossible bottleneck. The new system lumps senior finalists, coach finalists, and contributor finalists into one voting block. Each selector gets just three votes for five candidates.
Ken Anderson, Roger Craig, and L.C. Greenwood advanced as senior finalists. Belichick made it through as the coach finalist. Robert Kraft emerged as the contributor finalist.
These five candidates survived months of debate through separate Blue-Ribbon Committees. Each committee spent extensive time evaluating worthiness and historical significance.
The math is unforgiving. With 150 total votes available and a 40-vote threshold required for induction, four or five candidates can’t possibly get in. Three is technically possible but wildly unlikely.
Most years under this system produce one or two inductees maximum. Zero is no longer out of the question.
The previous system worked differently. Before 2025, finalists from subcommittees were voted on independently by the full selection committee. Voters answered a simple question: is this person a Hall of Famer?
The 80 percent approval standard existed then just as it does now, requiring 40 of 50 votes. But candidates weren’t competing against each other for limited slots.
Last year’s results showed the problem immediately. Only Sterling Sharpe emerged from the senior process, producing a four-person Hall of Fame class. That was the smallest since 2005.
The system hasn’t cleared the backlog. It’s reinforced it.
Hall-of-Fame-caliber players from the 1950s and earlier are still waiting their turn. Even before this rule change, the process had blind spots that kept worthy candidates out for decades.
Jerry Kramer waited decades for induction. Ken Stabler, Les Richter, Cliff Branch and Dick Stanfel weren’t inducted until after they passed away.
This isn’t rejection of Belichick’s candidacy. It’s vote scarcity created by artificial limits.
Under this structure, a candidate doesn’t need resistance to fall short. They just need competition and math working against them.
The fix isn’t complicated. Let selectors vote for four candidates instead of three. Better yet, let them vote for all five and trust the work of the subcommittees.
If someone objects to a candidate, they can leave that name off their ballot and explain why publicly. Transparency beats hiding behind math.
Once voters are forced to strategize instead of evaluate, the Hall of Fame vote stops being about legacy. It starts being about survival.
If Bill Belichick can get voted off the island, the problem isn’t the voters. It’s the game.
