This year, the Hall of Fame will get nine new members. With all due respect to each of the nine new members, nine is too many.
It underscores a point that Hall of Famer Deion Sanders has made in the past. There are too many members of the Hall of Fame. It’s not nearly as exclusive as it should be.
There’s a very real business reason for that. And, yes, at its core, the Hall of Fame is a business.
It’s a museum that becomes the epicenter of the NFL for one weekend of every year. It needs to have a robust class of enshrinees, to attract visitors to town for the ceremony and the game. The smaller the class, the fewer the people.
And the bigger the class, the more the people.
That’s the reality of the business that is the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And that’s the core of the concerns raised by people like Deion and others who are know-it-when-you-see-it, best of the best.
Deion has suggested an “upper room” of the Hall of Fame, consisting of the true, short-list, all-time, no-brainer greats. We’ve been working on a proposed list of who would get in, if there were a Prime Time Place with the Hall of Fame.
I’ll post it on Saturday. Some of you will agree. Some of you won’t. That’s what makes it fun.
