The Pro Football Hall of Fame made significant changes to its bylaws for the next three election cycles. The Hall’s Board of Trustees approved increasing the number of senior finalists from one to three per year for 2023, 2024 and 2025.
The change increases the maximum class size each of those three years to nine enshrinees. It does not guarantee three seniors will be elected over any of the next three years as the senior nominees still will need 80 percent approval from selectors.
“Members of the selection committee have made it clear they wanted to get more seniors ‘in the room’ for discussion,” Jim Porter, president of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, said in a statement. “From those initial conversations, the team at the Hall of Fame overseeing the selection process worked with the board to create a path for those committee discussions that could lead to possible enshrinement for more seniors.”
Senior candidates are defined as those 25 years or more from their final season. There are 57 all-decade seniors candidates, 53 of whom have never been a finalist, according to Rick Gosselin of Talk of Fame Network.
The board also changed the way senior finalists are determined. For the next three years, 12 semifinalists will be presented to the now-12-member senior committee after two reduction votes.
The board merged the coaches and contributors’ categories into one category the next three years, and that sub-committee also will expand from nine members to 12.
