We have known for a while now that Bill Belichick fell short of the needed votes to gain entry into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a first-ballot entry.
In the days that followed, there has been a ton of questions regarding how and why this could happen and just who amongst the group of 50 voters could have possibly not voted for him. So far, just two voters have shared publicly their reasons for passing on Belichick’s enshrinement. But the exact voting details have thus far remained a mystery.
Until now.
As unearthed by Mike Florio, the exact results of the Belichick vote was shared by Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in his column about the situation.
Dulac walked his readers through the vote for senior candidates and contributors. In those paragraphs, he says that Belichick received 39 of the 50 votes from the committee, falling just shy of the 40 votes needed. He also says the fact that another member of the group of five receiving more votes than a six-time Super Bowl winning coach is “embarrassing.”
This vote is independent of the one in which modern-era players are selected for induction.
To be elected, a candidate has to receive at least 80% of the votes, or, in this instance, 40 of the 50. Belichick, according to a published report, did not. He received 39.
But if Belichick didn’t receive at least 40 votes, who did?
According to the by-laws, at least one candidate has to be selected. If none of the five candidates received at least 80% of the votes, the one who received the most votes will be elected. So, if Belichick was informed by someone with knowledge of the vote he wasn’t elected, then that would mean some other candidate received more votes than the coach who won six Super Bowls.
And, yes, that is embarrassing.
For the voters that decided to vote against Bill Belichick, this is probably the worst case scenario. It means that anyone on the fence who chose not to vote for the legendary coach could have been the de facto deciding vote to grant him Hall of Fame selection. Whether that was because of Spygate, because they voted for the senior candidates, or because they thought his candidacy wasn’t that pressing and he could easily get in next year, the only thing that matters is it would have taken just one vote switched to get him elected.
Given this detail, it would be highly unlikely to see any more of the nine non-Belichick voters share their reasoning for doing so publicly given the vote totals. They would immediately be hit with a social media onslaught blaming them as the one vote who kept the coach out of Canton.
And the tight vote may explain why the Hall of Fame itself was so blunt in their statement about the situation, even saying they reserve the right to remove voters from their selection committee for violating rules. After seeing their voting process completely out in the open amidst the Bill Belichick saga, it’s a drama that Canton does not want to live through again anytime soon.
About Matt Yoder