Paul Kuharsky cut from Pro Football Hall of Fame committee

Paul Kuharsky is out at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The longtime Tennessee Titans reporter announced on Friday, Sept. 11, that he’d been dropped from the Hall’s Selection Committee, joining the roster of veteran voters swept out as the panel is winnowed from 50 members down to 28 under its overhauled bylaws.

Kuharsky had represented the Tennessee market since 2016, following two years as an alternate selector, and said it was “an honor to be part of the process” even as he acknowledged disappointment with how the Hall is handling the transition. He noted Derrick Henry, the franchise’s next likely enshrinee, will get in just fine without him in the room, but argued it had been valuable for candidates to have at least one voter who’d watched their entire career unfold firsthand.

The @ProFootballHOF has informed me I did not survive the cutdown of the selection committee. Was an honor to be part of the process.

Proud of the work I did there since 2015 when I filled in for David Climer and 2016 when I got the Nashville slot. Disappointed but who knows…

— Paul Kuharsky (@PaulKuharskyNFL) September 11, 2026

Kuharsky, a former ESPN reporter who has covered the franchise — much to the chagrin of Brian Callahan — since its Houston days and now covers them for his site, joins John McClain among the notable names not retained this month. McClain, a fixture of Houston sports journalism for nearly four decades who logged 47 years at the Houston Chronicle before being laid off from SportsRadio 610 in 2024, had occupied his seat on the committee for 33 years.

The overhaul followed Bill Belichick’s stunning first-ballot snub, though Hall president Jim Porter insists the timing is coincidental. He’s said the bylaws review had already been underway for two and a half years earlier, before Belichick’s case came up. In addition to eliminating 22 seats, the new rules also get rid of the market-based system that guaranteed every city a seat, and move candidate presentations to people outside the committee rather than the local writers who’d covered those players for years.

Clearly, the recent wave of reductions is disproportionately hitting the committee’s “old guard,” though it’s not yet clear who else has been informed they weren’t retained.