Bill Belichick Snubbed! What Happened?

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1:06Welcome to the Ringer NFL Show. I'm your host, Shiel Kapadia. We've got a big story in the NFL, a big unexpected story in the NFL. Bill Belichick not getting into the Hall of Fame. It has people up in arms. We're going to dive into that. What is the process? How did they vote? Why did this happen? Is there any reason why it has legitimacy? We're going to get into all that, and then we'll finish the show talking about another head coach opening being filled. This time it's the Cleveland Browns with the surprise hiring Todd Munkin, the former Ravens offensive coordinator. My guest today is the Ringers' Stephen Ruiz.

1:44Let's take a break. We'll come back with Stephen. The Ringer NFL Show is presented by FanDuel. FanDuel's got it all. Same game parlays, quick bets for jumping in live and your way so you can build the bet that fits your play. Plus, don't miss out on the NFL playoffs all month long. Download the FanDuel app or head to fanduel.com slash ringer NFL to get started. 21 plus and present in select states or 18 plus and present in D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut.

2:37All right, we are back here on the Ringer NFL show with Steven Ruiz. Ruiz, there's so much going on in the NFL right now. Coaches are getting hired. We're what? 10 days away from the Super Bowl. Yet there is one story that has just swept everyone up this week, and that is Bill Belichick not getting into the Hall of Fame. So we're going to get into every aspect of this. What happened? How does the process work? But first, just give me your first impressions. You're an emotional guy. You like to just, when you're feeling something, just throw it out there. What did you think when you first heard this news?

3:11Steven Ruiz:Yeah, I went on a tweet storm after I saw the news. But I was very encouraged, I have to say, about the blowback to the vote. I did think it would be a little more divisive. I thought there would be some people, like some prominent voices on one side going, no, like there was the deflate gate stuff, the spy gate stuff, just his interaction with the media. But I think it was like universally hated that the fact that he's not going to be a first ballot Hall of Famer. But my first reaction was, I think the people that did vote against him, it's an ego thing on one hand, and you just don't respect the sport of football.

3:42Steven Ruiz:And I think as a hired gatekeeper of the sport, as a Hall of Fame voter, that's just unacceptable in my opinion. He's the greatest coach of all time. Maybe the greatest coach in all of sports and he's going to have to wait longer than Bill Polian had to wait to get into the Hall of Fame. To me, it's not even like really worth debating the credentials. I mean, he won six Super Bowls. He's second most victories behind Don Chula. There's nothing really to be like, well, I mean, we can have the Spygate conversation here in a little bit, but just in terms of what he accomplished in the NFL, there's no real debate there.

4:12So I don't think we need to spend too much time on that. So I think the more interesting question is like, how did this happen? Why did this happen? So here's how it works. The Hall of Fame vote. There is a panel of 50 voters, one from each NFL market, one additional writer. That makes 33. And then there are these 17 additional voters, which some of them are media members. Some of them are former coaches, execs, players like you mentioned, Bill Pullian, Tony Dungy, Dan Fouts, James Loftin. These guys get a vote as well. So this specific vote with Belichick, there's kind of two categories. There's the modern era finalists where you see, you know, a bunch of guys and who's going to get in.

4:51But then there's this other thing, which is senior candidates and also coaches and execs. So basically what you had here was Bill Belichick, Robert Kraft, and then three senior candidates. Bengals quarterback, Kenny Anderson, 49ers running back, Roger Craig, and Steelers defensive end, Elsie Greenwood. Greenwood. And Mike Sando of The Athletic did a good job explaining this on social media that each of the 50 voters has to pick three people from those five guys I just mentioned, the group that Belichick's in. And you got to get 40 votes to get in. And so, you know, you can game it any way you want.

5:30But this means it's actually surprising because this means it wasn't just one or two, this means that at least 11 voters did not vote for Bill Belichick among their top three, among that group or five. They thought three of the other four were more deserving than Bill Belichick. So did that all make sense, Ray? Because it is very confusing. Anything to add on the process there? And that makes it even more surprising, I think, that it wasn't just like a couple people, 11, at least 11 people out of the 50 voters did not vote for Belichick. And it's not like they only had to, could vote for one person.

6:06They could vote for three people. They could have had him third on their ballot and he still would have got in. But 11 people didn't even have him in their top three.

6:13Steven Ruiz:And I wonder how many, like how many average football fans, if you pull them all and you read off those names, which of those five names would they know? And like all respect to Kenny Anderson, but I don't think we need Ken Anderson in the hall of fame. Like Greenwood's another matter. I don't really know much about him. Roger Craig, I think should have been in early. I was kind of shocked to hear that he hadn't been in already, just based on how dynamic of a running back he was. But out of all those fives, even understanding the voting process and all that, I still can't fathom how Bill Belichick didn't make it through that, even though it's a flawed system.

6:47Steven Ruiz:And I think the one thing I would add is it is a new system. And I think some of the voters were against the new setup where they were putting coaches in this senior category and through this voting process. and apparently, I think it was Mike Sando who said it, was a reaction to maybe players like Deion Sanders were kind of complaining that middle-of-the-road players were getting in and the standard was too low for some of these players and that was the solution to it. I don't understand how that works. But no matter how you spin it, I just don't understand how Bill Belichick doesn't go to the front of the line.

7:17Steven Ruiz:I don't care who's in there, whether it's a coach or a player. There are only a handful of players I would put in front of the line for the Hall of Fame in front of Bill Belichick and none of those players make the cut. Yeah, your test there is a good one. If I just said, Ruiz, pick out the 10 to 20 people you respect the most, their opinion on the NFL and give them those five names and tell them to pick one, I almost feel like it would be unanimous that everyone would be like, all right, you can make cases for the other guys and that kind of thing. But I feel like Bill Belichick would be unanimous.

7:52So that brings us to what in the world happened here. And this is where it gets a little juicy. This is where, you know, I start liking it. All right. The voting process, it could be a little boring. Hall of Fame.

8:03Steven Ruiz:It's going to be a Netflix true crime doc one day. You know, Hall of Fame. I'm like, all right, I don't really care, you know, too much about it. But when you get to the juiciness of petty rivalries and backroom dealings, and he said, she said, that's when as team content, you get my interest. So let's get to the most. The juiciest theory, quite frankly here. And this is that Bill Pollian, a longtime Bill Belichick rival, GM of the Colts from 1998 to 2009, led a campaign of sorts. Again, this is just a theory. The reporting is from ESPN.com, Seth Wickersham and Don Van Mata, most of this reporting.

8:45that he led a campaign of sorts, I guess you could say, to make Belichick wait a year because of his multiple cheating scandal. So this is from that ESPN article, which says multiple sources told ESPN that Spygate and Deflategate, the twin cheating scandals during the Patriots championship run, came up in deliberations among voters. A voter who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Polian, an Arden, Kraft supporter, and former general manager of the Bills and Colts, a chief Patriots rival during their dynasty, told some voters he believed Belichick should, quote, wait a year before induction as penance for Spygate, the 2007 cheating scandal that cost the team a first round pick and there were fines and stuff there as well.

9:36So they reach out to Bill Polian Ruiz and Polian denies telling voters that Belichick should serve a one-year penance for Spygate. He said he heard his fellow voters, quote, float that idea, but insisted he didn't agree or disagree with the proposal. He said he voted for Kraft and even spoke up on his behalf during the deliberation, saying Kraft had no knowledge of Spygate. Now, this is where it gets interesting. Polian added that he could not remember with 100 % certainty if he voted for Belichick, saying he was 95 % sure he voted for the coach and a player, most likely Greenwood. I was shocked to learn Bill didn't get in.

10:20Pollian said he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Now, I think that he also, I think it was Sports Illustrated also reached out to Bill Pollian and he categorically denied that and said that he did vote for Belichick. But what do you make of this rivalry, Ruiz?

10:41Steven Ruiz:Well, it's not a rivalry because rivalry is supposed to be competitive and the Patriots were beating the hell out of the Colts every year until Bill Polian decided to change the rules to favor their team. So I don't think it's really a rivalry. And it actually goes back further. Before New England and Indianapolis, Bill Polian was the GM of the Bills, as you said, and Bill Belichick kind of made his name with that 1990 Super Bowl where he out-schemed the Bills and ended up getting the job in Cleveland. So it goes back even further. I think he's salty about just getting his ass kicked by Bill Belichick for two decades.

11:12Steven Ruiz:But, Shield, do you watch any reality show like Survivor, Big Brother, like those competitions where people are voting? You know, not recently, but I was a big challenge guy back in the day. The challenge is another one, yeah. Yeah, I'm familiar with the voting process. Always very interesting part of those episodes. When you listen to the goats of those shows talk about their strategy, the one strategy that always comes up is, especially when you're trying to influence a vote, is that you never want the people that are voting to realize that it was your idea. You kind of want to be the guy that kind of, you know, you start to get the whispers going and eventually everyone votes.

11:43Steven Ruiz:And then when it's time to, you know, look back at the vote and who voted for who, then they can be like, oh, I don't know. I wasn't, you know, I didn't influence his vote at all. I think that's what Polian is going for. And we're already seeing him start to backtrack and everything just start to crumble around him. If this was the challenge or a big brother or survivor, they would be like, all right, we're doing a house meeting. Everyone comes out. Do you remember the House meetings? Everyone comes out and you put everything out in the open. If we had a House meeting with all these voters, I think Bill Pullian would come out looking exposed.

12:11Man, that would be interesting. Now, that would be, if you really want to get me interested in the Hall of Fame, let's, yeah, let's do something like that. Let's make this long meeting that they have with the whole panel. It's like a day-long meeting. Let's make that into a TV event. I think you stumbled onto something here. I think we both did.

12:29Steven Ruiz:And maybe we uncovered his conspiracy, another possible theory behind this. Maybe the Hall of Fame was like, people are losing interest. We need some juice. Bill, we need you to take the fall. We're going to joke. This is the best way to do it. The other way to do it would have been making Tom Brady wait a year. By the way, deflicate. Maybe you should wait a year. Bill Polian's in charge. But that's another possible theory. We can't rule out anything at this point. So they do this. Yeah, it's a day-long meeting, I believe. Literally day-long. Eight hours where different people present different candidates.

12:58They all talk about it. And they learn more about each candidate. that would be a great televised event. Honestly, I mean, the NFL, they can't put enough stuff on TV and make people bid up the rights. That is something that maybe people would watch. And I like your theory as well, because it didn't have a lot of juice, the Hall of Fame. Normally I look at it, I look at the names. Okay, cool. Yeah, he was a great player. Never heard of him. All right, looks like, you know, he reads some story about a guy who had been waiting for a long time. All right, that's really cool. But I don't get that caught up in it, even the speeches.

13:30I usually will watch the clips, but I'm not watching the whole thing there. And can't, so this did, this has put the hall of fame more in the forefront, in the focus than maybe any other thing that's happened in recent memory.

13:42Steven Ruiz:I think people are going to watch Belichick's induction speech next year. I think it's going to be a thing. People are going to be, it's like the handshake with the rival coach. You're like, how, how's he going to respond? Is he going to, you know, he's going to say something. He's Belichick. He's going to say something when, when every gets in, I think that's what it was. I think they're just trying to get eyes on events. You know, they put your door in the pro bowl. Maybe that was the alternative. We put Shador in Canton right now instead of holding Belichick out. But I think there's something nefarious going on behind the scenes because that's a better explanation than our voting system resulted in Bill Belichick not getting in the Hall of Fame.

14:14Steven Ruiz:It's like the show The Good Place. I don't know if you watched that, where they figured out that nobody gets into the good place because it's impossible to be a good person on earth because of everything. So maybe that's the case here. But I feel like the Hall of Fame has been scrutinized for the voting process and who's getting in and who doesn't get in. And I think this might be the moment where we decide to tear it down and kind of start over because I think it's needed. A veteran Hall voter told ESPN the only explanation for the outcome was the cheating stuff. It really bothered some of the guys.

14:47Now, let's say that it hasn't been transparent. That's the one thing that they are told, do not disclose how you vote. I think because they don't, I really don't totally understand. It's because they don't want outside influence or pressure to be a factor. I guess if you don't vote for someone, now all of a sudden that fan base is just, you have a target on your back for the rest of your career because you didn't vote for them. I guess it's something like that. I sort of feel like if you're going to take on the responsibility of being a voter, then maybe you should deal with that. and maybe it should just be transparent because I actually would have more respect and I think you might disagree with this, but if a voter came out and said, I didn't vote for Belichick because of Spygate because I think he cheated.

15:32I think the integrity of the game, he cheated the integrity of the game. The league did an investigation. They lost a draft pick. The team was fine. He was fine. They destroyed the tapes. That never sat well with me. I know he's a great coach and I know he's going to get in eventually and I will put him in eventually, but I am making him wait a year because I don't think that that should just get swept under the rug. I wouldn't have a problem with that, personally. I would be like, okay, that's, you know, well, are you doing that with everybody else? Exactly, that's the problem. Yes, there's a lot of...

16:03Steven Ruiz:And you're the moral arbiter of the game, like who gets to decide what's... Breaking the integrity of the game where, you know, Tom Brady, deflate gate, that's going against the integrity of the game. Bill Cowher came out and was like, everyone was doing what Belichick was doing. in a way. Belichick said that recently, or not Belichick, Bill Cowher. And Bill Cowher's in the Hall of Fame, and we didn't hold that against him. So there are plenty of cheaters. There are steroid users in the game. There are people that have been fined. The Broncos got fined a bunch at the beginning of the 2000s for what they were doing with the salary cap when they won those Super Bowls.

16:35Steven Ruiz:No one held that against Pat Bolin, I don't believe. I think he ended up making the Hall of Fame as a contributor. So even that falls flat for me. They got punished. It wasn't that big of a deal. I know it was a big deal at the time, but in the grand scheme of things, Belichick continued to win afterwards. He was winning before then. So even that argument just falls flat to me. This is one of the greatest influences on football that we've ever seen from any individual. He's been a part of the sport for, I think, five decades now. He's coached under some great coaches. He's had great coaches come up from under him.

17:07Steven Ruiz:Nick's the greatest coach in college football history came up from under him, Nick Saban. It's ridiculous. And the other part of it, I think there are other people saying like, Like, oh, the time after Tom Brady kind of exposed him for what he was and he was kind of riding Brady. Like, are you serious? Like, what he did as a defensive coordinator was Hall of Fame worthy on its own. His game plan for that Bill Super Bowl is in the Hall of Fame. He went to the Browns and won a playoff game with them and had them as, like, Sports Illustrated, the year before they moved, had them as the Super Bowl favorites going into the year.

17:36Steven Ruiz:That's how well he built up that team before they decided to announce they were moving to Baltimore and everything fell apart. So, like, this guy has been successful elsewhere and without Tom Brady. He made the playoffs with Matt Jones. Like that's a Hall of Fame worthy accomplishment in my opinion. And the other part of this is Tom Brady himself has said like, Bill Belichick was in those meetings with me all the time. He taught me how to read coverages. Like he developed maybe the greatest quarterback of all time. And that's another thing you should get credit for. It shouldn't be held against him.

18:03Steven Ruiz:So if that's your other argument for why he should be held out or have to wait a year or whatever, if you want to question his greatness, like even that doesn't work. Yeah, that one is pretty much impossible because it's just, you know, you look at the body of work and it's like, it kind of doesn't matter. You can say, I give Brady more credit than Belichick and it really doesn't matter when you look at the entire body of work there. So at least that, at least if that was a reasoning, I would just want to know and a voter should put their name on it and say, this is why I'm doing it. And then, all right, we can rip, you can rip them and say, I totally disagree with that.

18:33I don't think you should be doing that. We can point to all the stuff in baseball. We can point to the players who have gotten in with some heinous off-field stuff, which we don't bring up when they get into the Hall of Fame. So there's all that stuff that, you know, These are Hall of Fame things that when I was a kid, I remember sports talk radio. It was like this would just take up an entire program for four hours. They would have these conversations about Pete Rose or whoever it is. But here, it's just there's not kind of that transparency. We had the Pullian theory here as well. So let me take a break.

19:03I want to give you one more theory that I saw out there. You can tell me if you think that one has any merit. Then we'll close the loop on this and we will get into the Browns hiring Todd Munkin. The Ringer NFL Show is brought to you by FanDuel. It's the last call for football on FanDuel. One final Sunday, one last kickoff, the final chance to place your bets before the NFL season closes its tap. And if you're a new customer, bet$5 and get$200 in bonus bets. If you win, make it count because after the Super Bowl, the season's over. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors.

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20:31First online real money wager only, $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets, which expires seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. All right, we're back on the Ringer NFL show. So the only other one I saw, Ruiz, was that this is actually kind of a funny one. Voters assumed he would get in. Now, you know, it's like they thought everyone else is going to vote for him. I really like these other three guys.

21:08I want them to get in. Belichick doesn't need my vote. And then like enough people do that to 11 and he ends up not getting in. What do you think?