When you?re the pied piper of pigskin, leading football fandom down the path of gridiron enlightenment, it only makes sense that you toot your own horn as often as possible.
But we missed a major-league opportunity to toot, toot, toot for the home team a couple weeks ago in the wake of the Hall of Fame
Class of 2010 induction ceremony.
After all, once again, for the third straight year, Canton welcomed into its fold one of the biggest classes of defenders in Hall of Fame history.
In 2008, the Hall voted in four defensive players, the largest single class of defenders in the two-platoon era. Then three more were added in 2009 and then three again here in 2010, in each case tying the previous record for HOF defenders last matched more a decade ago. It adds up to an unprecedented 10 defenders entering Canton in just three years.
This year's class included defensive back Dick LeBeau, defensive tackle John Randle and linebacker Rickey Jackson (pictured), a player
for whom we publicly lobbied over the years.
Credit the Cold, Hard Football Facts for forcing the Hall, and open-minded pigskin "pundits," to give defenders their due after decades of treating them like second-class citizens.
Here?s the short version of the story: back in 2007,
we notified the football world, including Hall of Fame voters, that the committee charged with handing out football immortality had failed miserably. They had failed to honor defenders the same way that had offensive players.
The disparity was incredible: through 2007, the Hall of Fame had welcomed two offensive players for every defensive player in the two-platoon era. And the disparity was only growing worse: in the more recent years, Hall voters ushered in three to four offensive players for every defensive player.
Clearly, Hall of Fame voters were not treating defenders fairly.
We
broke it all down with the Cold, Hard Football Facts, to the point that nobody could deny that Hall voters had failed. But instead of circling the wagons, Hall of Fame voters did the right thing: they accepted the Cold, Hard Football Facts (as if there?s another option) and they began to long, slow process of righting history.
Soon after our 2007 report, we heard from Sports Illustrated scribe and Hall of Fame voter Peter King, who was concerned about the disparity we had uncovered. He put us in touch with a slew of other Hall of Fame voters, including Rick Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News and St. Louis sports writer Howard Balzer.
They were all concerned about the disparity between the number of offensive and defensive players with a bronze bust in Canton. Suddenly, in the wake of our report, Hall voters immediately began to toot a new tune.
Here?s a look, for example, at the past 10 Hall of Fame classes.
- The Class of 2001: 4 offensive players and 2 defensive players
- The Class of 2002: 3 offensive players and 1 defensive player
- The Class of 2003: 3 offensive players and 1 defensive player
- The Class of 2004: 3 offensive players and 1 defensive players
- The Class of 2005: 4 offensive players and 0 defensive players
- The Class of 2006: 3 offensive players and 2 defensive players
- The Class of 2007: 5 offensive players and 1 defensive player
- The Class of 2008: 2 offensive players and 4 defensive players*
- The Class of 2009: 2 offensive players and 3 defensive players
- The Class of 2010: 4 offensive players and 3 defensive players
You?ll notice a huge disparity in the seven years before our report: from 2001 to 2007, the HOF inducted 25 offensive players and just eight defensive players. That?s a rate of greater than 3 to 1 for those of you keeping score at home. The disparity was incredible in the three classes from 2005 to 2007: 12 offensive players and just three defensive players.
Something was very, very wrong here.
But in the three most recent Hall of Fame classes? Eight offensive players and 10 defenders, including the single largest class of defenders in Hall of Fame history (2008) in the immediate aftermath of our report.
Mere coincidence? We think not.
There's still a long way to go. Two-platoon offensive players still outnumber defenders by a total of 117 to 73. And among those who played in the Liva Ball Era, the tally is 26 offensive players and 13 defenders. So that's still a 2-to-1 ratio among those who played the contemporary game.
But Hall voters have clearly expressed a new apprecation for the Hall of Fame qualifications of defensive players. And, in our always humble view, this new-found appreciation is a tribute to the almighty power of the Cold, Hard Football Facts to right the wrongs of gridiron history.
