The Pro Football Hall of Fame has officially joined the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in the irrelevant category. Today, the 44 "I'm smarter than you" media members who vote for the Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees somehow found a way to leave out the greatest Tight End (TE) to ever play the game, Shannon Sharpe, along with the 2nd or 3rd best Wide Receiver ever, Cris Carter. This is truly a joke!
I'm especially struck by this because Shannon Sharpe played 12 of his 14 seasons for the Denver Broncos. He revolutionized the way teams thought of the TE position. Prior to Sharpe, teams had TE's who could block and catch the occasional pass. When Shannon Sharpe came along, he was an offensive weapon from the TE position. He could still block, but now the team was designing pass plays for him. Defensively, the other teams had to account for him every time he was on the field, because he was a threat. If Shannon Sharpe is not a Hall of Famer, I'm not sure what a Hall of Famer is.
Sharpe won 2 Super Bowls with the Broncos and 1 with the Baltimore Ravens. The fact that he was left out today was a slap in the face to Broncos fans. We are already sensitive, because the Broncos only have 2 players in the Hall of Fame (John Elway and Gary Zimmerman), even though they have been a consistent playoff team for the last 35 years, winning 2 Superbowls and making it to 6 Superbowls. Teams with significantly less success, such as the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs have more players in the Hall, with fewer Super Bowl wins and fewer playoff wins. It's ridiculous!
I realize I'm biased towards the Broncos, but there is no acceptable reason why a franchise as successful as Denver should only have 2 players in the Hall of Fame. The only reason is some of these media guys who vote have decided that they finally have power over the jocks who picked on them in high school, so they are going to find some reason to make deserving players wait, sometimes several years, for induction.
Until the Pro Football Hall of Fame finds some voters who have a clue what a great football player looks like, the Hall of Fame is officially irrelevant!
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6 comments:
Sorry. I feel bad for you. I looked up my favorite team's hall of fame count just to see if I could whine more than you. Looks like they're up to 18. :(
I thought you didn't follow sports? What's your favorite team?
I don't follow them anymore. I don't think I ever said I never followed them. I gave them up for the most part after leaving my folks' house (in '93) when I no longer had free access to cable, and my girlfriend sort of made me stop watching TV, lol. :)
And, you're going to hate me, cuz they just won the Super Bowl. I grew up a fan of the Steelers, Yankees and Lakers. Oh, and golf... Chi Chi Rodriguez and Phil Mickelson. ;)
Oh, and I had a few year bout where I followed the Phoenix Suns while Jeff Hornacek (from ISU) was there.
Nothing like rooting for teams that always win (Yankees, Steelers and Lakers).
Yep, I was certainly one of those kids who looked closely at history before choosing a team to follow. ;)
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