Bill Belichick, the eight-time Super Bowl-winning coach, is not a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
In voting earlier this month, Belichick fell short of the 40 out of 50 votes needed for induction to the Pro Football Hall of Fame during his first year of eligibility, four sources with firsthand knowledge of the outcome told ESPN. Belichick received a call from a Hall representative last Friday afternoon with the news that he won’t be inducted into the Hall in Canton, Ohio, this summer.
Deflategate was a clown show, not a scandal. At worst it was a minor rules violation that a $22 million investigation ultimately couldn’t conclude even happened.
Taping practices was a deliberate protest of a mid season rule change. The NFL issued a memo that this couldn’t be done anymore and the Pats continued with the argument that you couldn’t just issue a memo mid season to change the rules. It blew up because a Rams player offhandedly said “it feels like they know what we’re doing before we do.”
Keep in mind that shortly after all this, the Saints were discovered issuing bounties to players who injured their opponents, which is straight up evil, but people remember deflategate.
Belichick might not be the greatest coach of all time, but he coached arguably the most successful team of all time, and that’s Hall of Fame material.