Football Hall of Fame planning voting changes after Bill Belihcick snub

It looks like the Pro Football Hall of Fame could be regretting not letting Bill Belichick in on the first try.

Hall of Fame President Jim Porter told ESPN that the institution could be making some tweaks to its voting process for next year’s class. But he insisted that the potential changes are not a direct result of Belichick’s snub.

Porter said the Hall of Fame plans to return to in-person voting and discussion for the committee after it was moved to a virtual meeting room in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The vote would likely occur closer to the reveal at the NFL Honors in an attempt to thwart the leaks prior to the event.

Porter added that the 50-member voting committee would consider the release of individual ballots and vote totals in the future, but will not for this year’s class.

Additionally, Porter said that HOF would be looking into voters who might have violated the rules by revealing the off-record debate about potential candidates to the public and could replace those who did.

“I’m not here to tell them who the most deserving is,” Porter told ESPN. “If the Hall was to tell who the most deserving is, we wouldn’t need them to vote. We understand that. We just want the rules followed.”

This comes as some voters have expressed their frustrations over rule changes last year that groups senior players — who have been retired for at least 25 years — along with coaches and contributors, making it more difficult for candidates to reach the required 80 percent threshold to gain entry.

Belichick’s miss marks three straight years in which no coach has gotten into the Hall of Fame, sparking a debate over whether the process should be changed to separate coaches and contributors from the seniors.

Porter, however, did not indicate that part of the process would be changed, citing that coaches and contributors were grouped with players for over five decades before changes about 10 years ago.

“The question is, what changed?” Porter said. “What was it that the selectors could do that for the 50-some years but now can’t. They could get the right person in that didn’t require a category. I don’t know. We’ll find it out. We’ll talk to a lot of people. … But there’s a responsibility there.

“The responsibility is to pick the most deserving. They got down to where that number was. So my question is, is everybody picking the most deserving.”