SI:AM | Bill Belichick’s Canton Call on Hold

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. Leave it to the NFL to find a way to seize headlines during the Super Bowl bye week.

In today’s SI:AM:
🏆 Belichick’s Hall snub
🏈 Why Belichick doesn’t deserve further punishment
🥌 NFLers’ new curling venture

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No golden hoodie for Belichick

Bill Belichick is going to have to wait to get his gold jacket.

The longtime Patriots coach will not be among those included in the 2026 Pro Football Hall of Fame class when the inductees are announced at the NFL Honors awards show in San Francisco on Feb. 5, ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham reported Tuesday.

I realize plenty of people don’t give a damn about halls of fame—and especially don’t care about the vagaries of the voting process for who gets inducted—but there’s plenty about the Belichick situation that every sports fan should find interesting.

For one thing, we’re talking about Bill Belichick, the most accomplished coach in modern NFL history. His six Super Bowl victories with New England, plus his two additional rings as the mind behind two Super Bowl-winning defenses with the Giants, should make him an easy first-ballot selection. He compiled a career record of 333–178, including playoff games, giving him the second-most wins of any coach in NFL history. (Don Shula is first with 347.)

So why didn’t he get in? There are a couple of possible explanations. For one, Van Natta and Wickersham reported that Hall voter Bill Polian, the general manager of the Colts during the height of their rivalry with the Patriots in the 2000s, led a campaign to make Belichick wait to be inducted. According to the report, Polian “told some voters he believed Belichick should ‘wait a year’ before induction as penance for Spygate.” Van Natta and Wickersham also describe Polian as an “ardent” supporter of Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who is also on the ballot this year and had a public falling out with Belichick over the coach’s messy exit from New England after the 2023 season.

Forcing Belichick to wait to be inducted as punishment for his involvement in a cheating scandal would be similar to how Baseball Hall of Fame voters evidently treated the candidacy of Carlos Beltrán, who was regarded as one of the ringleaders of the Astros’ sign-stealing scheme. Beltrán had the stats worthy of a first-ballot induction but had to wait until this year, his fourth on the ballot, to earn the honor.

For his part, though, Polian denies leading any sort of anti-Belichick charge. In an interview with ESPN, he denied telling his fellow voters to leave Belichick off their ballot for Spygate reasons. He said he did hear other voters “float that idea.” Curiously, Polian told ESPN that he couldn’t say for sure who he voted for during the Jan. 13 balloting, other than Kraft.

According to ESPN, Polian “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’ L.C. Greenwood.”

The process by which Belichick was up for induction is a bit complicated to explain. He was one of five finalists in the Senior, Coaches and Contributor pool of candidates. In 2024, the Hall changed its voting process to include coaches and “contributors” (owners like Kraft) alongside players in the “Senior” category. There are five finalists in that category: one coach, one contributor and three players. The pool of 50 voters casts ballots for three candidates each. A maximum of three candidates who receive at least 40 votes is elected. If no one receives 40 votes, the top vote-getter is elected. This year’s finalists are Belichick, Kraft, Bengals quarterback Ken Anderson, 49ers fullback Roger Craig and Greenwood, the former Steelers defensive end. There is a separate process for electing players from the “Modern Era” (those whose careers ended after 2001). This year’s list of 15 Modern-Era finalists includes Eli Manning, Drew Brees and Larry Fitzgerald.

The voting process could be partially to blame for why Belichick wasn’t elected on the first ballot. With 40 of the 50 votes required for induction, it only takes 11 voters leaving Belichick off their ballot for him to get snubbed. It’s easy to imagine some combination of anti-cheating voters, pro-Kraft voters and strong supporters of the three players on the ballot adding up to the 11 votes needed to keep Belichick out. You occasionally see situations like this during Baseball Hall of Fame voting. A voter might exclude a sure-fire Hall of Famer from their ballot in favor of casting a vote for someone who might garner less support but whom they believe deserves further consideration the following year. The difference is that in baseball, there are far more voters (425 this year), so one statement vote is less likely to sway the results.

Belichick will get his place in Canton someday. If anything, his snub this year should help his chances of getting next year, as voters seek to rectify what has been widely decried as a foolish omission. When his bust is eventually added to the Hall, no one will remember whether he got in on the first ballot.

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The top five…

… plays on a wild night in college basketball:
5. Divine Ugochukwu’s game-tying three to force overtime for Michigan State on the road against Rutgers. The Spartans held off an upset bid to win in OT and improve to 19–2.
4. The roar of the crowd when Miami (Ohio) wrapped up its win over UMass to improve to 21–0. The Redhawks are one of only two undefeated men’s basketball teams in the nation, joining Arizona.
3. Robbie Avila’s game-winning three for Saint Louis against George Washington. The Billikens have won 14 straight to improve to 20–1 on the season and are ranked in the AP poll for the first time in five years. (And yes, Avila is the guy with the glasses who became a cult hero at Indiana State two years ago.)
2. Sam Lewis’s contested three for Virginia to force a second overtime against Notre Dame. The Cavaliers went on to win, 100–97.
1. Cole Certa’s audacious go-ahead three for the Irish earlier in the game.