44 handpicked selectors not enough to confer sports immortality--Jason Whitlock

• Jason Whitlock notes only 44 handpicked selectors decide pro football's Hall of Fame. He cites what is wrong with this and why it must change.

As it happens, MLB's Cy Young and MVP Awards are also the result of a small group of handpicked selectors, 28 or 30, and as such compare with the big NFL award. From Whitlock's article:

• "A small group of handpicked selectors — 44 — of varying degrees of qualifications choose who goes into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

• That group pretty much pledges not to criticize each other publicly.

And the sports writers who are not among that group and someday hope to be

• realize they better not offer

• a word of criticism.

It’s an un-American process. It’s a journalistically unsound process. It’s a cowardly process....

• It’s a process — in these economically tough times —

• ripe for corruption.

It’s a process that mostly serves the egos of the selectors....

• New York Giants linebacker Harry Carson was the first football player

• to whine his way into the Hall of Fame."...

Kansas City Star, "Process for voting on football hall is broken," by Jason Whitlock, 2/6/10

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