Cote: Belichick’s stunning Hall snub is shame of sanctimonious voters | Opinion
The news jarred the NFL with a blind side hit even as America’s biggest sport prepared to celebrate its Super Bowl — whose championship trophy might as well be named for Bill Belichick.
If you say you saw this coming, you’re lying.
The only people who might have seen it coming were the sanctimonious Pro Football Hall of Fame voters who, reportedly, were plentiful enough to deny Belichick a place in Canton in his first year of eligibility. There are only 50 voters and 80% approval, or 40 votes, is required.
Someday, maybe after Feb. 5, when the Hall’s Class of ‘26 is revealed, the at least 11 voters who punished Belichick and logic will in turn have the nerve to publicly reveal themselves as the self-appointed moralists presently hiding in the shadows as incredulous football fans rightly mock them.
A quick and unanimous vote should have swept Belichick in following all the endorsement speech that should have been needed:
“He won six Super Bowls.” Period.
This is professional sports. The object is winning. The bottom line is championships.
Belichick’s six Super Bowls won is the most of any head coach. Also it’s the most overall NFL championships won by a coach dating to the league’s founding in 1920. (It’s actually eight Super Bowl rings for Belchick counting two he earned as an assistant coach — for those voters who found insufficient the record six he won with the New England Patriots between 2001 and ‘18.
Belichick left the NFL with 333 combined regularseason and playoff wins — only 14 short of Don Shula’s all-time mark of 347. And Belichick has three times as many Super Bowl victories as Shula’s as a head coach.
“One of the greatest if not the GREATEST of all time!” wrote former Cowboy, Dolphins and Miami Hurricanes coach Jimmy Johnson of Belichick, on X — the all-caps his.
Johnson also wrote: “I would like to know the names of the assholes who did not vote for him. They are too cowardly to identify themselves.”
This from Hall voter (and former Miami Herald colleague ) Armando Salguero: “I presented Bill Belichick in the coach subcommittee meeting that moved him forward to the ful committe, and I presnted him to the full committee. I am stunned, disappointed, and disagree deeply with the at least 11 selectors who didn’t vote for him for the HOF Class of 2026.”
With this, Salguero is confirming the ESPN report that (barring an emergency re-vote to avoid the embarrassment) Belichick will be denied on Feb. 5.
I have seen some who agree with Belichick being denied suggest he wasn’t that great and that quarterback Tom Brady won all those rings for him. How spectacularly stupid! Coaches who have won major championships without great players could hold a national meeting at Waffle House and not fill up the corner booth.
So why didn’t Belichick, despite being obviously deserving, not get in? This is where the sanctimony and the moralizing comes in.
Deflategate was not a big deal. Spygate, admittedly, was bigger. It was not nothing. It was a 2007 NFL scandal in which the Patriots were caught illegally filming New York Jets coaches’ sideline signals. Commissioner Roger Goodell fined Belichick $500,000, fined the team $250,000 and made he Pats forfeit a 2008 first-round draft pick.
This justifiably smudged Belichick’s reputation, the stain evidently permanent, even as no evidence has ever existed that Belichick and Brady won any of their championships because of “cheating.” Should Belichick have been punished? Yes. And he was. Should the punishment be a life sentence banishing Belichick from the Hall? Of course not.
This is a Hall of Fame, not a Hall of Sainthood. It’s about football, not about being perfect.
I predict — all of this assuming the ESPN report on Tuesday proves accurate — that voters who denied Belichick the honor of being a first-ballot inductee will soften next year and let him in during his second year of eligibility.
That isn’t a given, though. Some of us thought that would happen in baseball with the “steroid guys” ... punish them, but eventually let the deserving guys in. But Cooperstown-worthy players such as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were denied for all of the 10 years they were allowed on the ballot.
I am a baseball Hall of Fame voter (not one in football) and voted for Bonds and Clemens because A). Their Hall credentials did not depend on PEDs, B). I do not believe their use should be a lifetime sentence, and C). Fallible humans, not just angels, should have a chance, too.
Same with football. Belichick’s and Brady’s greatness and championships did not depend on Spygate, the coach already has paid his punishment for that, and the shrine in Canton, Ohio, is not restricted to mortal deities.
It wasn’t just the shared sanctimony of a few voters that did this. It was enough voters that I smell collusion. I believe, based on reports, that former Buffalo Bills executive Bill Polian, an at-large Hall voter, worked behind the scenes to keep Belichick out. I also believe Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a fellow 2026 Hall nominee whose professional relationship with Belichick ended badly, also lobbied to keep his ex-coach out.
The whole thing stinks.
Look, I’m not a huge Belichick fan. Always seemed a bit unlikeable to me. Didn’t mind his NFL career ended with a 4-13 season. Sort of liked he went 4-8 in college with North Carolina last season. I’ve made as many snarky jokes as the next guy over Bill, at 73, having a girlfriend young enough to be his granddaughter.
But let’s be fair, that’s all.
He won six Super Bowls.
When that stops being enough for a head coach to make the Hall of Fame, that diminishes the Hall of Fame far more than it does the man being wrongly denied.
This story was originally published January 28, 2026 at 3:15 PM.
