The Pro Football Hall of Fame announced several significant changes to its induction procedures on Friday, and they look to be pretty bad news for some former, prominent members of the Minnesota Vikings who may have gotten the call to Canton in the future.
Among the changes that have been made are the following:
The selection committee has been reduced from 50 voting members to 28.
There is no longer a separate "Seniors" category. All eligible players will be considered in one pool following the mandatory five-year retirement period.
The annual finalist pool will go from 15 modern-era players, 3 Seniors players, 1 coach, and 1 contributor to 13 total players, 1 coach, and 1 contributor.
Candidates who reach the final seven will no longer carry over as finalists the next year.
Contributor eligibility will now consider a candidate's entire football résumé, including playing, coaching and other contributions.
It's the second point on the list that I want to draw everyone's attention to. The "Seniors" category was for players who had been retired for more than 25 years. In recent years, some of the players who had made it into the Hall of Fame from the Seniors category were Roger Craig, Sterling Sharpe, and the late Steve "Mongo" McMichael. It gave an opportunity for players who may have been overlooked during their initial stints of eligibility a second chance at potentially being enshrined.
Jim Marshall, who many Vikings fans have been pushing to get into the Hall of Fame for years, was a Seniors finalist in 2004, but did not make it into the Hall that season. He has been on the list of Seniors up for consideration multiple times since then, but has not been one of the three finalists considered since that 2004 season. Now, with the elimination of the Seniors category, it would appear that whatever slim chance there may have been to get the league's original Iron Man into Canton may have, officially, gone by the wayside.
Big changes for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. . .and, if you're a fan of the Minnesota Vikings, it doesn't look like they're necessarily good ones.
