For the second straight year, Terrell Owens has been denied into the NFL Hall of Fame. This year it didn’t even come down to the final 10; Owens was cut in the top 15.
The Hall of Fame begins with 15 finalists. From there, they trim everything to 10, and finally seven people are inducted into the Hall. They spend time discussing why each person should be in the hall, though sometimes these discussions are less of an argument and more of a reflection—such is the case when Eddie DeBartolo was inducted in 2016.
Despite being the third longest discussion in the hall of fame at 32:21, Terrell Owens didn’t crack the top 10, and was one of the five names discarded before the final votes were made. There’s plenty of arguments to be made of why Terrell Owens shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame due to his attitude on and off the field. Calling voters into question in 2016 probably didn’t help his case for this year, and his #flawedprocess tweet probably won’t help his cause either.
Each year, Hall of Fame voter Clark Judge provides some insight into the voting room and notable names and discussions that arose. He had this to say about TO:
The debate wasn’t different from a year ago, and here’s why: Nothing has changed. Owens still has the numbers and still has the reputation. The debate was passionate on both sides of the aisle, but it wasn’t long before it became clear that, as happened a year ago when he was a first-year finalist, his candidacy would be put on call-waiting. Owens can complain … and he and his supporters have … but he has an uphill climb to reach Canton.
Regardless, we’ve seen other players with character questions, and lesser numbers compared to TO, get into the Hall of Fame. If it comes down to what gets in and what doesn’t, sure, bring up TO’s attitude, but for him to not even make it to the final cuts, is a bit questionable. Looking at this year’s class, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher why T.O. isn’t inducted.
But as I said in 2016, regardless of how good he is, if he keeps talking, this may keep getting delayed.