Say It Ain't So, Joe: The Saga of Namath's Journey to Pro Football Hall

Due mostly to fallout from the COVID pandemic, the Pro Football Hall-of-Fame's board of selectors hasn't met in person since February, 2020. That was supposed to change last month, but weather conditions throughout the country compelled the Hall cancel its plans and return to a fourth consecutive Zoom session.

But that should end next year. Barring anything unforseen (weather, for instance), the Hall intends to return to in-person sessions in 2025 when it can return to business as usual.

Well, almost.

Prior to COVID, voters convened in the Super Bowl city the Saturday before the Big Game to hash out who should get a Gold Jacket ... and it wasn't always pretty. Sometimes old-school voters (all veteran NFL writers) had agendas that were odd, unfair and even unsavory, and that made for legendary stories of heated meetings that could get ugly.

A few years ago, I heard the late Sid Hartman, a longtime voter who represented Vikings' players, say on a Minneapolis radio show that, the night before one vote, he and a few other selectors, like Will "Billy" McDonough, Len Shapiro, John Steadman and a couple of others, would meet privately to "decide who was going into the Hall of Fame the next day."

I don't know if that's 100 percent accurate, but I definitely captured inklings of similar things in the 1990s when I began to follow the process. 

Hopefully, Sid was just humble-bragging. But literature of the day -- as well as voting results -- revealed that players on championship teams had an easier time at election than players with similar stats and All-Pro recognition but who didn't win ... or never went to ... a Super Bowl. Granted, there were exceptions, but you couldn't help but notice that some values -- e.g., league title games -- were more prevalent among inductees than now. 

Perhaps there's no better example of that than the saga of the 1983-85 selectors' meetings when there was a to-the-mat fight over quarterbacks Joe Namath and Fran Tarkenton.

As we know, Namath had an enormous impact on pro football by quarterbacking the first AFL team (the New York Jets) to a Super  Bowl championship. We also know that Namath had a reputation for taking chances, and suffered the consequences. In other words, he threw a lot of interceptions. But he also threw a lot of passes (an out from one hash to the far sideline) that opponents couldn't cover and that no other quarterback could throw. They were part of a rare skill-set and part of his legacy.

Namath parlayed that talent into making the Jets a winning franchise and, in 1968, upsetting the heavily-favored Baltimore Colts, 16-7, in Super Bowl III -- football's equivalent to the shot heard 'round the world. It put the AFL on the map, elevating the upstart league to equal status with the established league.

There were two schools of thought on Namath. The first was that he was a great player whose career changed the game on levels that were hardly measurable. More than that, he was an All-Pro and MVP-level standout who came out on the winning side of one of the biggest upsets the game had ever known. 

He was a first-ballot Hall-of-Fame player, no doubt.

On the other side, however, was the view that Namath was good and not great -- someone who had outstanding years but was overrated. As proof, critics noted that he threw more interceptions (220) than touchdowns (173) in his career, didn't beat a winning team from Super Bowl III until 1974 and was a shell of himself in his final years.

He was, they contended, not worthy of being a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer and maybe not even worthy of the Hall at all.

Fran Tarkenton was kind of the opposite. He held every passing record in the book -- yards, touchdowns, competions, all of it. He also was a perennial Pro Bowler, first-team All-Pro and league MVP. But he never won the big one, failing three times to win a Super Bowl. Even so, he was expected to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

No so fast.

Some background.

Namath retired after the 1977 season. One year later, Tarkenton retired. Then, after the 1979 season, Roger Staubach hung 'em up. After the five-year wait, Namath was eligible for the Hall-of-Fame's Class of 1983 and in January was one of the finalists voters discussed when they met the day before Super Bowl XVII in Los Angeles.

According to the late Dave Anderson, a legendary writer for the New York Times and a longtime member of the Hall's board of selectors, after Namath's case was presented, it was shot down by a bloc of voters who represented NFL cities. The debate was contentious, with the pros and cons of Namath's candidacy debated -- how he changed the game ... poor career stats ... the historic Super Bowl victory ... the multitude of injuries ... and on and on.

Though some NFL voters pushed for Namath, there weren't enough to put him over the finish line. So he would have to wait.

AFL voters fumed.

Fast-forward one year to Tampa, site of Super Bowl XVIII, when Tarkenton was up for the Hall of Fame for the first time. As his case was presented by Hartman, all the AFL voters folded their arms in solidarity and sat silently. They didn't ask questions or make negative comments about the scrambing quarterback. They didn't say anything.

But when votes were counted, they were heard.

According to newspaper reports, Namath (in his second try as a finalist) was eight short and Tarkenton nine shy of gaining the 80 percent approval needed for election. AFL voters had made their point. If Namath waits, then Tarkenton waits, too.

By 1985, the old guard got the message. Namath was finally elected in his third year of eligibility, while Staubach leaped over Tarkenton to become a first-ballot inductee. With the AFL football gods satisfied, Tarkenton was easily elected to the Class of 1986 on his third try. It didn't matter that Tarkenton's credentials were stellar. In the minds of AFL voters, the lost Super Bowls were enough to justify him waiting. But it was clear that the real reason for Tarkenton's delay was the Namath snub. 

As unfair as some fans and media think the Hall-of-Fame process is now (current criticism usually stems from someone's "guy" not being elected), it is much better than the bad old days. 

Let's hope those days never return.