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Editor’s note: Mike Sando is on the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee and has served since 2010.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame revealed an overhauled selection process Friday, including changes to policies dating back decades, seven months after Bill Belichick’s omission from the 2026 class created controversy and confusion.
The changes, which the Hall described in a news release as the culmination of a review lasting 2 1/2 years, include:
• Reducing the selection committee from 50 to 25 members, plus three nonvoting participants, with voting status determined annually.
• Eliminating the senior category for players retired at least 25 years.
• Enshrining between three and seven candidates each year from a 15-person pool: 13 players, one coach and one contributor.
• Scrapping the system whereby one selector from each NFL market takes the lead in presenting the candidacy for finalists associated with that market. Instead, one person who is not on the committee will present all candidates.
The separate senior category has been used since it was established in 1972. The selection committee has included at least one representative for each team/market since the Hall’s inception in 1963, with an increasing number of at-large selectors more recently. The new committee will be the smallest since 1976, when the league expanded to 28 teams.
The Hall said it hoped the new rules would curtail “unintended biases” in three areas: disparate presentation skills among selectors; team markets from which selectors hail; and the pressure to enshrine candidates before they transitioned from modern-era (retired between five and 25 years) to senior status.
The changes also appear to address unintended consequences that arose from new rules implemented in August 2024, beginning with the Class of 2025. Those changes included forcing three senior candidates, one coach and one contributor to compete for between one and three slots each year.
The Hall of Fame hoped selectors would choose the three strongest candidates from that five-person bucket. Had that happened, Belichick, the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach of the New England Patriots, surely would have earned selection in his first year of eligibility.
Instead, some selectors admitted to prioritizing long-waiting senior candidates, on the thinking that this might be their only shot at enshrinement (as explained in the video from January below). The result was former San Francisco 49ers running back Roger Craig earning enshrinement, while Belichick and the four others fell short of the necessary 80 percent vote threshold.
Why Bill Belichick might have been snubbed: HOF voting process explained
Mike Sando
The Hall has not yet announced who will serve on the smaller new committee. It plans to contact selectors individually. Some selectors excluded from the 25-person selection committee could still serve on subcommittees for coach and contributor candidates.
The 25-member panel will meet in person during the first week of February to consider the 13 players, one coach and one contributor on the ballot that year. The committee has met via video call since the pandemic.
Selectors will vote to reduce the group from 15 candidates to 10 to seven during the meeting, the same as before. Selectors then must vote for six of the final seven. All candidates receiving at least 20 of the 25 possible votes (80 percent) will be enshrined that year.
That’s a change from the past two years, when selectors had to pick five of the final seven from a pool of modern-era candidates.
Requiring selectors to vote for six of the final seven, instead of five of seven, means between three and seven candidates could meet the 80 percent threshold for enshrinement. The range was three to six previously, as the Hall set a three-member minimum, regardless of whether candidates received 80 percent of the votes.
All else equal, the new rules appear likely to increase class sizes. That would be a change from the system over the past two years, which the Hall introduced with the stated goal of reducing class sizes. Those changes came after Hall of Famer Deion Sanders complained that too many candidates were being selected. The Hall said Sanders’ comments did not drive those changes.
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