The situation is very clear.
The numbers are unquestioned, the issue is that some in media have decided to become judge, jury and executioner about who should be in the Hall of Fame based off the type of personality that player had and if he was liked by the media.
The interesting thing is they seem to care about what happened in locker room more so than off the field issues.
If T.O. was a wife beater but a beloved teammate, he is in the Hall of Fame right now. That is how backwards things are with the HOF of committee.
Kurt Warner explains perfectly on PFT Live.
“I believe, A, he’s a Hall of Famer,” Warner said on a Wednesday visit to PFT Live. “What he did between those lines you can’t argue. There’s nothing you can argue about, and I believe he will get in.”
“But there’s a prestige factor that maybe wasn’t matched with T.O. based on the different things that we hear and that we’ve seen and that’s really the only caveat right there [for him] and guys like Charles Haley. Same way, right? He belonged in the Hall of Fame way before he got in but there was a part to it that says, ‘We believe that the Hall of Fame is more than stats.’ It’s not just stats there’s something else extra to it and then you have to weigh that with guys like myself. You know you got T.O. and myself and you try to weigh the two and balance them out and I think it was just a matter of, ‘Okay we weighed this one a little bit heavier than T.O. yet T.O. I believe without question because he’s earned that right with the way he played the game.’”
This is a common assessment of Owens, but I would counter that by saying there are many players in the Hall of Fame that had similar issues on teams, but it was just kept private.
It is simply a travesty that he isn’t in the Hall of Fame.