{"id":115930,"date":"2026-01-29T02:42:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T02:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/115930\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T02:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T02:42:12","slug":"first-known-bill-belichick-dissenter-explains-his-hall-of-fame-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/115930\/","title":{"rendered":"First known Bill Belichick dissenter explains his Hall of Fame ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first known Bill Belichick dissenter has been revealed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Kansas City Star\u2019s Vahe Gregorian came out as one of at least 11 Pro Football Hall of Fame voters who didn\u2019t put Belichick on their ballots<\/a> after the shocking news that the eight-time Super Bowl champion failed to make the cut during his first time up for induction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a column for the Star on Wednesday<\/a>, Gregorian, who has covered the NFL for nearly four decades, wrote that the snubbing had nothing to do with Spygate, Deflategate or Belichick\u2019s infamous testiness with the media.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead, the longtime sports columnist said, the Hall\u2019s \u201ccurious selection dynamics\u201d led him to put his votes elsewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"HeadHead coach Bill Belichick of the North Carolina Tar Heels looks on prior to the game against the Virginia Cavaliers at Kenan Memorial Stadium on October 25, 2025 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Separate from the 15-man modern-era ballot, voters are tasked with selecting candidates from a special, five-person pool made up of three categories consisting of three senior candidates, a contributor, and a coach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Belichick, this year\u2019s coaching candidate, was competing with senior nominees Ken Anderson, Roger Craig and L.C. Greenwood and the contributor nominee, who happened to be longtime Patriots owner Robert Kraft.<\/p>\n

Voters were allowed to pick just three candidates from this field, with the nominees needing 80 percent (40 out of 50) of the votes to make it into Canton, Ohio.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite only having three votes, all five men, Gregorian stated, were deserving of the Hall in his eyes, and he had initially assumed he would be voting for Belichick on his first ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But when it came time to vote, Gregorian said he felt \u201cduty-bound\u201d to vote for the three \u201crichly deserving\u201d senior candidates \u2014 Anderson, Craig and Greenwood \u2014 who could be staring at one of their final chances at the notoriously tough-to-get-into HOF.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"BillNew England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick speaks into his headset on the sideline during the first half of an NFL football game against the New Orleans Saints, Sunday, Oct. 8, 2023, in Foxborough, Mass. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll three have been long deserving of induction in the Hall. All three have been, well, snubbed for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gregorian cited NFL greats like Albert Lewis, Otis Taylor and Jim Tyrer, who all fell short of the Hall during their turn as senior candidates, as players he didn\u2019t want this year\u2019s trio to suffer the same fate.<\/p>\n

Belichick\u2019s induction, Gregorian wrote, \u201cis inevitable soon,\u201d and he stated that he understood why the football world was so outraged at the results<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the risk of contradicting my own vote, really, [Belichick] shouldn\u2019t even have to wait,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI understand why people are offended that he isn\u2019t going in the first moment he can. \u2026 I felt more compelled by what I perceive to be last chances and looming lost causes within the system as we have it \u2014 a system I hope the Hall will see fit to change now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first known Bill Belichick dissenter has been revealed.\u00a0 The Kansas City Star\u2019s Vahe Gregorian came out as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[21602,837,9,11,10,22,51012,319,6475],"class_list":["post-115930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-bill-belichick","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-nfl","tag-pro-football-hall-of-fame","tag-sports","tag-sports-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}