Whatever you might think of Terrell Owens, everyone can agree his career was never boring. He rose from the 49ers' special teams to a spot as one of the greatest players in the history of football, ending his career second in receiving yards, fifth in total touchdowns, and eighth in receptions. With numbers like his, Owens should be a no-doubt Hall of Famer.
Pro football writers thought otherwise, and the 2017 Pro Football Hall of Fame class will not include Owens. He shared his thoughts on Twitter:
Kurt Warner, Morten Andersen, and Jason Taylor will be enshrined alongside running backs Ladanian Tomlinson and Terrell Davis. Once the list went public, Twitter went off on the voting committee, ripping them for excluding one of the finest players of his generation:
Some members of the media even honed in on the voting process and the players who got in ahead of him, highlighting how ridiculous it is to keep out Owens (and other candidates like former Eagles safety Brian Dawkins) in favor of lesser players:
As of now, the Pro Football Hall of Fame still uses an anonymous voting process, which could come under fire in the wake of this result. Baseball already made the switch to more transparent balloting to keep their voters accountable, and it's a logical next step here.
It's hard to reconcile football writers keeping Owens out for what can only be character reasons when you look at some of the other members already in the Hall of Fame. OJ Simpson's legal history didn't get his bust removed from Canton. Marvin Harrison, an inferior player to Owens who played during the same era, has been in several dust-ups over the last decade or so that don't paint him in the best light. And Ray Lewis, who will most likely be a slam-dunk election to the HOF next year in his first time on the ballot, was part of a high-profile murder trial following a Super Bowl party in 2000.
Owens gets labeled as a "team cancer" for his antics away from the gridiron, and while he certainly didn't do himself any favors in the court of public opinion, it never stopped his teams from winning. The teams he played on had a higher winning percentage than those of Emmitt Smith, Randy Moss, Tomlinson, Marshall Faulk, Cris Carter, and Walter Payton—six of the NFL's top-11 scoring players of all-time. All of those players are either current or future Hall of Famers.
T.O. should get in eventually, but the charade should have been over after he was snubbed last year. For now, Owens will have to wait until writers decide it's "his time" to get the honor.
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