Defend or Deny… the baseball Hall of Fame vs Football Hall of Fame
 

I have this friendly debate with my adult son - my position is that the energy, attention and importance of the Baseball HOF and all that goes with it (the vote, the player bans, the importance to the fans of the sport) is objectively more significant than the football HOF.

I like to say that I am a 4 sport fan, but a 1 sport collector - my son thinks that my baseball “beer goggles” clouds my objectivity on this debate.

But my twitter feed (algorithm) is full of as much football as it is baseball and yet it feels like I see 10 to 1 posts about the baseball HOF vs football.

Does anyone have ideas of how to objectively settle this debate? And if not, what is your POV on this issue? (… he asks on a vintage baseball card message board 😂😂😂)

Jeff

Flip a coin........Heads Baseball.........Tails Not Football

I'm not a football fan, so can't speak in terms of the gravitas of being in the Hall of Fame. I do feel like the football process seems to happen each year with less fanfare, where the baseball one is typically months of media coverage, opinions, and discussion from November through January each year.

Maybe that's happening on the football side and it's just not where I hang out, but the baseball is all over.

It's definitely Baseball. Football just doesn't revere its past. Anything outside of the fans living memory is a footnote that few fans recognize. Jim Brown is probably the only player from the 50's or before a majority of football fans will recognize the name of. History and the Hall are a lot less significant. Baseball is rather unique in how it honors its history and that history is considered an important part of the identity of the sport.


EDIT: For vintage football card collectors, this is a great thing. Truly great, important players are mostly cheap still in vintage football cards even with much lower print runs than baseball. There aren't 5, 10, 20 expensive cards in a set, there's 0-1 and most hall of famers carry very modest premiums, if any premium. Bang for buck is really good in vintage football, and makes it a lot of fun to collect.

Football Greatness, in general, is often tough to define for us 'regular' fans.
Think about being a kid and cheering on (for me, the Jets and Bills) your team.
Almost all of your focus is on the QB, RB and WRs (these days, TEs get a lot more play). With certain exceptions, no one is crazy-rooting for Guards, Cornerbacks, Offensive Tackles or any of the myriad other positions (which you're probably clueless about) on the field.

When the HOF vote comes, the vast majority of the talk is really all about the main positions I noted - QB, RB and WRs. (Yes, there are exceptions.) With the Offensive Line, most of the players on Defense and Special Teams, many of us have no clue (even looking at stats) what would actually make them worthy of enshrinement.

Contrast that with the rigidity of baseball positions. Every kid knows what each player's role is in a game. Although it's hotly debated, we all have an innate ability to know exactly who should (at least) be in the conversation of being an all-time great.

To me, that's a part of why I feel answering Cooperstown is the 'better' bet.

Here's an article talking about this

https://www.royalsreview.com/2025/1/...d-among-sports

Wasn't one of them built by a community effort to honor the game and the other a gimmick to boost the towns economy?

Almost everyone (except Joe Jacoby) makes the football HOF. You just don't see the same controversies and debates as with baseball. Baseball discussions are much more conducive to statistical analyses as well, you aren't going to see (I don't think) passionate debates about QB ratings. And while I love FB, I have sometimes wondered if the fact that between the helmet and the face mask you really don't see much of players' faces during the game, somehow cuts down on the personal connection fans feel?

Yeah the biggest controversy I can remember for the NFL HOF was whether a punter belonged. Every year the MLB vote is scrutinized by major media. I would say it means more to be elected to MLB HOF than probably all other sports in terms of coverage, debate, etc. on a national level.

Not sure if anybody noticed, but Offensive Lineman Jim Tyrer is the controversy this year.

Couldn't believe I wasn't familiar with his story until it came up again recently. If this were a baseball guy who was otherwise a HOF lock, we'd probably never stop talking about it.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/...y-chiefs-great

Here's something I never knew about the Football Hall of Fame:

"While there is no set number for any class of Enshrinees, the Hall of Fame's current selection process by laws stipulates that between four and eight new members will be selected."

This seems like another reason why the Baseball Hall of Fame is talked about more. While it doesn't happen often, there's no guarantee that someone is getting inducted every year.

Football also has a much bigger pool to select from. I'm not of the school of thought that it's any easier to get into then the Baseball HOF.

A Baseball team has 9 starters on the field plus DH plus bench guys plus relievers per game

A Football team has 22 starters on the field, plus kickers, special teamers and regular rotational players.

I seemingly see guys who retired from the game in the Top 10 in a major statistical category, regularly get passed over in the HOF voting, by the time they come up for election.

Isaac Bruce was the #3 all time guy in Yards from a Receiver at the time he retired. Took him like 11 years before he got in the HOF.

This doesn't really happen in baseball, unless there's some sort of underlying factor, and a bunch of angsty, non-stop chatter surrounding it.

I don't pay attention to the Football Hall of Fame and who gets inducted each year so I can't say if it's easier or harder to get into than it is for Baseball. I just think it's interesting that there are supposed to be 4 to 8 inducted every year. Rosters in football are basically double the size of rosters in baseball and 2 to 4 new inductees in the Baseball Hall of Fame is probably what happens each year so 4 to 8 for Football sounds right. It's just surprising that it's basically mandated for Football.