Fans around the country and especially in New England were puzzled and outraged by the recent exclusion of former Patriots head coach Bill Belichick and team owner Robert Kraft from the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

What, people wondered, could be the reason that the Hall of Fame Selection Committee would deny one of the most successful coaches in NFL history and the owner of the team he coached first-ballot election to the Hall of Fame?

Was it their connection to scandals like “Deflategate” or “Spygate?” Surely, a sport that has forever been in bed with gambling must demand only the highest moral and ethical standards of its Hall of Fame inductees, right?

Or did Belichick’s romantic involvement with a much younger woman awaken the green-eyed monsters on the Selection Committee?

I’m no football genius, but when I heard that neither Belichick nor Kraft were among this year’s Hall of Fame inductees, I immediately suspected what their real crime was: insufficient hatred toward the man residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame Selection Committee is largely made up of members of the media. Need I say more?

No, but I will.

The NFL chose Bad Bunny to headline the Super Bowl halftime show. This is the same Bad Bunny who made celebrity elites swoon when he bravely used his recent Grammy Award acceptance speech to declare “ICE out!”

Another clue was the hiring of late-stage TDS-sufferers, Green Day, as the Super Bowl’s pre-game entertainment.

But we are expected to believe that politics had nothing to do with Belichick’s and Kraft’s Hall of Fame snub.

It’s not that Kraft and Belichick have been going around singing the praises of the American President. No, their offense is that they haven’t publicly rebuked him enough. All Kraft and Belichick had to do was direct some perfunctory reproach at the Fascist in Chief and they would have been first-ballot shoo-ins.

But there’s another problem, beyond the taint of Trump. Both Belichick and Kraft are associated with a team whose name and logo glorify the “colonizers” who founded the United States on land stolen from Indigenous Peoples. Not cool among Bad Bunny and Green Day fans.

Belichick and Kraft will eventually get into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But the message has been sent by NFL grandees and their media comrades.

Play ball with us or forever face fourth and long.
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[This column originally appeared in the February 12, 2026 Wakefield Daily Item.]

Robert Kraft photo by Football Schedule, use permitted under Creative Commons license.