Edgerrin James. A great running back for the Arizona Cardinals. Still, he belongs in the hall of very great, not the Hall of Fame.
Michael Vick. Cruelty to animals and arrogance. Two horrible crimes .
Any athelete that has ever touched steroids should not ever even sniff a hall of fame.
How about Redskin Running back Timmy Smith: Most Rushing Yards Gained (204 yards in one game which is, my friends, just 150 less yards than the most yards in Superbowls over an NFL career held by Franco Harris at 354). In the Biggest Game in the U.S. on the biggest stage imaginable against the AFC Champions Denver Broncos in 1988. He was unstoppable. It was an amazing performance.
And even as a Redskin homer I would howl & protest if it were suggested he belonged in the HOF.
Plus there’s the whole illegal under federal law thingy…
If I’m reading that memo correctly, a player COULD have used steroids if he’d gotten a prescription.
Given that MLB took away the Angels’ steroid and HGH fueled world series win over the Giants, it seems unlikely that Bonds will ever get near the HoF.
What on earth are you talking about?
I’m still steamed that Barry Sanders got in the Hall of Fame. The guy had negative leadership. The way he retired made Brett Favre look good.
Yep he should have shut his mouth and ran for a team that was totally mismanaged. They had no chance to advance in the playoffs . A Superbowl was unreachable. He should have been a good little worker and gave his all to an organization that returned nothing. He was risking his health every game. The Lions just made a ton off him.
I had season tickets when he was there. They never made a Superbowl appearance yet are one of the original teams.
WTF? He was a great running back, maybe one of the best ever. He was exciting to watch and made very bad teams respectable. When he chose to leave the sport early, he announced it in plenty of time to allow Detroit to draft or trade to try and fill the large gap to some degree. Favre held his team up for several years in a row. I don’t get the hatred for Sanders.
I came in to say Mattingly, but he is already listed. He was maybe the best player in baseball for 2-3 years but only for 2-3 years and then he dropped from being a great player to a good player with a back injury.
I think Bonds will be snubbed for a year or two and then go in, so I am not sure with who I am agreeing. I think the same will happen to Clemens. Big Mac will be suspected of never having been a Hall of Famer without steroids, so he might be snubbed forever. Bonds and Clemens while assholes, were already Hall of Fame quality before they started abusing.
Sanders really should have given the bonus money back without having to be sued. However, there’s no evidence at all that Sanders ever took a negative attitude into the locker room or onto the field (at least, no more than any guy does.) His disagreement with the Lions came AFTER he decided to quit, and doesn’t really have anything to do with his performance as a football player while he was playing.
I was never under the impression Vick was that good a QB, even before the dog thing. He was extremely popular and a jersey seller, but the stats show he was never a really good QB.
With Vick, I think the attraction was that he always seemed to be on the verge of having a big break-out season where he’d win MVP and lead the Falcons to the Super Bowl. However, his off-field activities quickly put an end to that.
As for dominant athletes who won’t go in their sport’s HOF, I’d have to go with Kirk Gibson. Bill James once wrote that Gibson was a guy who you’d think was constantly putting up HOF numbers even though his stats said otherwise. (James incidentally wrote this a couple years before Gibson hit his memorable home run in the 1988 World Series which further added to that perception.) During his injury-plagued career, Gibson never had a season where he hit more than 30 home runs or knocked in more than 100 RBIs. He did hit .328 in the strike-interrupted season of 1981 (playing 83 games) but never topped .300 again.
He was, actually, a very good QB in 2002 (link) – 2:1 TD-INT ratio, 7.0 yards per attempt, acceptable sack rate. He was middle-of-the-pack as a passer that year according to DVOA and DYAR, and if you factor his value as a rusher he was probably a Top 10 QB in '02. However, in each of '04, '05, and '06 he was one of the worst passers among starting QBs. His value as a runner probably brought him up to level of “okay,” a guy you could get by with, but he was horribly overrated.
Anyway, this is just a long-winded way of saying I agree. He was very good for one season, but never dominant, and mostly below average.
I don’t know if Vick is underrated or overrated. He added an offensive dimension with the ability to break a play at any time. Yet his passing could at times be horrible. But there was always an interest . You watched to see what he would do.
Dion Sanders. I think he personifies the “Team has an ‘M’ and and ‘E’, and it spells ‘ME’” attitude.
Why the hatred for Bo Jackson? The only reason that I can think of was simply because he had a shortened career because of injury.
Steve Garvey The poster child of the Hall of Very Good.
You’re reading that memo incorrectly. According to the memo, a player would be violating the rules of baseball even if he did have a prescription- it doesn’t make any allowances for prescribed drugs.
IOW, if Bonds is guilty of a rule violation under that memo, so is just about every other MLB player since 1991.
I don’t think he was overrated at all. I think he was used horribly.
Obviously, I wasn’t the only one who thought so at the time, but using Vick as a West Coast quarterback was akin to lining Deion Sanders up at defensive tackle.
He was terrible at the one thing you need in the West Coast- throwing short passes accurately- and great at lots of things you don’t need.
Dan Reeves’ offense was perfectly suited to his skillset- lots of running, and deep passing. Vick could run, and Vick could throw a great deep ball. Thus, his excellent (for a first-year starter) 2002 numbers. Of course, Vick was at least partly responsible for Reeves getting run out of town after the next season.
Greg Knapp’s offense wasn’t suited to him at all. Not having any decent receivers didn’t help, obviously, but he had Brian Finneran and Trevor Gaylor in 2002 and did just fine.
ETA: I’m not saying he would have put up Peyton Manning or even Eli Manning-esque numbers had he been used correctly, but I think that with a smart offensive coordinator (Norv Turner, maybe) his passing and rushing numbers would be enough for the Hall one day.