Stars feeling pinch of Hall process

Cris Carter tallied 130 touchdowns in 16 NFL seasons (No. 2 on the alltime list), including a career-high 17 with the Vikings in '95. John Iacono/SI

TAMPA, Fla. -- A player who ended his career as the greatest pass-catching tight end in NFL history failed to make the cut for the Hall of Fame Saturday afternoon. So did a wide receiver who ranks second in league history with 130 touchdown catches.

To anyone who thinks this is an oversight, think again. This is a trend.

Like the reaction from the back of a Tampa Convention Center ballroom when tight end Shannon Sharpe and wide receiver Cris Carter were not announced as members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2009, there are sure to more groans in the years to come. The reason is numbers: Too many deserving candidates, too few available spots.

A maximum of seven players/contributors can be inducted each year -- five from the modern era and two seniors candidates -- and that means someone is going to be left out. Looking down the road, the problem is only going to get worse when you consider that, in 2010, the first-year candidates will include two shoo-ins -- Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith -- the league's greatest receiver and all-time leading rusher, respectively, as well as wide receiver Tim Brown.

At a minimum, that will leave just three available spots for players such as Sharpe, Carter, Brown and running back Eddie George -- in additon to the finalists who didn't make the cut Saturday.

In 2011, the list of first-ballot candidates will include cornerback Deion Sanders, running backs Marshall Faulk, Curtis Martin and Jerome Bettis, and coach Dick Vermeil. You could make a case for each of them going in right away.

Saturday brought the toughest round of cuts yet in my three years on the Board of Selectors. Several of the 43 other voters said the same thing.

We started with 17 finalists: seniors candidates Bob Hayes and Claude Humphrey; linebacker Derrick Thomas; defensive linemen Richard Dent, Cortez Kennedy, John Randle, and Bruce Smith; wide receivers Carter and Andre Reed; tight end Sharpe; offensive linemen Dermontti Dawson, Russ Grimm, Bob Kuechenberg and Randall McDaniel; defensive back Rod Woodson; and contributors Paul Tagliabue and Ralph Wilson Jr.

After voting separately on the seniors, we cut from 15 to 10 by secret ballot. The first five to go were Tagliabue, Kennedy, Kuechchenberg, Dawson and Reed.

We then cut the list to five, again by secret ballot. The general consensus was that there were only two shoo-ins: Smith and Woodson, first-ballot guys who really didn't require discussion. That left eight individuals for three spots.

When Steve Perry, the president/executive director of the Hall of Fame, announced the five finalists, my first thought was: Wow! No Sharpe. No Carter.

My second thought: Great for Wilson, the 90-year-old owner of the Bills who was among the original founders of the American Football League. The knee-jerk reaction of some is, why Wilson? What impact has he had on the game?

The answer can be found in Larry Felser's illuminating book, The Birth of the New NFL: How the AFL/NFL Merger Transformed Pro Football. Read the book and your questions will be answered. Wilson played a major role in laying the foundation of the NFL as we now know it, and his judgment remains spot-on (remember, he and Mike Brown were the owners who voted against the current Collective Bargaining Agreement the 30 other owners now loathe, even though they voted for it).

Without divulging privileged information, Wilson was not a front-runner for induction at the start of the meeting. Several voters did not wake up planning to put an X through the box next to his name. But there was a groundswell of support once his candidacy was discussed, particularly with the coming season representing the 50th anniversary of the AFL. In essence, that left two spots for four candidates: Carter, Sharpe, Thomas, McDaniel. To sit and go through each of their qualifications would be a waste of time, in my opinion, because each was deserving. And in a room of 44 voters, there are going to be different reasons for selecting one over another.

Ultimately, we wound up with a class of Smith, Woodson, Hayes, Thomas, McDaniel, and Wilson. Some voters called the final vote gut-wrenching. If so, we should all bring a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, because things are only going to get worse.

Carter concluded his career after the 2002 season with 1,101 receptions for 13,899 yards and 130 touchdowns, second-most in NFL history. Sharpe retired after the 2003 season as the league's alltime leader in catches (815), touchdown catches (62) and yards receiving (10,060) by a tight end. If neither of them can gain induction in his first or second year of eligibility, then surely there are going to be numerous other deserving candidates whose wait will be longer than expected.