Well a year has passed and it has included plenty of anticipation and discussion over the Class of 2020 – with a special amount of focus associated with the Centennial Class. After years of debating over senior candidates and hoping for a larger group of said seniors to be elected, we finally got our wish. Yet the results were disappointing to many of us. We should reflect on the fact that 10 seniors (along with three contributors and two coaches) along with five modern-era candidates were elected in a class of 20 for 2020.

Last month has seen plenty of follow-up posts and comments about the results and even our first annual prediction contest! Thanks everyone for their continued input and posts in keeping the debates and discussion fresh and updated.

So, perhaps now is a time to move on to 2021 and the future. We know the next few years will again see deserving modern candidates, including some likely first-ballot selections, along with seniors, coaches and contributors worthy of consideration. What has yet to be determined (or officially announced) by the Hall is whether or not they will stick with the recent system under which they have rotated between one senior and two contributor candidates and vice versa.

Also of interest is whether coaches will still be considered with contributors or will be given a category of their own. Rumors and speculation has suggested that we will have two seniors, one contributor and one coach candidate each year, but we are still waiting on a decision by the Hall. There is no known timetable for an announcement of their plans.

If we anticipate that the election schedule will resume back to its normal timeframe we would expect the senior, contributor and coach finalists to be nominated by their respective committees in mid/late August, with modern preliminary candidates following in late September. That latter group of modern-era candidates would be whittled to semifinalists in late November and finalists in January, with Selection Saturday remaining the day before Super Bowl LV in Tampa on February 7.

There have been some suggestions that the Hall may be looking at possible changes to the election process, but no confirmation of what that may mean in terms of details.

So, over the next several months, we’ll continue to look into discussing, both under this post and in specifically dedicated posts, a few topics, including these (but feel free to suggest others in the comments):

  • What will be the impact of the Centennial Class be moving forward? Will those not-elected be the focus of deliberation by seniors, contributors/coaches committees for future election?
  • Will the number of first-ballot elections continue to be debated as the number is increasingly a significant part of the modern five candidate slots?
  • How will voters address continued backlogs now still existing at OL and WR, and soon to be at QB?
  • Is the class total limit of eight sufficient? Should it be increased? Or, as Deion Sanders recently suggested, is the Hall already getting to “big” or “watered down”?
  • Will all-decade players (including the yet to be announced Team of the 2010s) continue to be fast-tracked to election?

Let the debates and discussions continue.