As I’m sure most of you have seen or heard, the Hall of Fame officially announced the Class of 2011 tonight.  Making the final cut were:

DB Deion Sanders
RB Marshall Faulk
Contributor Ed Sabol
DE Richard Dent
TE Shannon Sharpe
LB Chris Hanburger (Senior Candidate)
LB Les Richter (Senior Candidate)

So our thoughts on the class?

Well, we hit on Sanders, Sharpe and Dent, and it seems three out of five isn’t bad.  Leading up to the announcement, I probably would have put Faulk on my list as well, as it made more sense to get at least one of the three backs out of the way right away.  I would suspect Martin is next, although it wouldn’t shock me if he had to wait another year.

I’m still not 100% sold on Dent, although the career numbers are obviously there.  To be fair, he mostly played before I was seriously into football, so I’ll have to give some benefit of the doubt on this one.

Sanders was a no-brainer, although I still think he’s lucky the voters don’t pay attention to unofficial stats like “willingness to tackle.”

I’m glad Sharpe finally made it in–as much as I wasn’t a huge fan of him due to his mouth, he clearly deserved it, and I’ve had him on the list each of the last couple of years.

I’m still a bit surprised by the Ed Sabol induction–unless he’s in poor health, it’s just shocking to me to see someone go from not even showing up on lists to suddenly going all the way through.  And I do kind of feel like the Hall should have a special “contributor” label that doesn’t necessarily take the spot of a player.  That being said, NFL Films is a huge part of the history and growth of popularity of the game, and I definitely don’t hate the election.

As for Hanburger and Richter, as per usual, I don’t know enough about them to really say since they played before my time–but I know they are better than last year’s senior candidates, and I’ll take the general consensus that I’ve seen in the comments that they are solid enshrinees.

On the flip side, I’m glad Jerome Bettis didn’t make it on his first try, in part because I just didn’t think he was a first ballot guy, and in part because my level of annoyance would probably be turned up a notch tomorrow with his Steelers in the Super Bowl.  And being a Vikings fan that works with several Packer fans, my level of annoyance can’t get much higher for tomorrow’s game.

At the same time, I am still somewhat disappointed that Dermontti Dawson didn’t make it–must have something to do with my affection for offensive linemen.

I am still surprised that neither Tim Brown or Cris Carter even made it to the final 10–and that Reed still made it there ahead of them.  I suspect the voters will (hopefully) do something about that logjam next year.

What say the rest of you?  Anything particularly surprising for you?  And don’t forget to check back to see our 2012 Hall of Fame Inductees post sometime in the next few days.