Even ESPN Agrees That Mr. Kraft is Being Kept Out of the Hall of Fame Due to Petty Jealousy and Resentment

Maddie Meyer. Getty Images.

By now, any time I go online to find another long-form article about the Patriots on ESPN - particularly one with career anti-Patriots zealot Don Van Natta Jr.'s name in the byline - I duck and cover and wait for the bombs to start falling. It's an automatic, Pavlovian response by this point. 

And so it was when this latest piece of ordinance dropped. Because it turned out to be a dud. Not in terms of it being dull or unreadable; I'm just saying it was non-explosive. In fact, despite the length, there's very little in here any sane, rational person - be they a Patriots fan or one of the sad, unfortunate, wretched souls so misguided they've been rooting against them all these years - could argue with. 

The topic is Mr. Kraft's inexplicable omission from the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Which I can safely say without fear of contradiction is the gravest miscarriage of justice in human history. The equivalent of keeping the Beatles out the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. They might not have invented the genre, but they certainly took in directions no one could've imagined, dominated the charts, and left is a profound impact on the culture that will echo through eternity. 

Mr. Kraft has done the same with the NFL. Except he's been at it for almost four times longer than the Beatles were together. That's a point that's obvious to anyone with an even casual knowledge of the league. Except, it seems, the voting committee in Canton:

Source - ROBERT KRAFT HAS an $11 billion empire and six Super Bowl rings -- five if you don't count the one Vladimir Putin stuffed into his pocket during a 2005 meeting in Russia. But the New England Patriots boss has fallen short in his lengthy quest for a bronze bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

In the past decade, three owners have slipped on a gold jacket in Canton, Ohio. Each time, Kraft, now 83, was on the outside looking in, even though arguably no owner is more deserving.

"There's no box that Bob Kraft doesn't check to get into the Hall of Fame," says Hall of Famer Bill Polian, the former Colts general manager who has twice stood up to argue for Kraft's induction. "When he didn't get in last year, I lost sleep over it. I'm still sick at heart about it."

No current owner has tried harder to get into the Hall -- or been denied longer. Beginning in 2012, Kraft's supporters have lobbied Hall voters on his behalf. Eddie DeBartolo Jr., the former San Francisco 49ers owner, was inducted in 2016 despite losing his team in 2000 because of his connection to an extortion case. …

Jerry Jones was inducted in August 2017. … "He hasn't been to the NFC title game in two decades and he gets in?" Kraft told a confidant. "How does that work?" …

A dozen Hall voters, who rarely discuss their deliberations, told ESPN that each time Kraft was snubbed, the campaign on his behalf became more urgent and inventive. The selectors lean on a variety of reasons for denying Kraft while approving coaches and a scout from decades ago -- and even a referee. The voters said the case for Kraft has been hurt by multiple Patriots cheating scandals, along with a selection system that until now has pitted coaches against owners. They even mention Kraft's dismissed charges after two visits to a Jupiter, Florida, massage parlor. …

[His career] highlights include buying and reviving the team in the 1990s, winning six championships, cobbling together decades of labor peace with the players' union, and helping the league land its mammoth TV and streaming rights deal.

Getting Kraft into Canton first occurred to [Pats PR Director Stacy] James after watching his boss play peacemaker during the contentious 2011 lockout of players by the owners. When a collective bargaining agreement was finally struck that saved the season, Kraft famously hugged Colts center and players' union leader Jeff Saturday, who declared: "This doesn't get done without Robert Kraft."

I seriously needed to go back to the other tab on my screen to confirm that this was, in fact, on ESPN. This reads like something on Patriots.com. Or a Stacy James press release. Or a Jerry Thornton blog. And not the kind of thing you'd expect to find posted by Roger Goodell's Mininstry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment. The same outfit that pushed whatever ridiculous narrative the league told them to. Whether it was inconsequential camera angles or anti-science psi data.

But there you have it. In black and white. Clear as crystal. DeBartolo is in Canton despite the fact he was kicked out da club due to an actual scandal. Jones is in even though his teams haven't done a damned thing in three decades and he's a lizard person who invites game officials onto his team party bus and drags the mother of his secret love child into court.

Meanwhile a self made man who saved pro football in New England by refusing to let the team get moved to St. Louis, paid for his own stadium, built the greatest Dynasty of the Super Bowl era, brought labor peace and reinvented how the game is telecast, is still on the outside looking in. Why? Because of some useless footage of the Jets sideline, some air pressure, and a nothingburger at a Florida spa. 

But what are we really talking about here? One of the Seven Deadly Sins: Envy. The empire RKK built didn't die a hero; it lived long enough to see itself become the villain. He didn't take the money when he could've been bought out in 1994 and watched the team he loves pack up and head to Missouri. He didn't fleece the taxpayers in order to replace the worst stadium in all of North American sports. He didn't even take the sweetheart deal that was offered by Connecticut to get him to move to Hartford. And the team he spent $175 million on is now the centerpiece of a global $11 billion enterprise that includes his own private air force of jumbo jets. All the while he's been leading the league in charitable endeavors, not the least of which is bringing people of different faiths to see the Holy Land on a regular basis. And the resentment toward all these great works around the NFL is palable. As blatantly obvious as it is pathetic.

Now, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention one little subplot in this article. The one in which the World Wide Leader suggests Mr. Kraft's Hall of Fame candidacy was the motivation behind the Apple TV docuseries about his team:

Kraft owns the film and television rights to "The Dynasty" book, according to documents obtained by ESPN. That means the book by acclaimed author Jeff Benedict could be turned into a film only with Kraft's permission. And according to emails, documents and sources, Kraft owns the docuseries, licensed it to Apple and sought editorial control.

The emphasis on those last three words is mine. Because the key there is that he "sought editorial control," but did not "receive" it:

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That's the part everyone who's been screencapping that paragraph and posting it on X, or has been hammering away at the subject all day on sports radio is wilfully choosing to ignore. 

The editorial decisions in that loathesome, 10-part smear job were the producers' and the producers' alone. If his was, in fact, a Kraft Production by Kraft Productions, it would've actually been positive. As positive as his team's unprecendented run of success deserved. Instead of ending up like the kind of propaganda the CIA produces in order to overthrow some unfriendly foreign leader who won't play ball. For sure an actual Kraft Production would't have spent 10 seconds and two highlights on the 2003-04 championship seasons before immediately pivoting to Spygate. And it wouldn't have dedicated an entire episode to doing a True Crime documentary about Aaron Hernandez. 

I mean, if that's the thing you put together in order to make the case you belong in a Hall of Fame, you do NOT belong in that Hall of Fame just on general principle. The Krafts did not. 

After reading all this (and I've only posted a tiny fraction of a very long article) I can only conclude that while Mr. Kraft is worthy of being in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Pro Football Hall of Fame isn't worthy of him.