Nov 25, 2017 5 min read

Here’s an idea: How about trying do-overs on the football and baseball halls of fame? The basketball and hockey hall could probably use makeovers but people just don’t seem to care about those as much.

Jeff Passan, MLB columnist for Yahoo Sports, announced in his column this week that he won’t be casting a ballot for the 2018 candidates for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I apologize if that piece of news ruins your weekend, but we’re all going to have to suck it up and go on the best we can without Jeff’s input.

Passan is upset by an email sent to all HOF voters by Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan telling them not to vote for any player who was caught or admitted to using steroids. Morgan says they cheated and don’t belong.

The email is way too long to reproduce here and so is Passan’s diatribe against it and anybody who thinks steroid users should be kept out of Cooperstown.

Passan makes all the usual arguments about how many bad people have had their plaques hanging in Cooperstown for years, including players who took amphetamines (speed, reds, greenies) to help them play better.

Greenies were everywhere for a long time and just about everybody used them, but you might have trouble finding before and after pictures of greenie users that are as startling as some of the before and afters of your favorite juicer.

Everybody has an opinion on whether steroid use should disqualify a player from admission to the Baseball Hall of Fame, but you rarely hear anybody bring it up when the Pro Football Hall of Fame ballots go out.

That’s strange because NFL players started using PEDs in the 1970s – almost 30 years before they became wildly popular in Major League Baseball.

You would need a couple of moving vans to remove all the busts of NFL players who juiced from Canton.

So, lets start over. Wipe the slate clean, drag all the busts out of Canton and the plaques out of Cooperstown and store them in a warehouse and do a re-vote.

But, this time keep the writers out of it.

How did they ever get picked to do the picking anyway?

Isn’t there a rule in journalism about the reporter never allowing him or herself to be part of the story? Shouldn’t journalists have turned down the job on that basis in the beginning?

So, who gets to vote?

Players, coaches and managers. And only players, coaches and managers who played, coached or managed against future nominees get to vote.

That would probably put an end to Shoeless Joe Jackson’s chances, but that’s too bad. If you’ve waited so long to get in that everybody you played against is dead, you probably don’t deserve to get in.

Former baseball players, who didn’t use steroids and are offended by the numbers put up by the guys they knew who did, can withhold their votes.

Henry Aaron could email every voter and ask them not to vote for Barry Bonds.

If you think Ty Cobb being a racist disqualifies him, don’t vote for him.

If a non-juiced defensive lineman – if there is such a thing – was dominated by an offensive lineman nominee who was a known juicer, then he can withhold his vote.

Let the sports media debate who should and shouldn’t get in and maybe influence the vote in the process, but let the people who are really qualified to judge do the judging. They can review the guys who are in, and decide who stays and who goes, and they can decide on all future nominees.

I know. Fat chance.

I tried.

• Speaking of reporters allowing themselves to be a part of the story, why is any self-respecting sports journalist interested in being a part of the NCAA’s football championship stupidity?

Pitt beating Miami has everybody speculating about whether the loss will keep Miami out of the playoff even with a win over Clemson for the ACC championship. Why not just have the conference champions play for a real national championship?

Why should Miami’s loss to Pitt be any different from the Steelers’ loss to the Bears? If the Steelers win their conference, then they’ll play for the championship. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?

And anybody who watched Central Florida go to 11-0 with a win over South Florida (9-2) on Friday, for a chance to play Memphis for the American Athletic Conference championship, should be okay with the winner of that conference getting a shot at a real national championship. Both of those teams looked as good or better than Miami, by the way.

• Coach Pat Narduzzi has won more games at Pitt since he arrived in 2014 than Todd Graham has won at Arizona State.
• There were a lot of great rivalry games this weekend, including Ohio State-Michigan and Alabama-Auburn, but the best is on Dec. 9: Army vs. Navy. Prior to Navy winning in 2002 and going on a 14-game winning streak that ended last year with Army’s 21-17 win, the teams had played 102 times and Army led 49-46 with 7 ties.

In 1992 Army won 25-24 to tie the series at 43-43-7. It was the first of five wins in a row for Army by a total of 10 points.

Best rivalry in sports.