Abby Wambach isn't getting in in 2018. She doesn't become eligible until 2019. However, Brad Friedel does become eligible in 2018. Also, Shannon Boxx doesn't become eligible until 2019.

 

And if there were a conspiracy to postpone Beckham's induction, wouldn't you think they would have had to tell some voters about it?

Or is that why we only had 79 ballots returned this year?

 

Whoa -- really?

Roger, can we investigate this at some point? Have a lot of voters just checked out?

 

Doing the math, the percentages all line up to 79 responses.

That's not the lowest in the modern era (2004 was) but it's uncommonly low. Usually 100-115.

 

I was told a few years ago that getting some people to vote is like pulling teeth. And one voter has told me that he no longer trusts his memory and thinks he probably won't vote next year (I suspect that there may be others who had already made decisions like that).

My guess is that factors like that are the reason for the low vote total.

 

Then we need some new voters.

I mean, there are qualified people out there who I know don't get a vote.

I'll ask the hall's new executive director about it. I have an interview coming up with him.

 

At this point, 11 years since the ECG and (ThreeSixOne) went on hiatus, I figure I continue to get a ballot primarily because I actually vote every year.

 

There was a time when no official would call a player for going off his line early. But that has changed now. The Argentine keeper I remember who did it very blatantly was on the last World Cup team that Maradona played on must have been in 1990 Sergio Goycochea.

 

You gotta admit...there are worse reasons.

 

Review the post histories of Big Soccer posters.

Select those most knowledgeable about US soccer to be Internet HOF voters.

????

Profit!

 

I have no objection to people who decide they're no longer able to make a good decision. I've bowed out of many postseason award votes for that reason.

But some people are clearly turning in blank ballots or joke ballots, and I'd be really curious to know who they are.

Everyone who talks in public about the ballot seems reasonable. We're all voting for at least five people a year. We're not the ones leaving out Scurry, Earnie Stewart, etc. So who is?

 

Back in Oneonta, I got called in to attend a few non-public red jacket events. As I recall, all living Hall of Famers get a player ballot. I had a couple of them indicate that they would never vote for anyone that doesn't have an exemplary USNT history. I also got the filling there were definitely some gender specific voters. Not necessarily out of malice or sexism, but out of not wanting to vote on something they didn't really care about or follow.

Like you, I stopped voting for MLS end of season awards years ago - because I just can't keep up. With 10-12 teams, you could do that without being a full-time MLS media member. At 22 teams, I don't think that's possible. I follow the league closer than most, and - as Ted and friends like to point out - I actually draw the occasional check from MLS. The All-Star game involved me getting familiar with a couple of All-Stars I had never really heard of.

 

And finally, Briana Scurry made it in to the US Soccer Hall of Fame.

It's a well-known fact that anybody who runs through the streets wearing nothing but a gold medal automatically qualifies for the Soccer Hall of Fame, even if they don't play soccer.

 

Does anyone have a gold medal I could borrow?

 

Scurry brought hers to a presentation I saw a couple of years ago. First time I've ever held one.

 

There were, by my count, 295 Hall of Famers before this class. I believe Mooch and Al Trost are the only ones from the last 10 years or so who are deceased. I'm going to guess maybe 100, 125 are still alive? Is that a high number? Maybe. Maybe it's less than that, I'm not going to go through and check.

Then you have

1) All past and present full Men's and Women's National Team coaches. This would be Klinsi, Bradley, Arena, Sampson, Bora, Kowalski, Gansler, Osiander, Schellscheidt, Miller, Wosniak, Kehoe, Jago, Ellis, Sermanni, Sundhage, Greg Ryan, Heinrichs, Gregg and Dorrance. Did I miss anyone? Those folks are all still with us as far as I know. (Not sure on Wosniak, who only coached two games.) That's 20.

2) All active MLS and NWSL head coaches with a minimum of four years as a professional head coach at the highest level in the United States. This would mean anyone out of the 22 current MLS coaches who have been in the league four full seasons. Seems like Vermes, Olsen, Heaps, Porter, Robinson, Pareja, Berhalter, Kreis and Schmid. Thats nine. In the NWSL that should be Gabarra, Harvey, Parsons, Riley, Andonovski and Dames for six more. That's 15.

3) MLS and NWSL Commissioner/Executive Director and select MLS and NWSL management representatives. Garber had a vote before he got in the Hall himself. Amanda Duffy. We have no idea how many "select MLS and NWSL management representatives" they tabbed, but call it 12-15 between the two?

4) U.S. Soccer Federation President and Secretary General. That's two

5) Designated media members. I have no idea how many there are. Surely it's fewer than 50, right? I'm told there are only a couple of people considered "historians" in this pool. There are others who I can think of off the top of my head who would be qualified to get a vote.

So you're talking about a couple hundred in the voting pool. If we're getting voter turnout of less than 50 percent, that seems low. (To be fair, other years we had more than 100, so I don't know what the dynamic is.)

Seems like we need more, but I don't know where we're going to get a lot more. It seems like there aren't a lot of media members who have been covering the sport for more than a handful of years. I know French has a vote and Schoen and Goff (though he doesn't use it because of ethics at the WaPo) and Dan and Andy and me. I certainly would not think the garden-variety bloggers and podcast hosts (some well-intentioned) who have sprung up in the cottage industry over the last few years have the historical knowledge to cast reasonable votes, but if the old-timers aren't voting on recent players, I'm not 100% sure we'd be doing a lot of damage there anyway.

It does seem as though the consensus of the electorate is that a player has to excel for club and country (and normally a club in this country) to be garner enough votes to get over the threshold. I'm not as hard-core against that as some are, because it seems to me we have a unique thing in our sport. Baseball players will (occasionally) play for their country, but you're not going to base someone's worthiness for Cooperstown on what he did in the World Baseball Classic against Italy. Hockey players play for their country (in the Olympics and World Cups when they are held), but for most non-Canadians, they're just sidelines to their NHL gigs. Basketball players are mercenaries when it comes to the international game, too, and have been since 1992. And there is no such dynamic in American football.

(The women's game adds a wrinkle that is not as meaningful in other sports, too (though WNBA players play in the Olympics). I think we can all agree Mia Hamm and Michelle Akers belong in the Hall of Fame. But there does seem like there might be a bit of a gender bias when it comes to that next level down of women's player. Maybe there aren't enough women in the electorate, I don't know. Surely there aren't as many women broadcasting, coaching or covering the sport and, obviously, not as many women in the Hall itself.)

If the club and country things make up the de facto rules, then so be it. I wouldn't necessarily want to see every Tom, Dick and Jeff Cunningham who racks up a lot of goals in the domestic league get in, either. And an MLS-only Hall of Fame would devalue both.

 

I was at USA TODAY when they started voting this way, and I was given a ballot. I'm pretty sure I've voted each year.

It is indeed tricky to come up with media voters. Not many "soccer writers" around at what's left of the mainstream media, and it's tough to tell who should get a ballot out of the various blogs and independent sites. There's a pretty big WoSo contingent now -- some of them are up to speed on MLS and the men's team, some of them wouldn't know Landon Donovan from Kasey Keller.

 

To be fair, Landon is sometimes in disguise.

 

It's not a new problem. When they started the current system, there were still some mid-80s/early-90s players who had played outdoors or for the lost era of the MNT, but primarily had played indoor soccer filtering through the ballot. I know Casey (Nogueira) Lloyd extremely well, but I am all but unfamiliar with her father Victor except that his name appeared on my first few Hall of Fame ballots.

With the rapid expansion of MLS and coverage in soccer in general, it is a problem identifying new media voters who are prepared to select player ballot nominees based on playing careers that probably peaked 15 years ago - and not said players current occupation as a coach/broadcaster/executive.

Nowak certainly got a boost his first year of eligibility as he won MLS Cup as a rookie coach in 2004 right before his name appeared on the ballot. 13 years later, his coaching career leaves a different impression, and not a lot of us are around that actually remember him playing for Chicago.

One of the things that does bother me is the disconnect between who the Players and the Veterans vote in. But that's probably just me. And given the math that Kenn has succinctly pointed out about the voting pool, I'm not sure that making the two ballots have exclusive voting pools would help.

We may just be in a 10-20 year period of what we're seeing now. I don't think anyone would doubt that the number of critical media attention being focused on professional soccer in the United States is at an all-time high.

We may just have to wait until the Roldans and Pulisics and Palmer-Browns and Pughs and Lynn Williamses are on the Hall of Fame ballot to greatly expand the media pool to include the newer media members. We need people who witnessed the history through their own lens and perspective. Any attempt to artificially expand the pool now by educating potential voters is fraught with confirmation bias with the educators pre-selecting who is/was deserving. If we tell newer media members that Tiffeny Roberts was one of the all-time greats, she'll likely get in. If we tell them that she took advantage of being on teams of great players and her numbers were artificially inflated, but that Shannon Mac was better, she probably won't. (I voted for Millie)

The answer nobody wants is that we may just have to wait it out.