Strike 2: The Pro Football Hall of Fame is like a lot of other attention-seeking venues. Nothing like a tease or some controversy to keep folks playing attention. Why else do they keep dragging out the selection process other than so they can keep getting attention?

Why else do we get a series of lists, nominees, votes and cutdowns before we get to the real deal – who’s getting enshrined in Canton, Ohio this year? The players get voted on and re-voted on and finally we get the list of names around Super Bowl time. Then there’s the “Coaches Blue Ribbon Committee” (and a Senior Committee too) who slog through the process yearly to finally recognize a single deserving former coach who should have been recognized shortly after he stepped away. Like Bill Belichick will be this year.

Currently the next step is for the Coaches Committee to reduce the nominees from 15 all the way down to 12. Next month they’ll take it all the way down to nine. Start biting those fingernails.

“The Hall of Fame’s selection process includes multiple steps in which the nominees are scrutinized” says the Hall’s website.

After that, a “sequence of reduction votes” finally gets the selection process down to one, which this year will be Belichick. One measly nominee (who is a shoe-in for induction) from a list of more than a dozen men who belonged in Canton several years ago.

For some dumb reason, they can put double digit players into one class in the Hall in a given year, but just one coach. Players have to be retired for five years. Coaches only have to be retired for just one.

Let’s remember, coaches tend to be older men, so making them wait a quarter century after they’ve retired means that many are being represented by loved ones when their day finally arrives since they’ve long since passed away.

This year, former Denver Broncos head coaches (the late) Dan Reeves and Mike Shanahan will once again be passed over, this time in favor of Belichick, who is a slam dunk for induction. Meanwhile both Reeves and Shanahan will wait alongside others like Mike Holmgren, George Seifert, Chuck Knox and Marty Schottenheimer – all of whom should have been in Canton before Belichick’s significant other was even born.

The bylaws that dictate this decision making process are from the stone age. It’s ridiculous to make successful and well-deserving coaches like Reeves and Shanahan wait two decades to get inducted, especially when someone who isn’t a contemporary like Belichick gets to sneak in line in front of them while he’s still an active coach. How many more times will that happen? You know the year after Andy Reid finally retires, he’s immediately jumping to the front of the line.

So it’s easy to sit back and say that both Reeves and Shanahan will one day be in Canton where they belong, so all is okay. But how long is long enough for them? Reeves didn’t live to see his day, and Shanahan isn’t getting any younger. The way things are going, Kyle Shanahan could make it before Mike does.