Tony Dungy may have two Super Bowl rings, but he no longer has a Hall of Fame vote.
The retired former Indianapolis Colts head coach Dungy is one of several notable figures who are getting their Pro Football Hall of Fame votes stripped. Longtime NFL writer Paul Kuharsky reported Wednesday that Dungy, Bill Polian, and Lisa Salters are among the voters who are being removed from the Selection Committee.
This news comes as the Pro Football Hall of Fame reduces its number of voters from 50 to 28. As a result, 22 members with over 300 years of combined voting experience are officially getting their votes taken away.
Dungy, now 70 years old, won Super Bowl XIII as a safety for the Pittsburgh Steelers and then went into an illustrious career in coaching. He served as head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 1996-2001 and then as head coach of the Colts from 2002-2008, winning Super Bowl XLI during the 2006 NFL season.
But Dungy, a Hall of Fame inductee himself in 2016, was at the center of a major controversy last year involving legendary New England Patriots head coach (and now University of North Carolina head coach) Bill Belichick. The six-time Super Bowl champion Belichick did not make it into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot, sparking widespread backlash and derision.
Dungy also became a face of the controversy himself after then-NBC colleague Rodney Harrison confronted him on the air over Belichick’s snub. While Dungy did not explicitly confirm that he left Belichick off his ballot, he did defend the Hall of Fame voters over the slight, leading many to believe that Dungy had not voted for Belichick.
We heard rumors for the last several months that big changes could be coming to the Hall of Fame voting process in response to Belichick’s snub. Now we know that Dungy (who had been a Hall of Fame voter for the last six years) and several other well-known figures are officially getting the boot.
