The title of the article appeared like this on the MSN page:
I agree that there are some people in the NFL Hall of Fame whose selection I would disagree with. However, all of those people were legitimately elected, and I don’t see any reason to retroactively remove them.
The only reason I could think of would be if something came to light later that ties directly to that person’s career and reason for being elected and, which had it been known at the time, would have affected his candidacy. The one example of this is Alan Eagleson, who for many years was the head of the NHL Players Association and was a big power broker in the sport. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame for his many accomplishments in both roles. It later came to light that he had done several improper things in those roles, and I mean really improper as in serving time in prison. Several Hockey Hall of Fame members said they would pull themselves out if Eagleson was not kicked out, and he ended up resigning before being forced out.
I guess another reason might be if there was something improper about the voting itself (i.e. some of the voters were bribed, etc), but that seems unlikely to happen.
I think the Baseball Hall of Fame does it better than the Football Hall of Fame overall. With the Baseball Hall of Fame, all credentialed writers vote, whereas with the Football Hall of Fame their are forty-nine voters who select who gets in. Plus, the Football Hall of Fame has a minimum and maximum number of people they will admit each year, while Baseball has no such number. The threshold to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame is a bit higher.
The one thing that Football does better is that it limits the criteria to what the person did on the field or in his other role, whereas with Baseball, “The Hall of Fame asks voters to decide based on a player’s record, ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and team contributions.” The character clause is a load of crap, in my opinion. There are plenty of people in the Baseball Hall of Fame with questionable character, and I have seen others justify using that clause to keep somebody out for something totally unrelated to baseball, an sometime something that happened after his career was over.
I think what it takes to get into both Halls of Fame has been diluted in recent years, but I think it is more pronounced in Football than Baseball.