One of the Dumber Sports Lists in Recent Memory

I enjoy sports counter-factuals and "hall of famer or not?" debates as much as any sports fan. But ESPN's article "Cantonized" is, to put it simply, absolutely stupid. Debating the top 10 or 20 people you think will get into the football hall of fame is fine, but fifty??????? It's one thing to say, "Warren Sapp will get in because of these factors", "Bret Favre is a lock", or "Alan Faneca may make it in"; all have been around for awhile, you can compare their results to other players throughout history, etc.

But saying "Adrian Peterson will get in" when he has no professional experience? Or (my favorite), saying Brady Quinn won't make it in only because the Browns are awful? This is just stupid beyond sublimity, and not just because there is no way of evaluating a future hall of famer when one hasn't even played a game (though there is that - saying Peterson won't ever get hurt seems rather ignorant of the fateful vagaries of issues like car accidents, plane crashes, unforeseen heart problems, exploding knees, etc.). It's also just absurd to know how a player will turn out in terms of personality. Did anybody look at Tom Brady pre-2000 and say, "now, here is a future hall of famer - even if he does play for the never-champion Patriots"? Of course not. You have no way of knowing who will turn into a born leader and who won't. While it's very possible Quinn could totally flame out, we know that as certainly as we know he could also be one of the greatest leaders ever in football.

And criticizing Quinn because he plays for the awful-for-the-last-17-years Browns is just as dumb, given the nature of modern sports contracts. If he ends up being unbelievable in terms of production, but wants more attention, there's nothing to stop him from going to New York or L.A. [if they have a team by then] when he has a contract expire.

In short, we just don't know anything beyond the top 15-25 potential hall-of-famers or so, and while performing such an exercise with 10 or 20 NFL players may be fun, by making it fifty and including who just misses is just one more way that ESPN.com has jumped the proverbial shark.