I just submitted my votes for the Hall of Fame. Not the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which is all over the news (and discussed below, read on!), but the CSO Hall of Fame. It’s an honor to be a judge, participating in curating membership in an elite institution, but it’s also a hard responsibility. In the end, you’re aiming to balance being discriminating enough that people will say “Wow, those people all belong!” with being welcoming enough that no one says, “Wow, why isn’t that person in the Hall?
The early years of the CSO Hall of Fame I wasn’t a judge (I was inducted into the Hall in its second year, in 2021, as part of the Covid Class). I believe that CSO Magazine then just selected the most well-known CSOs and CISOs, relying on their own judgement. I like to think that they erred on the side of discriminating, which is easy to do when facing a backlog: the 2020 inductees were all obvious, no-brainer easy names to put in.
The judging now looks a bit different. Candidates are nominated, and while there may be some prefiltering, those nominations are distributed out to different judges. In some years, I’ve had 9 nominees to judge; this year, I had 3 (no, I won’t name them). We provide two answers: a rating of 1-5 (5 being the no-brainer, 4 being better than expected, 3 being “on-par” with peers, and let’s not mention 2 and 1) and a simple “should this person be in the Hall?” You answer that question with a Yes, No, or Unsure. For both questions, you provide commentary; my goal in that is to be direct, brief, and forthright for the selection committee (I have no idea who that is or how it works, honestly).
This year, I had the unusual circumstance of three candidates who were easily placed (for me) in the 3, 4, and 5 buckets. In past years, I usually see one or two 5s (who automatically get a ‘Yes’ vote for me), and often a few 2s (there are occasional CISOs who get a few LinkedIn awards from the usual engagement-bait awards, and then apply, but have held a CISO title for a couple of years at most). On paper, all three of the candidates were good, qualified CISOs. One had a few yellow flags, one seemed a little early in their career, and one was a pretty obvious person to induct.
I’m happy I don’t have a quota or limited votes, and can give direct feedback. Based on past years, the final selection honors the judges’ feedback (at least mine; my 5s tend to get in, my 3s and below don’t). But I am seeing more and more nominations over time that aren’t qualified, and I worry that other judges might not be as discriminating.
What about football?
News has leaked that in addition to Bill Belichick not making the Pro Football Hall of Fame, neither has Robert Kraft. New England sports fans are in an uproar: the two architects of the double dynasty, who won 6 Lombardis together, not getting in? It’s a clear snub. And maybe it is. But what about looking at it from the judges’ perspectives?
To do that, first you have to understand how voting happens in the PFHoF. There are several selection tracks: modern candidates (retired 5 or more years ago), senior candidates (retired 25 years ago), coaches (retired 1 year ago), and contributors (no retirement required). There are 50 voters (the Selection Committee), and there are 9 person Selection groups for each of the senior, coach, and contributor nominees.
There are multiple rounds of voting and filtering (if you want details), but at the final vote, the 50-person Selection Committee will be looking at two groups: 7 modern candidates, and everyone else (3 seniors, 1 coach, and 1 contributor). For the modern candidates, each selector votes for 5; and for everyone else, they vote for 3. If a candidate receives 40 votes (80%), they’ll be inducted. But the math on this plays out interestingly.
For the modern candidates, it’s entirely possible to have an unpleasant distribution of votes, with 35 or 36 votes per nominee – no one hitting the the threshold. In practice, that seems not to happen, and I suspect that there is a lot of horsetrading in the room. Usually, 5 are selected, although in 2025, only 3 cleared the bar.
For everyone else, the process is new – quite possibly a pushback against the 2020 class, which included 10 senior inductees, 2 coaches, and 3 contributors, clearing a long-waiting backlog. Since last year, the voters are voting for the 5 (3 senior, 1 owner, 1 coach) with 3 combined votes. If the votes are pessimally distributed, then whoever has the most votes goes in, even if they didn’t clear the 80% threshold (it would be fascinating to know if 2025’s class, which only had senior candidate Sterling Sharpe inducted from this group, met that threshold).
The challenge the voters have is that they have to simultaneously vote for a subgroup whose emphasis is a bit more on welcoming (the senior candidates who were passed over by a previous generation of voters) and one whose emphasis is more on discriminating (the 1 coach and 1 contributor). Each voter has their own bias for how they want to vote, and some have made that bias public.
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One group believes that it’s wrong to group the players with the coach/contributor, and only vote for players. If this group has at least 11 voters in it, then under the current rules, we will likely never see another coach or contributor go into the Hall (fortunately, I suspect that the Board of the Hall is going to change the rules).
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One group believes that you vote for the obvious must-have folks. Rarely is a senior candidate going to hit that threshold, but the coach/contributor are much more likely to (and Kraft/Belichick certainly clear that hurdle). If this group has at least 11 voters in it, then we’ll see, at most, 1 senior candidate make the Hall each year.
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There is a third group this year, apparently, who want to punish Kraft and Belichick for their behavior (either the various scandals, or, since the voters are predominantly media, the way Belichick treated media). It’s unclear if they want to deprive them of the status of “first ballot Hall of Famers” or keep them out entirely.
The Hall of Fame has designed a system that is going to break, and serve neither of its ostensible goals, because each voter has their own approach, and those approaches are not compatible with the current system.
It’s time to change that.