First, a personal note and acknowledgement: My graveyard of poor takes is wider and more expansive than the New Jersey Pine Barrens (and contains nearly as many skeletons I’d wish to remain buried). On more occasions than I’d care to admit, some kind of personal animus may have driven an opinion piece down one fork in the road instead of the other, though I am always willing to point to the cold place in my heart from where it came. Regardless, on all of those occasions, the errors are uniquely my own. The damage is, more or less, self-inflicted with a name attached to it (truly, many of my co-workers pretend not to know who I am in public).
But what happened on Tuesday is different. Appropriate is presenting your own personal thoughts as to why Bill Belichick is not a Hall of Famer and then getting pelted by a sack of vegetables. Inappropriate is denying one of the three greatest coaches in NFL history—a statement that is immensely difficult to argue—entry into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on the first ballot and not immediately being prepared to defend it publicly and with gusto.
