02-07-25 After Hours with Amy Lawrence PODCAST: Mike Sando
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Thanks for hanging out with us. Happy almost Friday from after hours right now to New Orleans to welcome Mike Sando, longtime NFL insider, now with the Athletic, not only a Hall of Fame selector, we'll talk about that momentarily, but also cast a vote for the NFL awards. Mike, what was your reaction to Josh Allen as MVP? I was surprised. So, you know, when Lamar Jackson won the

first-team All-Pro quarterback, history had told us that that person would be the MVP if the quarterback was going to be an MVP. So this is the first time in a couple decades I think that this has happened. It's just very rare. So I don't know what to make of it. I am one of the voters. I voted for Lamar Jackson as my first-team A

AP All-Pro and as the MVP. So other people flipped those around somehow and had the second All-Pro quarterback, Josh Allen, being the MVP. You tell me, how does that make sense? I don't get it. What made the difference for you in choosing Lamar as your MVP? Would have been back to back. Why did you go with him as your vote?

Well, it was very difficult, but I do think that for a lot of the season, he was overcoming really poor support from his defense and special teams. It got better late in the year, but remember Justin Tucker was missing. He was winning games, especially the two against Cincinnati, where you just don't win those games. They're the hardest to win games when your defense can't stop anyone. You've got to be perfect on offense. I thought he did a great job overcoming. Obviously, their schedule was...

you know, was difficult too. So it was close for me. I'm not, I wouldn't be mad at anybody for picking Josh Allen. I went back and forth, but I, that's why I leaned towards Lamar Jackson. Now the big reveal tonight, in addition to MVP is the pro football hall of fame class. The process is all new. So what do fans need to know about what changed for this class?

So they made it harder to get in, basically. If you remember a couple years ago, two, three years ago, there was a class, and Deion Sanders kind of complained, like, hey, we need our own wing for the real guys. It was a little bit of a shot at those guys. But there was a year in there where I think any one of those guys could have made it in the Hall of Fame, but they all might have been the fifth guy most years. And they decided to make it a little bit tougher.

And so we had a super small class. We had the smallest possible class. Four is the fewest that possibly could go in. Three modern era. So only three modern era out of the 15 in that category. Modern era means you've been retired less than 25 years. So the minimum three made it. Okay. And then in the 70s,

senior coach and contributor category, there was five possible. A maximum of three could make it, a minimum of one. The minimum made it. So they're basically requiring these guys to get 80% of the vote when competing against each other. And so the possibility exists that nobody gets 80% if the votes get split enough.

And so if that were to happen, they just take the three leading vote-getters in the modern and one leading in the non-modern era players, the coach, contributor, and the seniors who've been retired a long time. And that's how you get a minimum class of four. So it's possible to have as many as eight to get only four votes.

You know, it was an extreme manifestation of them trying to raise the bar. I don't know if they raised the bar. I think they shrunk the class. I know that. I just don't know if the bar was raised because if you look at the guys who got in, it wasn't like they were all a bunch of Deion Sanderses, right? I mean, you could have picked three other guys.

Mike Sando is with us from New Orleans where the NFL honors and the Pro Football Hall of Fame class has just been revealed in the last few hours. He covers the league for the athletic and it's after hours with Amy Lawrence.

How many do you choose when you get to the final round as voters? Okay, so when we start with those 15 modern era, we privately vote and reduce down to 10 and then we get to seven. And once we get seven, they say pick five, okay? So you pick your five and then we don't get the results until tonight. And the results from that is anybody with 80% of the votes gets in.

And in the absence of 80%, the top three vote getters get in. So we knew who the final seven were.

And we were sworn to secrecy. You know, you can't tell. So at that point, we know that like we know the eight people who didn't get it for sure. You know, we know that. But we're sworn to secrecy, not supposed to tell anybody and didn't. I believe there was one leak came out this afternoon or right before. But for the most part, it was pretty airtight. Then in the other category with the five. So we had three senior players, which would be Jim Tyra, long ago tackle for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Maxie Bond, long ago linebacker for the then Washington Redskins, and Sterling Sharp, the great receiver for the Packers who had his career cut short by an injury but with a dominant force. Then we had Mike Holmgren as a coach, and Ralph Hay, who was one of the founders of the league, somewhat controversially had beat out Robert Kraft in a subcommittee vote. I'm not on that subcommittee, but anyway, we had those five. So they say, okay, here's these five guys. You pick three.

Okay, and then the same standard applies. If you think about that, 49 voters times three votes, there's 147 votes to go around. Each guy needs 80%, 40 votes to make it. So let's just say one guy gets 48 votes. Well, there's a lot fewer votes to go around for the other guys to get 80%, right? If you have to get 40. So let's just say in this case,

Sterling Sharp got 48 votes, okay? That leaves a lot fewer votes for anyone else to clear that bar to go to the 80% threshold, which is 40 of 49. So we really could have had a case. It could have been like this. What if none of them got 40? What if Sterling Sharp got 39, Mike Holmgren got 38, and then you split the others however it was? Well,

then by default, only one makes it in, the top vote getter, because you're only guaranteed a minimum of one, even though none hit 80%. That would be short and sharp. Holmgren could have been within one vote. Doesn't make it. That's a pretty big consequence to changing the math. And they got what they wanted, which is a smaller class. But I think for people that were hoping for a certain guy would get in, they're left kind of scratching their heads. What they don't tell us publicly is whether and

and how many got the 80%. As far as anyone knows, Sterling Sharp easily cleared the 80% bar and he's just as legitimate as anyone else, right? Or those three modern era guys, they're not going to come out and say, well, actually none of these guys got the 80%, so we just took the top three, right? That's the way the process would be done privately to determine it, but we don't get to see that. So

We don't know what percentage guy got. We just know for sure this. No more than three modern era hit 80% and no more than one in the other categories hit 80%. We know that for sure because only four made it. But it's possible that fewer than that did. It's possible that none of them did. Right.

Wow. It's a lot of secrecy behind this. They're shrouded in mystery, Mike. Yeah, yeah. And I try to explain as much as I can because I think what happens when there's mystery, and I understand for the privacy part of it, but then people's minds go to work of like, okay, how does this really work? And so I get people...

people that, you know, fear that, hey, maybe there's someone on the committee who's a strong personality and they're kind of bullying or pressuring others to vote a certain way. That doesn't work. That doesn't happen because when we actually vote,

it's confidential. So since the pandemic, we've had our meetings on Zoom. They will give us a link, a private link to vote. And we vote without any of the other voters knowing how we voted. So you're never feeling pressured by somebody. There's no, hey, I'll vote for your guy if you vote for mine, because there's no way to know how anyone voted, right? I think everybody votes how they want to vote. I do believe that. I believe that people do have the best interests

at heart, but there's a lot of different opinions. You can find somebody who tonight thinks this whole process is a joke because so-and-so didn't make it, and someone else thinks it's a joke because this other guy didn't make it, right? And the reality is who didn't make it isn't necessarily a repudiation of that person as a candidate. It's the choices that wind up getting made with a numbers game at play that create uncertainty.

You know, the Hall wanted to make this more exclusive once, but you can't control who's up for the vote. Right. So you can reduce the number of people get in. It doesn't mean that the people that get in are all going to be Deion Sanders, right? No.

Interesting. Mike Sando is with us from New Orleans covering the NFL. He is a Hall of Fame selector. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence. So just to clarify, then not even those of you who cast votes know how close, say, an Eli Manning was or a Luke Kuechly was.

No, we would only know if they didn't miss the cut to the final seven. We would know that, but we're not supposed to say. I think the hall doesn't want people wondering if they were unanimous or, you know, I mean, if you get in, you get in. If you don't, you circle back and come in the next year. So I've been doing this 15 years probably around there. And sometimes you're super frustrated with how it comes out. You know, you question everything. And then...

You come back the next year and it works out more the way you thought or hoped it would, and you feel like it's restored faith in the process. You really just got to try to do your best. What I try to do is really...

Bring standards to it. Really have an idea and a rhyme or reason to what we're looking for, what we're looking at. Try to have criteria that can be applied equally to across different people. But even doing that, there's going to be differences of opinion. And that's just the way it is. There's you know, you're never going to get.

full agreement, but I think for the most part the people who get in the Hall of Fame are deserving. In the end, I just tell myself that if your guy or whoever you thought doesn't get in this year, it doesn't mean that everyone in the Hall of Fame is not worthy or whoever made it. In fact, you can flip it around like this. Okay, who do you want to take out to get your guy in, you know? And that's a harder question. Well, are you happy with it?

I'm not fully happy with only four getting in. Like, I think that's a little low because I'll give you an example of a couple of people. Torrey Holt has been on the verge of this thing for a long time. And I think in a normal class, he would have made it. Should he get in eventually? Probably. Does this just unnecessarily delay it for him? Maybe. But maybe he's not going to make it, right? So that's sort of the new reality here. I thought in the other category, only getting one of the five,

I think there was a broad support for more than one and a lot of people were surprised that only one got it. So it's not about pleasing me or any one voter. I'd probably take another guy in there, but you know, it's just the way that it is and it'll work out over time and the best people will get in hopefully and we'll move on. Well, let's hope Deion Sanders is happy.

Yeah, it's funny. It's funny, yeah. Do you really think it was changed because of his public comments? Well, not necessarily. I'll say this. If he had said the opposite, I don't think it would have been changed, in my opinion. If he had come out and said, wow, incredible class.

That's just my personal opinion. You know, I don't think the hall, I don't speak for the hall. I don't think the hall would even necessarily agree with that. And they would know better than me because they have their own processes and their board and all of that. I'm not in the middle of that. I can't say for sure, but that was my perception looking at it was, yeah, some of those complaints were taken to heart. And I think erring on the side of being more selective is probably better than erring on the side of letting in more, you know?

Right. And then, as you point out, it's not just about their credentials. It's also about the others who are up for election in that same year. And with this more exclusive process, you can see how people would get squeezed out, at least for a few years. Well, I appreciate you giving us a peek behind the curtain.

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That's 20% off your first order at American-Giant.com, code CLASSIC24. Find Mike online at Sando NFL. A lot of years covering the league, now with the Athletic in New Orleans. Thank you so much, Mike. Hey,

Hey, thank you, Amy. Have a great night.

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