infantrycak
Hall of Fame
In early 2013, Ira Kaufman of the Tampa Tribune managed to persuade the Hall of Fame voters to induct former Buccaneers defensive tackle Warren Sapp on the first ballot. While off-field, post-career behavior technically isn’t an official factor in the selection process (although maybe it should be), Kaufman knows that he’d have a very hard time getting enough votes for Sapp if Sapp were up for election in the aftermath of a pair of arrests in 2015.
“I’ve already heard from three or four of the selectors saying, ‘Kaufman, you want to rescind that speech and do it all over again?'” Kaufman said on PFT Live on NBC Sports Radio.
Kaufman explained that Sapp’s primary competition for first-ballot induction was Michael Strahan, and that Kaufman managed to persuade the voters to set aside their personal opinions of Sapp and focus on a football career that included election to a pair of All-Decade teams.
“As soon as I got to town in New Orleans, I talked to my guys on the committee that know which way the wind’s blowing,” Kaufman said, “and they were saying, ‘You got your work cut out, Ira. A bunch of guys, they want to make Sapp wait. They don’t want to put him in that first year. They still remember how he treated them.’ I knew what I was up against.”
Kaufman kept the focus on Sapp the football player by addressing the problem of his off-field persona from the outset of the presentation.
Link
Not directly on AJ but provides some insight into HoF voter thinking (including going outside the letter of the rules).
Of course AJ has such a stellar reputation his one time he went flagrantly outside the lines he just about got a standing ovation.