2025 Hall of Infamy: Round 1, Heat 1.
 

Pick up to EIGHT people in the poll who best meet the following voting criteria:

Brought "shame, dishonor, disgust, or embarrassment" to the sport of professional football.

The top-eight vote-getters will move on to Round 2.

My votes went to (in no particular order):

Mike Shanahan - knowingly cheated the salary cap, oiled jerseys, and advocated cheap-shot knee diving.

Jimmy Smith - I would've given him a pass for the drug stuff if he wasn't carrying guns.

John Riggins - Classic entitled athlete who was a jerk in public while being overrated on the field.

Robert Kraft - Built a cheating organization and was pretty lowbrow in his hookers.

Paul Hackett - Criminal against the sport of football with his "give up on third down" play calling.

Rob Gronkowski - I'm not a fan of the "I'm a moron" act. And then of course the play where he slammed the defensive back in the back of the head, which is one of the dirtiest hits ever.

Robert Irsay - I debated this one because it's his right to move the team, but he did it in a classless manner.


Obviously I could vote for the broncos offensive line, but the worst offenders have all been nominated individually, so I'll vote for them individually.

A lot of the other guys were just guys who made some bad football plays, which is not a recipe for infamy. Or they made errors in judgment, which happens sometimes and we've all made errors in our time. And I find Mark Davis to be rather entertaining.

John Riggins was a Jayhawk.

That alone secures my vote...

Was Condoleezza Rice supposed to make the list? Did I miss something?

Oh she owns part of the Broncos.

GUILTY!!!!

She's part owner of the broncos or something, right? And someone mentioned that she seduced some NFL player, though I don't remember who. I hadn't heard anything about that.

This feels like a really weak heat. The majority of these guys I would have to research to find out why they're even on here. No murderers or rapists that I'm aware of. I'm guessing there are some DV cases on here but none of the big names I've heard of. I'm hoping there are like 50 heats in Round 1.

If Lin Elliott isn’t the top vote getter something is wrong.
And yes, I hold grudges.

Chmura and Lawrence Taylor both got caught with underage girls. I didn't vote for either of them because it seemed like an anomaly for Chmura and I suspect Taylor didn't know the age. (I could be wrong about Taylor, though.)

But yeah, no murderers or rapists in this heat, or at least none that have been caught yet. I suspect we have a couple in the group somewhere, given the composition of the list, but nothing we can claim at the moment.

I mean I threw him a vote because why not with this group? But the vast majority of NFL fans have no idea who Lin Elliot is and have never heard of him. If this were the Chiefs Hall of Infamy he would definitely be first ballot and deserve his own wing in the museum. But I really don't think he should be part of the inaugural class for the whole NFL.

I kind of figure that every team has their own version of Lin, some guy who missed a field goal or blew a coverage or fumbled.

Like I mentioned, I won't vote for a guy who made a good faith mistake on the field. I'm saving my votes for the criminals and miscreants.

I don’t use ChatGPT much but using it for this was cool.

It even qualifies that the list isn’t for the best players who did bad things, but just a straight list of awful people.

Lawrence Taylor is easily the worst person on this list. He was such a crackhead that it's painful to hear him speak because he cooked his brain and his motor skills aren't there. Because he was arguably the greatest defensive player ever, his transgressions get overlooked by everyone.

Yeah, I think he's being overlooked in the voting. In terms of the sport, though, he brings a lot of highlight clips, and that's good for the sport. So I can see that being an offset, whether that's right or not.

Riggins is also being overlooked. Maybe people don't remember him showing up drunk at a White House dinner and making a scene with a Supreme Court Justice. Plus, that afro was terrible.

sounds like a mexican dish

Casey Wiegmann didn't play for the Broncos in the 90s, he signed there in 2008.

Todd blackledge should be higher that son of a bitch wouldn't give me a autograph but you know who did bill Kenny and Len Dawson I shook his hand and touched the Superbowl ring.

I’m probably in the minority here, but I actually enjoy rob gronkowski… not a fan of the patriots and there shtick, but I feel like he genuinely was/is a good dude. If he had been paired with Mahomes?? I think a lot of people here would sing a different tune..

Hmm, the nomination said something like "except that one center who played for us". I didn't bother looking it up, but Wiegman immediately jumped to mind and I ran with it. Who was the exception?

What do you mean? Lin Elliot is a hero.

Where’s Leon Lett

I could have sworn he played for the dirty Broncos before playing for the Chiefs. I guess he didn't, I feel like this is some Mandella effect thing.

I'll be damned -- you're right.

I'd have sworn we signed him as a veteran starter away from Denver.

Turns out we signed him as a part-time starter out of Chicago who wasn't terribly old (28) and had only started 25 career games before we got him.

Then he started 111 games (of a possible 112) over the next 7 years for us before going to Denver for 2 years. THEN he came back to KC for a farewell tour in 2010 and 2011.

That's nothing at all like I remember that career going. I thought of him as an NFL journeyman who had a few nice years here but that's not really fair. He was absolutely a Chiefs product. A guy who was really built here and played almost 3/4 of a 200 game career in KC.

Excited to see the next heat...are there any villains left?

It sounds like we should all agree that he came from Denver since that's what we all believe anyway.

I mean, I knew he didn't. But how the Vermeil offense was put together is one of my favorite things in Chiefs history. I don't know if there's ever been another top offense made up of such an odd collection of players.

That's a good point. Off the top of my head, we had:

Three high draft picks: Shields, Tait, and Gonzalez.
Two mid-to-high capital trades: Roaf and Green
Six signings of not-overly-sought free agents: Morton, Kennison, Holmes, Richardson, Wiegmann, Waters

Even then Green had been an 8th round pick who bounced around (including getting cut in the CFL) and didn't play a down in the NFL until he was 27. When we traded for him he was 31 and had started 19 games. And Roaf's knee was questionable enough that he was left unprotected in the expansion draft and the Texans passed on him. I guess that situation (a proven vet with an injury concern) is fairly common, but it's rare for it to work out so well.

And some of those were practically off the street. Waters literally was, Richardson was off Dallas's practice squad. Kennison was released by Denver mid-season, we were his 5th team in 6 years. Holmes signed right before the draft for cheap. Jason Dunn was also signed off the street, after being out of the league for a year with knee injury.

Moving on to the next round are:

Mike Shanahan
Mark Davis
Todd Marinovich
Lawrence Taylor
Collective Broncos OL in the 1990s
Robert Kraft
Lin Elliott
Robert Irsay

Congratulations to all of those who were not selected.