ESPN reported Tuesday that Belichick, now the head football coach at the University of North Carolina, fell short of the required 80% threshold for induction during the Jan. 13 selection meeting \u2014 in part due to lingering bitterness over the 2007 \u201cSpygate\u201d scandal, in which he was personally fined $500,000 and his New England Patriots were docked $250,000 and a first-round draft pick for improperly recording opposing team signals.<\/p>\n
![\"President](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/president-donald-trump-presented-new-119867135.jpg\")
President Trump is a longtime friend of former NFL coach Bill Belichick. The Washington Post via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Belichick, who reportedly was \u201cpuzzled\u201d and \u201cdisappointed\u201d by the result, went on to win three more Super Bowls with the help of star quarterback Tom Brady and finished his pro career with the most Lombardi Trophies by a single bench boss (6), as well as the most appearances in the big game (9), the most playoff wins (31) and second-most total victories (333, behind only Don Shula\u2019s 347).<\/p>\n
Trump, 79, is a longtime friend of Belichick, 73, with the coach famously penning the then-GOP nominee a gushing letter in the closing stages of the 2016 presidential campaign \u2014 which Trump read out loud during a rally in the swing state of New Hampshire.<\/p>\n
The president is also close with Patriots owner Robert Kraft, 84, who is himself under consideration for the Hall of Fame after New England made their 11th Super Bowl during his time in charge \u2014 and first since Kraft fired Belichick after the Patriots\u2019 disastrous 4-13 2023 season.<\/p>\n
The 2026 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees will be announced next week, with the formal ceremony to take place in Canton, Ohio in early August. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump went off on Pro Football Hall of Fame voters Wednesday morning after six-time Super Bowl champion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3851,78,7,6,4239,1371,9,7717],"class_list":{"0":"post-711582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-bill-belichick","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-pro-football-hall-of-fame","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-us-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=711582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}