Patriots owner Robert Kraft has an $11 billion empire and six Super Bowl rings but no Hall of Fame jacket.
Patriots owner Robert Kraft has an $11 billion empire and six Super Bowl rings, but he has fallen short in his lengthy quest to join the 16 owners among the 378 men enshrined in the Hall. Member of three Pulitzer Prize-winning teams for national, explanatory and public service journalism
No current owner has tried harder to get into the Hall -- or been denied longer. Beginning in 2012, Kraft's supporters have lobbied Hall voters on his behalf. Eddie DeBartolo Jr., the former San Francisco 49ers owner, was inducted in 2016 despite losing his team in 2000 because of his connection to an extortion case. DeBartolo has five Lombardi Trophies; Kraft, at the time, had four. Some Hall of Fame voters assured the disappointed members of Kraft's inner circle that he would be next.
Kraft holds up the Lombardi Trophy after his Patriots won the Super Bowl against the St. Louis Rams in 2002. story about the relentless Hall of Fame campaign on behalf of one of the most powerful and influential owners in NFL history, why it remains unsuccessful and how Kraft set out along the way to secretly burnish his own legacy.Kraft not only hasn't gotten into the Hall, but not once has the subcommittee even forwarded his name for consideration by the 50 selectors.
But Kraft owns the film and television rights to"The Dynasty" book, according to documents obtained by ESPN. That means the book by acclaimed author Jeff Benedict could be turned into a film only with Kraft's permission. And according to emails, documents and sources, Kraft owns the docuseries, licensed it to Apple and sought editorial control.
The moment he's eligible, Brady will catapult into Canton. So, too, will Belichick, possibly in a year if he doesn't get another coaching job.that most U.S. senators look in the mirror and see a future president. And when most NFL owners look in the mirror, they see a Pro Football Hall of Famer. Few owners have a better argument for induction than Robert Kraft.
When he began lobbying for his boss in 2012, James assumed Kraft's induction would be a relatively easy sell."I feel Robert Kraft has no peer when it comes to his contribution to the National Football League," James said during one of several interviews since June. When Kraft, then a 23-year Patriots season-ticket holder, bought the team in January 1994, the franchise was failing. The final home game of the previous season was a rare sellout, filling up because fans feared the team might move to St. Louis.
Early on, James discovered that influential voters seemed to have"a pecking order" for owners. First, it was DeBartolo's turn in 2016, then Jones' in 2017. The back-to-back inductions triggered a lobbying frenzy among other owners looking to get into Canton.In August 2017, longtime Hall of Fame voter Jason Cole said he sat down for an interview with Kraft and James in Kraft's wood-paneled office in Foxborough.
Kraft, seen here addressing a legislative commission in 1995, oversaw the Patriots' rise from the bottom of the NFL to six Super Bowl victories. Jeff Benedict proposed writing a book about the Patriots dynasty -- and sought Kraft's cooperation. According to a source with knowledge of the letter, the lifelong Patriots fan proposed to set the record straight on Kraft's underappreciated role in keeping the team in New England and its 20-year run of unprecedented greatness.
Kraft allowed Benedict to eavesdrop on conference calls as the team acquired talented-but-troubled receiver Antonio Brown. Benedict traveled to Israel with Kraft, rode on his private jet, and sifted through reams of privileged legal documents detailing how he bought the team and kept it in Foxborough.
But more than a dozen participants discussed with ESPN how the process works -- and why they opposed Kraft or believe he has been denied. "A handful do most of the talking in these meetings," one veteran Hall of Fame voter says."Some are silent assassins." Said another voter:"Kraft has distanced himself from Spygate, but it did come up -- it has to be considered."
A few voters said another factor for them is Kraft's massage parlor charges, which came in February 2019 after he made two visits to the Orchids of Asia. Prosecutors eventually dropped the charges."We probably need to put a little distance between the massage parlor and the Hall of Fame," a voter recalled telling James not long afterward.
In the five years since Bowlen's induction, Kraft has been edged out among"coaches and contributors" by former commissioner Paul Tagliabue in 2020; Raiders coach Tom Flores and Steelers scout Bill Nunn in 2021; Eagles coach Dick Vermeil and a referee, Art McNally, in 2022; and Chargers coach Don Coryell in 2023.
A half dozen voters pointed to James as another intangible in Kraft's annual Hall of Fame campaign. With each passing year, they say, James has become more insistent and impatient. Soon after the book was published, Benedict had the idea to turn his book into a multipart docuseries. He reached out to Alex Gibney, a prolific, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. Benedict and Gibney had a history. They had collaborated on a critically acclaimed HBO two-part series about Tiger Woods based on Benedict's bestselling book, co-authored with Armen Keteyian.
After a series of bids from Netflix, Amazon, ESPN and Apple, Apple acquired the docuseries for $27.5 million, a record sum at that time for a sports documentary. Documents show that, through Shire, Kraft sought an equal one-third split of docuseries profits among Kraft, Benedict and Gibney. On May 21, 2021, Kraft and the filmmaker talked by phone in a call joined by Shire. According to Gibney's contemporaneous notes, obtained by ESPN from a third-party source, the call was an attempt to find common ground.
Shire, who did not respond to a request for comment from ESPN, interjected and agreed with Gibney that the filmmaker couldn't hide Kraft's input. The call ended without resolution, according to the notes. Gibney declined to comment on the specifics of his dealings with Kraft. But in a statement to ESPN, he said,"Viewers can judge for themselves the value of autobiographies or so-called 'authorized biographies,' in which it's clear that the subject has editorial control.
Some Hall voters say Kraft deserves credit for keeping Brady and head coach Bill Belichick together during the team's unprecedented championship run. January 2024. Brady is retired. Belichick is essentially fired by Kraft. A close circle at the league office had early access to"The Dynasty.
With fans decrying the film and blaming Kraft, James told reporters that Grazer had produced the documentary as a favor to his old friend. Grazer also said the project was a byproduct of his friendship with Kraft, telling Deadline last February:"Someone else was going to do it and then Kraft said, 'Well, Brian, if you were going to do it then I would love to do this with you,' because neither one of us considered each other in that way, just as friends.
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