Football writers are morons.

That statement becomes more clear each year on the day before the Super Bowl when the latest class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame is revealed.

More than anything, the most recent class (and, most tellingly, who isn’t in it) should put an urgency into transferring the voting privileges from guys like me to actual players and team management. Year after year, faulty logic is applied to players who get in and to those that don’t. For quarterbacks, the Super Bowl gets tossed around. For receivers, the mind-boggling requirement is that you, as a writer, remember a catch he had.

There’s no unifying criteria, and the most galling thing are the guys that are currently in the Hall of Fame who have no business being in there in the first place. Among the many, Joe Namath stands out. He guided the AFL champion Jets to an upset win over the legendary Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. He also guided his team to just three postseason appearances and threw 47 more interceptions than touchdowns. His teams were 77-108 in stints with the Jets and Rams. Gutsy and flashy, sure, but an all-time great he is not.

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Gale Sayers was an incredible running back in his injury-shortened career, but if he’s in, so is Denver’s Terrell Davis.

Baltimore people will tell you former Cleveland Browns/Baltimore Ravens owner and NFL pioneer Art Modell should have already been inducted, if only for his immense contributions to the television aspect of the game. Grudge-holders inside the voting panel continue to hold against him the Browns’ move to Baltimore. He wasn’t even among the 17 finalists in this year’s Hall voting.

There’s another Art — down in D.C. — who has been royally snubbed. Art Monk, who didn’t make the Hall selection committee’s final six candidates this year, played on the second greatest dynasty of the 1980s and early ’90s. In 10 seasons, the Redskins made four Super Bowl appearances, winning three. From 1982 to ’92, only the 49ers won more titles. The Redskins of that era featured a relentless rushing attack that starred the team’s lone Hall of Famer, John Riggins.

Despite the ground-game emphasis, Monk still became the game’s all-time leader in catches before his retirement. He was the first man to catch 100 passes in a season. Now, that benchmark is commonplace for the game’s elite receivers, who are too scared to throw the blocks that Monk did unflinchingly. Somehow, Monk has become a victim of his own trailblazing among voters.

Monk finished with 940 catches, nearly 13,000 yards and 68 touchdowns in a 16-year career. Compare those numbers to current Hall of Famers John Stallworth (537 catches, 8,723 yards, 63 TDs over 14 years) and Charley Taylor (649 catches, 9,110 yards, 79 TDs over 14 years), and Monk’s enshrinement should be a given. Hall of Famer Lynn Swann (336 catches, 5,462 yards, 51 TDs over 9 seasons) should do the magnanimous thing and hand his jacket to Monk now.

Monk played in an era where not every game was televised around the country on DirectTV. Sports writers are busy watching one game a week and then spending the next three hours writing, missing out on 12-14 games a weekend. Their ignorance now costs him a deserved place among the game’s greats.

Matt Palmer is a staff writer for The Examiner. He can be reached at mpalmer@baltimoreexaminer.com.