Robert Kraft among 25 contributors up for HOF consideration - ESPN

Six-time Super Bowl-winning owner Robert Kraft and three of the key figures around the rise of «Monday Night Football» were picked among the 25 candidates in the contributor category for the 2025 Pro Football Hall of Fame class.

The names of the candidates released Wednesday came after a blue-ribbon committee cut the list down from 47 people. It will be reduced to nine candidates in about two weeks, and eventually there will be one finalist who will be grouped with one coaching candidate and three senior candidates for consideration by the full selection committee for the Hall early next year.

Between one and three of those five finalists will make it to the Hall based on getting at least 80% of the votes from the full committee.

Kraft bought the New England Patriots in 1994 and quickly turned them into one of the most successful franchises in the NFL. He hired Bill Belichick as coach in 2000 and oversaw the franchise winning six Super Bowl titles from the 2001 to 2018 seasons.

Three key people behind the success of «Monday Night Football» also made the cut, including Roone Arledge, the ABC executive who produced the games that helped broaden the NFL's popularity in the 1970s, and announcer Howard Cosell.

Former Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell, who was the chairman of the NFL's television committee, was also instrumental in bringing the NFL into prime time. Modell was one of the league's most influential owners, but he drew ire from fans in Cleveland after he moved his team to Baltimore in 1996.

There were two other candidates linked to television on the list: longtime ESPN announcer Chris Berman, who was the anchor of the network's influential pregame show and popular highlight show «NFL Primetime,» and John Facenda,