He pissed us off, but he should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Bill Belichick's famed scowl is as much of his legacy as his six Super Bowl titles.

(Author's note: The following missive originally appeared as a Facebook post earlier in the week. Since then, some of its readers asked if I could share it to other platforms, and since this blog is the only platform over which I have any sort of editorial control, I dutifully comply with those wishes.)

Let me be blunt. 

Bill Belichick reaped what he had sown.

And it wasn’t just the pettiness of media members that denied him the chance to be a first-ballot inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Most beat writers would have voted for him.

Yes, he pissed off a lot of us over his long career as a head coach in the NFL. He treated most of us as if we were sub-human, conspiratorial subversives whose only task in life was to attack and destroy what he was building. Maybe there were some individuals that fit that description, but the majority of reporters that covered the Patriots over my 42 years on the beat were good people, family men and women, educated souls that had a job to do and deserved a greater level of respect and to be treated with simple human dignity, as opposed to what Belichick was willing to offer.

That being said, I believe that most beat writers here, self included, would have voted to keep Belichick in the running for first-ballot eligibility. The proof was in the pudding, as they say — six Super Bowl championships.

But media members were not the only ones Bill pissed off along the way.

If reports are accurate, former NFL executive Bill Polian made an impassioned plea to the voters to make Belichick wait a year before induction. Polian was the general manager of the Indianapolis Colts at the time of the grossly overblown “Deflategate” scandals, in which the Patriots were accused of intentionally deflating game-used footballs during the playoffs to give Tom Brady a better grip. Deflategate was mostly debunked by the time it was over, but because Belichick had already been labeled a “cheater” because of the earlier “Spygate” videotaping affair, the league fined the Patriots and suspended Brady, and further labeled its first true dynasty of the 21st century as fraudulent. 

In his own little world.

Spygate was much more legitimate of an infraction, although not uncommon around the league. What made it uncommon in its importance was Belichick’s smug refusal to admit that he had simply done what many of his profession do regularly — to try to see how far he could bend the rules until they reached the limit of flexibility.

Belichick also refused to play the publicity game that made the NFL the towering presence in American pro sports that it is today. His sour attitude and petulant press conferences after losses were embarrassments to a publicity-sensitive organization that expected its coaches to display their disappointment in a more dignified manner. He became the poster boy for bad behavior, and eventually, a running joke.

Granted, anyone that voted against Belichick because of his current soap opera should lose his or her vote. After all, this is the league that still has O.J. Simpson in its hall of fame. And please don’t tell me he was innocent.

This foolishness doesn't matter.

Many former players say that the media never saw the Belichick they did — the coach that had their backs, the coach that developed an environment that put them in positions to win. But to Belichick, that was the team’s business and no one else’s. That is how he did things, and no one had any business telling him to do things differently. 

Not even his boss, as it turned out.

The bottom line is that on the merits of what he accomplished with the Patriots alone, Belichick should be a first-ballot enshrinee. But at the same time, he burned enough bridges that it should come as no surprise that this has happened. Bill is a smart man — but as it turned out, he was never smart enough to play the NFL’s game.

It should have been just business, not personal. But to some, payback is indeed a bitch.

MARK FARINELLA covered the New England Patriots for The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, Mass., and other news organizations, for 42 years, including all but four of Bill Belichick's seasons with the team. Send condolences his way at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.