Ask ten NFL fans whether Eli Manning belongs in the Hall of Fame and there's a decent chance you'll get ten slightly different answers. Some will point to his 57,023 passing yards and two Super Bowl MVP awards. Others will bring up the interceptions, the inconsistent seasons and the fact that he was rarely regarded as the best quarterback in football.

Then somebody will mention the 2007 Patriots.

And suddenly the argument isn't really about passing statistics anymore.

New England had won every regular-season game. Tom Brady and Randy Moss were breaking records, and the Patriots were one victory away from completing a perfect 19–0 season. The Giants, meanwhile, had entered the playoffs as a wild-card team. They'd already beaten Tampa Bay, Dallas and Green Bay on the road, which was impressive enough. Beating New England was another matter.

Yet that's exactly what happened.

People tend to remember David Tyree's helmet catch and Manning somehow escaping a sack before throwing the ball. Fair enough. It's one of those plays that still looks ridiculous when you watch it back. What sometimes gets overlooked is how much the Giants' defence contributed. Brady was sacked five times, New England managed only 14 points, and a team that had spent the season overwhelming opponents suddenly couldn't get comfortable. Manning still had to deliver the winning drive, of course. He found Plaxico Burress in the end zone with 35 seconds remaining, and the Giants won 17–14.

Four years later, he beat Brady in another Super Bowl. That's a difficult pair of results to leave out of any discussion about his career.

Would Manning have the same Hall of Fame support without those victories? I doubt it. His regular-season record would still be substantial, but two championships against Brady's Patriots have given his career a significance that statistics alone struggle to capture.

Joe Namath is an even stranger case when you look at the numbers. He finished his career with 173 touchdown passes and 220 interceptions. His regular-season record as a starting quarterback was 62–63–4.

Those figures aren't exactly what you'd expect from somebody with such an enormous place in NFL history. But Namath wasn't inducted because he had a tidy touchdown-to-interception ratio.

In January 1969, his New York Jets faced the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. The Colts were overwhelming favourites, and there was still considerable scepticism about whether teams from the American Football League could compete with the established NFL.

Namath guaranteed the Jets would win.

It sounds like the sort of thing a player would regret saying for the rest of his life. Instead, New York won 16–7, and Namath became permanently associated with one of the most important upsets in American football. He didn't even throw a touchdown pass in the game. That's the detail I always find interesting. The performance wasn't a statistical masterpiece, but the result changed how people viewed the AFL. Namath's place in football history is tied to something much bigger than his individual box score.

There's a problem with this way of remembering players, though.

Quarterbacks get an enormous amount of credit for winning, even when the defence has done most of the damage. They also get blamed for defeats that might have had very little to do with their performance. A defensive tackle can dominate an entire playoff game without becoming the face of the victory. A quarterback can throw for 180 yards, win by three points and spend the next twenty years being described as a big-game player.

It's not always fair.

Still, expectations are part of what makes certain performances memorable. Beating a team everyone expected you to beat is one thing. Winning when almost nobody gives you a chance is something else.

Betting odds provide a useful record of those expectations. Fans checking the latest lines for each game can see which teams are favoured and how the market assesses a matchup before kickoff.

The odds don't tell the whole story, and they certainly don't guarantee a result. But they help explain why some victories become famous while others are forgotten within a fortnight.

A heavy favourite losing a championship game is going to be remembered differently from two evenly matched teams producing the same score.

That doesn't mean Hall of Fame voters should simply reward players for being involved in famous upsets.

Longevity matters. So does consistency. There are players who performed at an extraordinary level for a decade without ever getting the championship moment that might have made their careers easier to celebrate.

And plenty of ordinary players have Super Bowl rings. Manning's case is interesting precisely because those arguments pull in different directions. Two Super Bowl MVP awards are hard to dismiss, but they don't make the weaker parts of his career disappear. I'm not convinced there's a completely satisfactory formula for weighing all of that.

You can compare passing yards, touchdowns, interceptions and playoff records until every number has been accounted for. Somebody will still ask whether the player was feared by opponents, whether he changed the sport or whether he delivered when the pressure was greatest.

And with Manning, somebody will inevitably ask how many quarterbacks could have beaten that Patriots team.

Twice.

Yes, we know that this is taking a while!

As many of you know, we at Notinhalloffame.com are slowly generating the top 50 of each major North American sports team. That being said, we maintain and update our existing Top 50 lists annually.  We are pleased to present our post-2025 revision of our top 50 Los Angeles Chargers.

As for all of our top 50 players in football, we look at the following: 

1.  Duration and Impact.

2.  Traditional statistics and how they finished in the National Football League.

3.  Advanced Statistics.

4.  Playoff performance.

5. Their respective legacy on the team.

6. How successful the team was when he was there.

7. Respecting the era in which they played.

Criteria 1-4 will make up the lion’s share of the algorithm.  Please note that we have implemented this for the first time.  This has changed the rankings all throughout the board.

Last year, the Chargers went 11-6 but lost the Wild Card Game to the New England Patriots.  There were two elevations based on the season.

As always, we present our top five, which had no changes.

1. Junior Seau
2. LaDainian Tomlinson
3. Lance Alworth
4. Dan Fouts
5. Philip Rivers

You can find the complete list here:

Defensive Back Derwin James rocketed to #25 from #40.

Quarterback Justin Herbert moved to #40 from #45.

We thank you for your continued support of our lists on Notinhalloffame.com.

2003 PRELIMINARY RESULTS:

Thank you to all who participated in the Pro Football Hall of Fame Revisited Project. If you are still figuring that out, we treated the PFHOF as having its first class in January 1946.

For “2003,” a Preliminary Vote with over 100 players whose playing career ended by 1997. We also follow the structure in which players have 20 years of eligibility, and if they do not make it into the Hall, they are relegated to the Senior Pool.

Each voter was asked to select 25 names from the preliminary list, and the top 25 vote-getters were named Semi-Finalists.

A week later, voters will be asked to select 15 names from the 25 Semi-Finalists, then choose five from the remaining 15. We will continue this process every week until we catch up to the current year.

Please note that a significant change occurred “years ago,” allowing voters to submit fewer than the allotted number of spots. 

31 Votes took place.

This is for the “Modern Era”

Bold indicates they advanced to the Semi-Finals:

*Indicates they have been removed from future ballots

Bold indicates they advanced to the Semi-Finals:

*Indicates that they will be removed from the ballot permanently.

This is for the “Coaches/Contributors”

Bold indicates they advanced to the Semi-Finals:

*Indicates that they will be removed from the ballot permanently.

Next week, we will announce the Semi-Finalists for the 2003 Pro Football Hall of Fame Revisited Project.

Every era of pop culture has a room where fame gets decided. For decades it was the stadium, the stage and the late night couch. Today a good share of it happens in a chat window next to a live video feed.

Live streamers now pull audiences that rival cable shows. Some of them have been on air, almost daily, for more than ten years. That is a longer run than most sitcoms. It is worth asking what that means for how we remember entertainers.

The new long career

Hall of fame debates usually reward longevity. A pitcher with twenty strong seasons. A band that kept filling arenas after its first hit faded.

Streaming has its own version of that. Creators who started on Justin.tv or early Twitch are still live in 2026, with audiences that grew up alongside them. Their viewers know the inside jokes, the old setups and the nights that went wrong.

That shared history is exactly what turns a performer into a cultural fixture. It is the same thing that keeps people arguing about classic rock bands on forums.

Sports and streaming are now one audience

The overlap between sports fans and stream viewers keeps growing. Athletes run their own channels. Watch along streams of big games draw hundreds of thousands of viewers who would rather hear a creator react than a TV booth.

Leagues have noticed. Clubs invite streamers to training grounds and draft nights. Music festivals give creators backstage access because one clip can travel further than a press release.

For fans, this changes what a memorable moment looks like. The play still matters. So does the reaction that went viral an hour later.

How brands follow the attention

Where audiences go, sponsors follow. Brand deals with streamers used to be simple banner placements. Now they look more like sports sponsorships: season long partnerships, custom segments and clear reporting on views and clicks.

Agencies such as 3Bet Media match brands with streamers and short form creators, then handle briefs, scheduling and results tracking. The goal is the same as any good sponsorship. Fit the brand into the show without breaking what the audience came for.

That last part is the real test. Viewers forgive an ad read. They do not forgive a creator who stops sounding like themselves.

What makes a streamer hall of fame worthy

If someone built a hall of fame for live creators, the ballot would probably weigh a few things:

• Longevity. Years on air, not just one huge month.
• Influence. Formats, phrases and styles that other creators copied.
• Moments. Broadcasts people still clip, quote and rewatch.
• Community. Audiences that stayed loyal through platform changes.

Those are not so different from the standards used for musicians or athletes. The medium changed. The way fans decide who matters did not.

The archive problem

There is one big gap. Classic albums and games are preserved. Many early streams are gone, deleted by platforms or never saved at all.

Fan communities have stepped in with clip archives and wikis. That grassroots record keeping looks a lot like the early days of sports statistics, when fans kept their own box scores.

Whether or not an official hall ever exists, the debate has already started. Ask any longtime viewer who belongs on the list, and you will get a strong opinion in seconds.