The Monitor's 2012 Pro Football Hall of Fame picks

The Christian Science Monitor has taken a hard look at the 17 nominees for enshrinement into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and picked seven men who would get our vote.

Cris Carter

Wide receiver

6 ft. 3 in., 202 lbs.

Philadelphia Eagles (1987-89), Minnesota Vikings (1990-2001), Miami Dolphins (2002)

Birthplace: Troy, Ohio

Alma mater: Ohio State

Among the two candidates who were strictly wide receivers during their careers, it is very hard to choose between Carter and Andre Reed. Here’s hoping that Reed gets in at some point, because anybody who caught as many balls over the middle, in often-frigid Buffalo, and gained as many yards after his catches as he did deserves entry into Canton at some point. This year, however, we think the slight edge goes to Carter. He made one more Pro Bowl (eight) than Reed and caught about 150 more passes in the same number of career games (234). His biggest edge is in the touchdown department, where Carter made 130 TD grabs compared with Reed’s 87. It’s also hard to ignore Carter’s selection as the 1999 NFL Man of the Year Award for his volunteer and charity work. That’s not necessarily a credential for making the Hall of Fame, but character deserves some consideration in our estimation.

2 of 7

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.