INDIANAPOLIS — Shame on the voters who barred Bill Parcells from the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday. They embarrassed themselves and exposed the voting system as flawed.
In the case of at least a few, the dissenting voters clearly placed more weight on their own petty personal issues than on what the process is supposed to be about: inducting those who have made the greatest contributions to the game with their accomplishments.
To make the argument that Parcells’ accomplishments are not worthy of the Hall of Fame is absurd, bordering on comical.
It’s ironic that those keeping Parcells out of Canton are blatantly ignoring one of his most oft-used phrases: “You are what your record says you are.’’
Parcells’ record says he should have been a first-ballot Hall-of-Fame inductee. Anyone who says otherwise is either not paying attention out of ignorance or simply is choosing not to pay attention out of arrogance.
Parcells won two Super Bowl championships with the Giants, was a Super Bowl runner-up with the Patriots, got to an AFC Championship Game with the Jets and led the Cowboys to the playoffs twice to become the only coach in NFL history to lead four different teams to the postseason.
He resurrected three franchises — the Giants, Patriots and Jets — from the ashes, changed the culture of each of them and left them as the perennial contenders they remain today.
You need to look no further than last night’s Super Bowl XLVI matchup between the Giants and Patriots to see Parcells’ fingerprint on the game.
Both are franchises he had a heavy hand in rebuilding from wreckage. Both are coached by men who were his assistants — Tom Coughlin and Bill Belichick — both of whom strongly credit much of their success to what they learned from him.
Three Parcells contemporaries who are in the Hall of Fame — Joe Gibbs from the Redskins, Bill Walsh from the 49ers and Marv Levy from the Bills — were a combined 1-4 against Parcells in the postseason.
“I feel like he has to be in there,’’ Gibbs told The Post.
Consider Parcells’ impact on the Giants, Patriots and Jets. The numbers don’t lie. They’re a lot more credible than the voters who kept him out of the Hall of Fame.
l In the 10 years before the Giants hired Parcells in 1983, they were 46-96-1 with one playoff appearance. In the 29 years since, they are 254-207-2 with 14 postseason appearances, three Super Bowl titles and one runner-up.
l In the four years before he took over the Patriots in 1993, they were 14-50 with no playoff appearances. In the 19 years since, they are 198-106 with 13 postseason appearances, three Super Bowl titles and two runner-ups.
l In the case of the Jets, in the 10 years before they hired Parcells in 1997, they were 54-104 with one playoff appearance. In the 15 years since, they’re 128-112 with seven postseason appearances and three AFC Championship game runner-ups.
You can hate on Parcells all you want, but you cannot argue that he didn’t leave every one of those franchises in a far better place than they were in before he arrived.
I speak not with a New York bias here. I speak with unadulterated objectivity when I say that if Parcells had gone to Cincinnati, Cleveland and Kansas City and did what he did with the Giants, Patriots and Jets I would still consider him a no-brainer first-ballot entrant.
Was Parcells abrasive and bullying with the media, hurting a few reporters’ feelings along the way at times? Sure he was.
Is that reason to keep him out? No.
But some of those reporters Parcells rubbed the wrong way over the years are voters and hold the power to keep him out.
This is where the system is flawed and can by fixed only by expanding the pool of voters from the current 44 to allow for more balance. Consider this: Because a candidate needs 80 percent of the votes to make it through the final process, it takes only nine voters to keep that candidate out.
In the case of the Baseball Hall of Fame, there are 573 voters, a number that, unlike football, doesn’t allow a small number of dissenters to wield a powerful say in the outcome.
Maybe something good will actually come out of this. Maybe it will push those in charge of the system to improve it and stop politics from impinging on the integrity of the operation.
“Two championships, another Super Bowl appearance and another AFC Championship Game,’’ former Giants linebacker Carl Banks said. “What else do you want?’’
mark.cannizzaro@nypost.com