Earlier today, I posted an interview with Leonard Shapiro on the voting process for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Here’s more from the former long-time voter on the human element and how it might keep Charles Haley out on Canton.

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Unlike baseball, where character is a consideration for enshrinement in Cooperstown, Shapiro says the football voters are only supposed “to care about what happens between the lines.”

But Charles Haley could be a case in point of why it doesn’t always work that way.

Haley will be a finalist for the fifth time Saturday. He was a pass rush dynamo who played on five Super Bowl winners for Dallas and San Francisco.

And he was a complete jerk to the media.

“He was surely, mean, arrogant. A rotten man,” said Shapiro, who was a long-time football writer for the Washington Post. “I thought he was despicable and a discredit to the game.”

Shapiro never voted for Haley during the 29 years he served on the committee. When asked to assess Haley as a player, “He’s in the hall of great. Whether he’s a Hall of Famer is debatable.”

Would Haley already be in the Hall of Fame if he was a good guy to the media? He definitely would have a better chance.

Shapiro said there are plenty of voters in the selection room who feel the same way he does about Haley’s treatment of the media.

“Are there guys in the room who think, ‘What an asshole, I’m not going to vote for that guy,'” Shapiro said. “You’re damn right there are guys who think like that.”

This situation isn’t unique to Haley. Shapiro said the character issue almost kept Lawrence Taylor from being a first-ballot Hall of Famer. It should have been a slam dunk, as Taylor might have been the greatest defensive player in NFL history. At the very least, he’s in the top 5.

“It got very heated over Taylor,” Shapiro said. “He had a history of drug problems and other issues. He wasn’t the world’s great citizen. The voters aren’t supposed to take the character issue into account, but it did factor in for LT. One guy said, ‘I don’t care, I’m not going to vote for him.'”

Taylor did get in. There’s no way they could keep him out.

Haley, though, is a different story, as his credentials aren’t as clear cut. Shapiro isn’t so sure the fifth time will be the charm for him.

“There is human nature involved,” Shapiro said. “(As much as it isn’t supposed to be that way), you can’t take that part out of it.”