In the world of the pool, where you must be 40 years old or older to be on the ballot, I feel that the five players that are most deserving of BCA HOF induction based on their competitive credentials are, alphabetically:
Karen Corr
Jeanette Lee
Rodney Morris
Oliver Ortmann
Jose Parica
See, that makes me confused. Rodney is 8 years younger then Tobjorn and has nowhere close to the competitive credentials in their respective forums of skill. Karen is 7 years younger then him and again, she does not have 15 world titles, ranking behind the most dominant 3-cushion player to ever pick up a cue.
I know Tobjorn is not a "pool" player, but the BCA HoF went and put in alot of 3-cushion and carom billiards players into their HoF and by doing so they now have a responsibility to put in future hall of fame calibre players from that particular disipline and allow them to join their peers and predecessors.
You cannot put in Hoppe, Ceulmans, Cochrane, and the other billiard players and then stop adding more and put in pool players with 1/10th the competitive credentials that the 3-cushion player has. They set a precedent when they included billiards players in their HoF and now they have a responsibility to give 3-cushion players equal chances of induction as a pool player.
There is NO POOL PLAYER ALIVE who is not already in the BCA HoF that has anywhere close to the competitive credentials of Tobjorn, 15 world titles... the last pool player who managed dominance like that was named Mosconi.
Either the BCA HoF gives 3-cushion players the credit they deserve or they need to split the HoF into two seperate entities, remove Hoppe, Cochrane, and the other billiards players from the "pool" version of the HoF and then you can go ahead and focus on only the pool players for the "pool" version of the HoF which would not include Hoppe, Cochrane, and the other billiard players, and give the Billiards HoF status to billiards players who can now join Hoppe, Cochrane and the others in a billiard specific HoF that only includes the billiard version of the sport.
What you cannot do is simply stop caring about billiards, keeping old billiard legends in the HoF, and ignoring any future billiard players and adding nothing but pool players from this moment forth.
When you look at the last 25 years of additions to the BCA HoF you can see a glaring and obvious ommision of billiards HoF inductees to join the old legends of THEIR game that ARE in the BCA HoF, and it is pretty freaking wrong IMO. They added Ceulmans for the reason that to not include a guy who simply owned that sport like noone who has ever lived would be mind boggling, but some guy with 15 world titles? Nah, lets add a pool player with 2.
