First of all, a big round of applause to all of you that nominated anyone for inclusion in the first year of the Buc ‘Em Ring of Honor. We received nominations for 47 different individuals (although we had to throw Ronde Barber out as he is still an active Buccaneer). And 21 individuals received multiple nominations. From there, the four of us went through a number of different ideas of how to narrow it down, before coming up with the ultimate decision. Here’s a little background of why we decided to go with the finalists you see below…

To start, we decided 47 was just too many. While there were some great nominations and no one is undeserving, we decided to eliminate anyone who only received one nomination. Why? Well because most of them would probably not end up getting a single vote when we got to the poll. We definitely appreciate the nominations, but we didn’t want a list of that many people to vote for when realistically a much smaller number would be getting probably 99% of the votes.

We then looked at the 21 who received multiple nominations, but again decided that was too much. Although it’s great that a couple of people thought Mark Carrier was worth a nomination, is he really going to get inducted over someone like Lee Roy Selmon or Warren Sapp? No, he’s not.

So we went back and forth on the final number before deciding on 10. 10 is a nice number. It gives each person a good chance to get a number of votes. And it had a clean break (each of the finalists received 6 or more nominations). So without further adieu, we present to you the Buc ‘Em Ring of Honor Finalists:

Lee Roy Selmon
Ricky Bell
Doug Williams
James Wilder
Hardy Nickerson
John Lynch
Mike Alstott
Derrick Brooks
Warren Sapp
Tony Dungy

Over the next few weeks, you will be provided with bios of each of the finalists and sometime after that the voting will begin. We plan on inducting the first two members of the Ring of Honor before the 2009 season begins. But until then, enjoy a video of the finalists put together by niko521bucs.