The idea of this award was prompted by Greg Sullivan's desire to see us recognize other disciplines, not just One Pocket. The way we came up with it, to keep it as consistent as possible with the original concept of a One Pocket Hall of Fame, was to keep our focus on the action side of pool, but broaden the scope beyond One Pocket itself. This was how Bank Pool was originally added as its own category, too, then the Lifetime Pool in Action honor. We did conceive the award as something to try to honor the living initially anyway -- the whole point being to recognize players in the action side of pool, most of whom were going to be overlooked by the BCA HOF because they fell too much in the action side of the game.
Since the beginning of Pool/Billiards time, the cue games have always had two faces -- the clean gentleman's "wholesome recreation" and establishment tournaments characterized by the BCA objectives (and before that, Brunswick's objectives), and the gambling, hustling, action side of the game. Certain games, like One Pocket, Banks (and for many years, 9-ball) originated essentially as gambling games, so it makes sense that they would be under-represented in the BCA HOF (obviously, 9-ball became accepted as an establishment game too, but this did not happen until the 60's (George Jansco, again). Likewise, black players were barred for years from tournaments, so their pool culture always revolved around gambling, until the color barrier was broken in the early 60's (again, George Jansco). The BCA HOF obviously represents one side of pool, we represent the other. There is no specific age requirement for this award, but there is a strong interest in recognizing players while they are still living -- but not exclusively old. JAM, Keith certainly epitomizes the kind of player we would like to recognize.