Joe Montana was the sports icon who defined the city of San Francisco.

The surprise, then, was that Ronnie Lott breezed through as well, which we'll get to in a minute.

Montana's inclusion lacked any of the suspense one normally likes to see on a Hall of Fame Saturday. The arguments that usually come with an election never materialized with the San Francisco 49ers' signature player. The best you can do for a Montana debate is whether he is better or worse than Johnny Unitas, and how much better he might have been than Otto Graham.

Montana's four Super Bowl rings explain all you really need to know for Hall of Fame purposes. His skill as the maestro and personification of Bill Walsh's offensive theories make Montana's plaque all the shinier.

Finally, though, he is the single brightest icon in San Francisco sports history -- he is to his town what DiMaggio is to New York, Unitas to Baltimore, the Richards to Montreal. He is cultural, not just athletic. That explains pretty much all you need to know.

His numbers? Well, sort of irrelevant, if you must know the truth. His name is sufficient. The placid expression even in the most stressful moments ... the fluid arm even in full flight ... the arms upraised without embellishment after each of his 273 touchdowns. Without him, it can fairly be said, San Francisco wouldn't have had its own decade, and maybe not even its own year.

As for Lott, he seemed like an easy enough choice, but unlike Montana, for whom discussion was unnecessary, the brilliant safety could have gotten caught in the politics of the Hall of Fame selectors' room. Is it excessive to take two guys from the same team? Aren't there better safeties not yet in, or worse safeties who already have their plaques? Shouldn't there be more Steelers from the '70s? Aren't there a few more Packers from the '60s we can squeeze in, like Ron Kostelnik, or Tom Brown?

The voters, though, usually do the right thing for the right reasons, and Lott was the right thing for the right reason for just about as long as Montana. He, too, has the four rings, and was the superstar on a defense that had a lot of good players but no other icons. In fact, his legend was made when he had the tip of an injured finger removed so he could keep playing, the football equivalent of Bobby Baun scoring the winning goal in a Stanley Cup final on a broken leg.

Like Montana, Lott did not finish his career where it began, a testament to the essentially cruel nature of the business. He played two serviceable years in Los Angeles with the Raiders after his fourth Super Bowl title, and two utterly forgettable ones with the Jets in New York. Like Montana, he looked out of place in a different uniform -- even more so because Montana at least got to wear Kansas City Chiefs red on his way out, while Lott finished in that bilious Jets green.

But as a 49er, he defined a largely underrated defense with his reckless style, his punishing hits and his sideline-to-sideline vision. He intercepted 63 passes in his career, but one wonders why that number was so high when so many opposing quarterbacks understood the folly of attacking Lott directly.

Like Montana, he was a member of the NFL's 75th Anniversary all-time team, the Super Bowl Silver Anniversary team, and the All-Decade team of the '80s. Like Montana, he is revered in San Francisco as a pure practitioner of a very violent art, lending dignity to what is by its nature a very undignified job.

So maybe Lott shouldn't have been a surprise inductee, either. His credentials are, after all, impeccable. Still, to have two men enter the Hall without any of the enjoyable give-and-take that should mark any such momentous decision ... well, it just sort of sucks the fun out of the whole exercise.

Let's hope at least someone tried to start an argument, if only to see the looks on the other voters' faces.

Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Examiner is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.