Class of 2020 will be announced next Wed

Discuss candidates for the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the PFRA's Hall of Very Good
rebelx24
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Nov 05, 2014 10:35 pm

Re: Class of 2020 will be announced next Wed

Post by rebelx24 »

JohnTurney wrote:
rebelx24 wrote:, but like Sprinkle, was borderline at best,

This is HOF?
1949 —1st Tm -Int. News Service
1950— 1st Tm— NY Daily News, Pro Bowl
1951— 2nd Tm— NY Daily News, UPI, Pro Bowl
1952— 2nd Tm — Associated Press, Pro Bowl
1954— 2nd Tm — Associated Press, Pro Bowl
Well, if we’re just going by raw numbers, then it’s 2 first teams and 3 second teams. You could definitely do worse for a career. These things always boil down to whether one weighs honors from different sources equally. That’s been a point of contention around here for a while.

As you said, though, film shows him to be merely good, but not great. That’s not helpful to his case compared to many other DEs, including the two you mentioned. FWIW, I think Brito is worthy and Katcavage probably is, but not 100% certain.
bachslunch
Posts: 824
Joined: Tue Oct 14, 2014 7:09 am

Re: Class of 2020 will be announced next Wed

Post by bachslunch »

JohnTurney wrote:
rebelx24 wrote:, but like Sprinkle, was borderline at best,
This is HOF?
1949 —1st Tm -Int. News Service
1950— 1st Tm— NY Daily News, Pro Bowl
1951— 2nd Tm— NY Daily News, UPI, Pro Bowl
1952— 2nd Tm — Associated Press, Pro Bowl
1954— 2nd Tm — Associated Press, Pro Bowl

And yes, I've seen film. He's good. Brito is better. Katcavage is better.

If all one need to be is good, and 1st team from INS and NY Daily News, a case can be made for
a hundred or more players.

His All-Decade for the 1940s---on honor was in 1949. Best case is he's All-Decade from 1945-55
Yeah, no kidding. Sprinkle's selection was a sheer, utter, shabby disgrace. When George Halas said Sprinkle was the best Bear he'd ever seen, was he high or something?
bachslunch
Posts: 824
Joined: Tue Oct 14, 2014 7:09 am

Re: Class of 2020 will be announced next Wed

Post by bachslunch »

rebelx24 wrote:As you said, though, film shows him to be merely good, but not great. That’s not helpful to his case compared to many other DEs, including the two you mentioned. FWIW, I think Brito is worthy and Katcavage probably is, but not 100% certain.
Yup. For me, Gene Brito is the best post-1940s DE not in Canton. And since they finally saw fit to enshrine Claude Humphrey, I don't think it's particularly close, either. L.C. Greenwood I support, but I think Brito was better.
boknows34
Posts: 43
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2015 2:39 pm

Re: Class of 2020 will be announced next Wed

Post by boknows34 »

SixtiesFan wrote:
Retro Rider wrote:
SixtiesFan wrote:
I remember back in the 70's you would often hear a player described "He will be in the Hall of Fame."

And not get in, or not yet.
I seem to remember George Allen saying that about Pat Fischer.
Thanks I remember George Allen saying Pat Fischer "should be in the Hall of Fame." I think it was in a 80's NFL Films segment.

This was part of Crunchtime, with Fischer one of six big hitters to be featured. I watched that tape hundreds of times in my youth.
sheajets
Posts: 1103
Joined: Sun Oct 12, 2014 12:22 am

Re: Class of 2020 will be announced next Wed

Post by sheajets »

Can't agree with Harold Carmichael. And I liked him as a player. He played in an era where it was a heck of a lot harder to be a receiver than it is now because secondaries were allowed to actually play defense. But he only caught more than 60 passes twice. He was good to very good for a long time. Very rarely great
rebelx24
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Nov 05, 2014 10:35 pm

Re: Class of 2020 will be announced next Wed

Post by rebelx24 »

sheajets wrote:Can't agree with Harold Carmichael. And I liked him as a player. He played in an era where it was a heck of a lot harder to be a receiver than it is now because secondaries were allowed to actually play defense. But he only caught more than 60 passes twice. He was good to very good for a long time. Very rarely great
I’d say Carmichael, overall, was worthy of induction, just not at this point in time. He held his own among the receivers of his era, but there were too many others at the position who were better and deserved induction first.
Andy Piascik
Posts: 155
Joined: Fri Oct 24, 2014 11:32 pm

Re: Class of 2020 will be announced next Wed

Post by Andy Piascik »

Agree with the overall sentiment that it was a lousy job by the Committee, especially given how optimistic many of us were when we initially saw how many old-timers were on the list of 20. Happy about Speedie, Slater, Sabol and Karras. Dillon, too, but if their thinking was that only one Packer should get elected, it should definitely have been Dilweg. For what it's worth regarding Speedie, Sunday was the centennial of his birth so maybe there was some karma at work.

Disagree completely about Carmichael being deserving, now or in the future. Can easily name a lot of guys both from the 10 of the 20 who weren't elected and others who are more deserving. Even among the three receivers from the 1970s in the final 20, I rate Branch and Pearson higher than Carmichael and I'm not wildly enthusiastic about either.

Regarding Sprinkle, the two years he was first team all-pro were not even consensus, let alone unanimous. He made first team on exactly one of the six all-NFL or all-AAFC/NFL teams in 1949 that John Hogrogian lists in his PFRA All-Pros book. Also made just one first team in 1950. Granted, the teams were weighted toward offensive players until more and more of the newspapers and wires services began selecting separate defensive and offensive teams. But even once that happened, he never got first team honors and the second team honors he got were behind guys who are by no means Hall of Famers. Just a terrible choice.

Regarding Hill, I don't believe he's deserving, either, and believe a lot of the Committee felt obligated to vote for the only AFL guy among the 20. Even there, they missed it. Walt Sweeney would have been a better choice. Dave Grayson, too. I don't say either necessarily belongs in the HOF, only that the Committee didn't do a good job on any of the fronts regarding Hill or the AFL.

The election of Covert is a bad joke. As someone posted elsewhere, it goes back to him getting an all-decade spot he in no way deserved, then that was used to give us this. Even though in some ways it's too late, I really think the PFRA should do a thorough critical re-evaluation of all of the all decade teams. John Turney and his mates did a good job of this at his website. Maybe we should just start with those, debate them and then see about popularizing whatever we come up with as an alternative to the "official" ones. And while we do so, we should call into question the value put on all-decade teams to begin with because of the arbitrariness of the numbers. We've talked ad infinitum about how great "tweeners" (guys whose great years are more or less equally divided between two decades) get shafted by this obsession with all decade teams.
Last edited by Andy Piascik on Wed Jan 15, 2020 7:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
BD Sullivan
Posts: 2318
Joined: Mon Oct 13, 2014 1:30 pm

Re: Class of 2020 will be announced next Wed

Post by BD Sullivan »

I mentioned elsewhere that Tagliabue's bust should be inserted in sand to represent his obstruction in dealing with CTE, etc.
User avatar
Bryan
Posts: 2509
Joined: Tue Oct 14, 2014 8:37 am

Re: Class of 2020 will be announced next Wed

Post by Bryan »

boknows34 wrote:This was part of Crunchtime, with Fischer one of six big hitters to be featured. I watched that tape hundreds of times in my youth.
One thing I never understood about that segment is Fred Biletnikoff saying something like "he intimidated me...threatened to break my leg...he was the one guy I played against where you had to know where he was at." How often did Biletnikoff even play against Pat Fischer? Seemed odd to me.
Post Reply