Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Rozehawk wrote:So I don't think he was ever left off any all-pro teams unfairly, at least not due to his race. Whether his race played a factor in being relegated to second-team all-pro rather than the first team, as well as his omission from the 1920s All-Decade Team, is much more compelling. I do touch on that a bit in the book, so I won't spoil that for you.

It wouldn't surprise me if race were a factor in his 1st vs. 2nd team all pro selections. He has a profile of 3/-/none, but was named a second teamer 3 other times. And none of his 1st team selections were unanimous by organization.

Unless you see him as a mistake, Fritz Pollard is already in and has a profile of 1/-/none. If he's in, Slater certainly should be, too.

Rozehawk wrote:

bachslunch wrote:Looks like someone with a voting bot got to this poll as well. All of a sudden, tons of votes went for Duke Slater. Didn’t know there were any Rock Island Independents or Chicago Cardinals devotees out there — learn something new every day, looks like.

Not sure why you'd assume it's a voting bot.

[snips]

I can't be certain, but this kind of voting pattern seems to happen a lot on the ToF website's polls. Things are moving along more or less as one might expect with incremental inching forward -- and then all of a sudden, hundreds or thousands of votes slam the poll. If it's not a bot, somebody almost surely has a heck of a nasty case of carpal tunnel from all that instantaneous mouse clicking.

bachslunch wrote:

Rozehawk wrote:So I don't think he was ever left off any all-pro teams unfairly, at least not due to his race. Whether his race played a factor in being relegated to second-team all-pro rather than the first team, as well as his omission from the 1920s All-Decade Team, is much more compelling. I do touch on that a bit in the book, so I won't spoil that for you.

It wouldn't surprise me if race were a factor in his 1st vs. 2nd team all pro selections. He has a profile of 3/-/none, but was named a second teamer 3 other times. And none of his 1st team selections were unanimous by organization.

Unless you see him as a mistake, Fritz Pollard is already in and has a profile of 1/-/none. If he's in, Slater certainly should be, too.

I do think a Pollard is a mistake who was elected mostly because of his race, but I certainly think Slater belongs in the HOF.

bachslunch wrote:

Rozehawk wrote:

bachslunch wrote:Looks like someone with a voting bot got to this poll as well. All of a sudden, tons of votes went for Duke Slater. Didn’t know there were any Rock Island Independents or Chicago Cardinals devotees out there — learn something new every day, looks like.

Not sure why you'd assume it's a voting bot.

[snips]

I can't be certain, but this kind of voting pattern seems to happen a lot on the ToF website's polls. Things are moving along more or less as one might expect with incremental inching forward -- and then all of a sudden, hundreds or thousands of votes slam the poll. If it's not a bot, somebody almost surely has a heck of a nasty case of carpal tunnel from all that instantaneous mouse clicking.

Don't be quick to rule out the Iowa Hawkeye fan factor. Just the mere whiff of a Hawkeye slighted brings them out in large number.

bachslunch wrote:

Rozehawk wrote:So I don't think he was ever left off any all-pro teams unfairly, at least not due to his race. Whether his race played a factor in being relegated to second-team all-pro rather than the first team, as well as his omission from the 1920s All-Decade Team, is much more compelling. I do touch on that a bit in the book, so I won't spoil that for you.

It wouldn't surprise me if race were a factor in his 1st vs. 2nd team all pro selections. He has a profile of 3/-/none, but was named a second teamer 3 other times. And none of his 1st team selections were unanimous by organization.

Unless you see him as a mistake, Fritz Pollard is already in and has a profile of 1/-/none. If he's in, Slater certainly should be, too.

At the risk of spoilering TanksandSpartans' reading...

For a long time, the all-pro teams chosen by the Green Bay Press-Gazette were considered the definitive word. That has changed in recent decades, as folks have taken a broader view of all-pro teams chosen by multiple sources from that era. But once upon a time, the Press-Gazette all-pro teams were held in the same high regard as Camp's All-American teams.

Slater was named a second team all-pro by the Press-Gazette FIVE times...and a first team all-pro by that organization ZERO times. (He was also named a third team all-pro by the Press-Gazette in 1930.) So I went back and researched all the Press-Gazette all-pro teams prior to 1945, and no player was named a second team all-pro on more than three occasions except Duke, who was put there five times. (And many of the players who were named second team all-pro three times also had numerous first team all-pro selections in other years.) It's pretty curious that Slater was so consistently one of the four best tackles in the sport - five times in the 1920s, or fully half the decade - but NEVER one of the top two.

But maybe he was just beat out by some great players, right? Well...Slater was denied a place at tackle on the Press-Gazette all-pro first team by Boni Petcoff in 1924, Ed Weir in 1927, and Bob Beattie in 1929. These were the only all-pro selections of these three men's careers. All were in their first or second year in the league when they were named all-pro over the more veteran Slater. All three were out of the NFL within two years. And their selections can't be contributed to team success, as none of their teams had winning records the year they were named all-pro.

Look...I'm just a nerdy white guy behind a keyboard, so I'm not going to channel my inner Whitlock and scream, "RACISM!!" It's just not me. But it's worth noting that when Slater was snubbed for Weir in 1927 and Beattie in 1929, Duke Slater was the only black player in the entire NFL. Wouldn't it have been a little uncomfortable for the Press-Gazette to name the only black player in the entire league as the very best at his position?

So while I try not to attribute such "coincidences" to racism, I do like to point out things I find...curious. Like my favorite Red Grange story, for instance, which I'm sure I've told here before. In conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the NFL in 1959, Grange was asked to pick his personal all-time all-pro team, the 11 best NFL players in history to that point. Grange picked 13 players because, well, because he can (and he didn't pick himself, which is pretty modest, too.) Anyway, Grange picked 12 white players and Duke Slater. The 12 white players are all in the Hall of Fame...Slater is not. I'm not saying, I'm just saying. You know what I'm saying?

The more you really study Duke Slater's career, the more frustrating it is that this guy still can't get the call to Canton, that fans and voters just keep consistently letting people in line ahead of him year after year after year. But that's the process...all you can do is keep raising awareness and hope for the best.

Well said.

I picked the wrong weekend to go out of town for a long weekend or I would have posted earlier.

John T.,

Bob says he used honors, but he didn't get real specific on his methodology i.e. which publications and how he dealt with 1st team v. 2nd team, etc. Also, it was 1985, so he didn't have the benefit of the internet or email to see what else was out there, CC was only about 6 years in, etc. Anyway, here's the link to the article: http://profootballresearchers.com/archi ... 05-233.pdf. No Slater.

Bachslunch,

You only count first team when you do x/y/z? I thought there was someone who counts ANY selection by any organization, have you noticed anyone doing that?

Ralph,

Did you read Pollard's bio? Based just on his short playing career, I would tend to agree, the length/sustained greatness isn't there for a HOFer, but if you consider everything ("Anthracite League", coaching (didn't mean the same thing then, but I still think counts for something (first black HC)), promoting teams where black players could play while they were banned from the NFL, etc.), I think it's a good selection from an underrepresented decade. One negative I will say, while Friedman's "campaigning" probably turned off voters, the stuff he was saying, in my opinion was correct. With Pollard, he may have exaggerated the significance and length of his coaching carer and count me skeptical that saying negative things about Thorpe, Guyon, and Halas, all HOFers, may have actually been a strategy to put his own career on their level.

Neal,

Glad you jumped into the discussion. I appreciate the specifics you added on some of those All-Pro teams. You hit on some of the exact things that bother me with those early All-Pro teams - for whatever reason - it's not like whoever picked those teams was immune to bad selections. On a side note, I met an Iowa football fan just this summer - didn't know much history, thought Slater played in the 40s, but he knew who he was! The voting looked a little fishy to me too - you won't get 20+ members to post in this thread, but Slater gets 200+ votes - hopefully its Iowa people and not bots. Halas may have been on the right track about Latone - not going to college probably hurt his chances of being remembered as a great.

Finally, I'm really enjoying the book - as someone who's been mostly focused on the 10s recently - I especially appreciated the Johnny Barrett reference. I'm up to Chapter 6.

TanksAndSpartans wrote:I picked the wrong weekend to go out of town for a long weekend or I would have posted earlier.

Ralph,

Did you read Pollard's bio? Based just on his short playing career, I would tend to agree, the length/sustained greatness isn't there for a HOFer, but if you consider everything ("Anthracite League", coaching (didn't mean the same thing then, but I still think counts for something (first black HC)), promoting teams where black players could play while they were banned from the NFL, etc.), I think it's a good selection from an underrepresented decade. One negative I will say, while Friedman's "campaigning" probably turned off voters, the stuff he was saying, in my opinion was correct. With Pollard, he may have exaggerated the significance and length of his coaching carer and count me skeptical that saying negative things about Thorpe, Guyon, and Halas, all HOFers, may have actually been a strategy to put his own career on their level.

Yes, I have read the bio and I knew quite a bit about Pollard before reading. (I included a brief biography of Pollard in one of my books, "A Who's Who of Sports Champions.") Nevertheless, I'm not convinced.

I should probably say a couple of things about my views on the HOF. First, I'm definitely a small hall guy. If I were put in charge, I'd probably prune 40 or 50 people from the hall. Second, I take a dim view of the whole contributor and contribution sort of thing. I think one of the worst things the HOF has ever done was to add the contributor slot for nominees. In my view, there are probably only about about a half-dozen people who deserve that honor and they're all in the hall already; the others are merely impostors. Just to cite one example, I'm a Packer fan and I don't think Ron Wolf belongs there.

I'm not all sure that the 1920s is really underrepresented, although I think Slater, Dilweg, and Lewellen are probably HOF-worthy. My view is that the 1920-24 period had only a few really good players and I don't think someone should be in the HOF just because he was one of the best of a relatively bad cohort of players. I'd compare that period in the NFL with the 1870s in baseball, which is also "underrepresented," and rightly so, in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

rhickok1109 wrote: I'm definitely a small hall guy.

My view is that the 1920-24 period had only a few really good players

I'd compare that period in the NFL with the 1870s in baseball, which is also "underrepresented," and rightly so, in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I respect being on the small HOF side - I think I was there too, but I guess I've softened a bit especially when it comes to players so few people have any interest in discussing because they played so long ago.

Saying 1920-24 only had a few really good players I disagree with or possibly just not sure what your basis for comparison is - I've never specifically looked closely at those 5 seasons, but I've looked at the previous 5 and found a decent number of really good players. I suspect if one tried, 20 or so great players could be identified. Among just players with virtually no chance for the HOF or likely HOVG either, Sonny Winters comes to mind - some of his career was spent outside the NFL with the Tanks and their rivals, but I don't think that makes him any less of a great player. Also, Al Mahrt, Rip King, Hank Gillo, Red Dunn, Tex Hamer, Tommy Hughitt, Duke Osborn, Russ Hathaway, Luke Urban, Tillie Voss, Cub Buck and Steamer Horning may have had their best season(s) within 20-24 and players that played 20-24 but may have been past their prime or close to passing it, but still at or close to all-pro/pro bowl level include Norb Sacksteder, Bob Nash, Pete Calac, etc. To me, its more of a lack of interest in the era issue than a sub-par cohort issue. Players like Winters, Latone, Charles Copley, etc. playing for Ironton or some coal mine town rather than the NFL probably doesn't help either. Plus, it wasn't necessarily a great primary means of financial support. Some great players would have played a bit and then moved on to other careers. Maybe Frank Nesser would be a HOFer had he focussed more on football than baseball, but baseball paid better. I don't think you're saying they aren't really good relative to 2018 because by that basis, I've watched video from the 50s, and the same could be said relative to modern athletes, yet the 50s is pretty well represented. I think players should be compared relative to their era. Is it even possible to build a team of 11 or 22 HOFers from pre-1930? (Friedman and Pollard getting in probably help, but I would guess no more than 12? HOFers - let me know if I'm wrong - careers overlapping into the 30s makes it inexact to say pre-1930 I understand). The decades where voters were alive to watch players, in my opinion are represented OK and also in my opinion, that's a bigger driver than the players not actually being good enough. You only have to look towards the top of this thread to see posters saying Wistert before Dilweg because they saw Wistert.

Also, in my opinion, 1920 is an arbitrary starting date - its the pro football HOF not NFL HOF. If 1920 is the starting date, Pollard actually has a better resume than Thorpe. 1920 makes it much easier for people to do internet research and use PFR as their only source (Ralph, obviously this isn't directed towards you, but I've seen posts for example regarding Tony Latone's HOVG canidacy where PFR was used and I think that's too bad because it doesn't give much of a picture for pre-statistical era players but at least they show up in there unlike Charles Follis or Homer Davidson, etc.)

SI has an article called "The First Super Bowl" and I don't think a player from that era - around 1906 will ever get into the HOF although Ted Nesser at least is in the HOVG (https://www.si.com/vault/2012/02/06/106 ... super-bowl). If baseball has any HOFers from the 1870s, it would seem to me they are doing better than football, but their HOF was started in 1936 so that may be the reason. It's also a much more individual sport, so wherever statistics exist, someone will have an interest in analyzing them to determine the best players, something much harder to do for football where the early pro history lacks surviving video, official statistics, and sometimes even newspaper coverage has nothing more than a final score.

TanksAndSpartans wrote:

rhickok1109 wrote: I'm definitely a small hall guy.

My view is that the 1920-24 period had only a few really good players

I'd compare that period in the NFL with the 1870s in baseball, which is also "underrepresented," and rightly so, in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I respect being on the small HOF side - I think I was there too, but I guess I've softened a bit especially when it comes to players so few people have any interest in discussing because they played so long ago.

Saying 1920-24 only had a few really good players I disagree with or possibly just not sure what your basis for comparison is - I've never specifically looked closely at those 5 seasons, but I've looked at the previous 5 and found a decent number of really good players. I suspect if one tried, 20 or so great players could be identified. Sonny Winters comes to mind - some of his time was spent outside the NFL with the Tanks, but I don't think that makes him any less of a great player. I don't think you're saying they aren't really good relative to 2018 because by that basis, I've watched video from the 50s, and the same could be said relative to modern athletes, yet the 50s is pretty well represented. I think players should be compared relative to their era. Is it even possible to build a team of 11 or 22 HOFers from pre-1930? (Friedman and Pollard getting in probably help, but I would guess no more than 12? HOFers - let me know if I'm wrong - careers overlapping into the 30s makes it inexact to say pre-1930 I understand). The decades where voters were alive to watch players, in my opinion are represented OK and also in my opinion, that's a bigger driver than the players not actually being good enough. You only have to look towards the top of this thread to see posters saying Wistert before Dilweg because they saw Wistert.

Also, in my opinion, 1920 is an arbitrary starting date - its the pro football HOF not NFL HOF. If 1920 is the starting date, Pollard actually has a better resume than Thorpe. 1920 makes it much easier for people to do internet research and use PFR as their only source (Ralph, obviously this isn't directed towards you, but I've seen posts for example regarding Tony Latone's HOVG canidacy where PFR was used and I think that's too bad because it doesn't give much of a picture for pre-statistical era players but at least they show up in there unlike Charles Follis or Homer Davidson, etc.)

SI has an article called "The First Super Bowl" and I don't think a player from that era - around 1906 will ever get into the HOF although Ted Nesser at least is in the HOVG (https://www.si.com/vault/2012/02/06/106 ... super-bowl). If baseball has any HOFers from the 1870s, it would seem to me they are doing better than football, but their HOF was started in 1936 so that may be the reason. It's also a much more individual sport, so wherever statistics exist, someone will have an interest in analyzing them to determine the best players.

My assertion about the 1920-24 period didn't come out of the clear blue sky; it was based on a study I did 40 some years ago.

That study, in turn, grew out of a discussion involving Johnny Blood, George Halas, Red Grange, and Ernie Nevers during the 1973 HOF weekend. I was more a listener than a participant in the discussion, though I spoke a few words now and then. John Bankert (I believe he was then the HOF's assistant director) brought the parties together and more or less served as moderator. The chief purpose was to get some suggestions on old-time players who might be HOF-worthy.

In the course of the discussion, Johnny Blood said that the really important impact of Grange's 1925 post-season tour was that it made pro football respectable and therefore more attractive to the best college players. Grange and Halas said there might be some truth in that, but without a great deal of enthusiasm.

Afterward, it occurred to me that it might be possible to test John's idea by looking at whether All-American players were more likely to enter the NFL after Grange's tour. I used the list of consensus All-America teams from the NCAA's annual "Football Records Book" and the Neft-Cohen encyclopedia to put together a chart showing All-American who were in the NFL from 1920 through 1930, along with the number of seasons and numbers of games that each of them played.

The chart showed pretty clearly that more All-American players entered the NFL after 1925 and that they played more seasons and more games, on average, than All-Americans had played before that. And all the numbers were significantly higher.

If you assume that being named to an All-America team really does mark a player as superior to others at the same position, I feel that was a fairly strong indicator that the quality of play in the NFL improved considerably from 1926 on.