Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

rhickok1109 wrote: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.

Hi Ralph,

Sounds like a really interesting study - thanks for sharing the results. Makes a lot of sense - AA players are actually one of the reasons I chose 1915 as the starting point for my last article and not 1905 or 1910 - there was more money to spend on players because midwestern economies were helped by the increased demand for goods resulting from WWI. Regardless of where the money came from, we saw things like: Jack Cusack hiring Thorpe; Massillon adding so many players for big games, they all didn't even get in, Akron recruited an All-American from Yale named Fritz Pollard which probably doesn't happen in 1910, Hammond put together a backfield consisting of Paddy Driscoll, Johnny Barrett, Milt Ghee, and Guil Falcon, etc., etc. Point being, the managers of pro teams realized they had a shot at bringing in the best players from around the country (All American recognition is a good proxy for this, I agree) and they brought quite a few in displacing some of the local players/sandlotters. I even read a great quote to the effect the death of Harry Turner symbolized the death of the sandlotter.

You picked '25 because of Grange and I picked '15 for the reason above, so we aren't that far apart. I'm also not trying to advocate we add another 25 players to the HOF from this early era - I would guess my number would be more in the 7-12 range, I'm not sure (It'll never happen anyway).

Couple last things - some of the sandlotters, railroaders, boilermakers, miners, small local college players (i.e. Buchtel College, U. of Dayton, etc) were pretty darn good players. I think statistical studies are great for finding macro trends so statements can be made about things on average, but I wouldn't use it as a reason to discount the possibility that there are some great players (and teams for that matter) from this era that haven't gotten the recognition they deserve because they came along too soon.

TanksAndSpartans wrote: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.

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Thanks, I collect these and wanted to add it to the list... interesting, I had the Football Digest one he spoke of plus a few others.

JohnTurney wrote:

TanksAndSpartans wrote: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.

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Thanks, I collect these and wanted to add it to the list... interesting, I had the Football Digest one he spoke of plus a few others.

You're welcome - glad I could help. My favorite one for the 20s is actually the Pro Football Chronicle one - that one just subjectively "feels right" to me.

I enjoyed the top 4-3 Ends list - that was a good read. I actually found out about it because the link was posted on the Talk of Fame site.