blogofmike
Registered User
- Dec 16, 2010
- 2,185
- 933
Agree. The baseball and football media revere in particular the old timers, whether it be Jim Brown or Babe Ruth.
I don't know why the hockey media is uninterested in the history of the game. I think part of the problem is that due to changing season lengths and the ebbs and flows goals per game, it's hard to compare eras using basic stats. So it's easy to say "Gordie Howe never scored 50 goals" or "Bobby Orr played when the league was super watered down!" or "Wayne Gretzky played when goalies didn't know what they were doing!"
NFL Top 100 left out Dwight Stephenson, who is considered by many to be the greatest center who ever lived. http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-video...0-Players-No-101-Dwight-Stephenson?r_src=ramp Think of him as Bobby Orr if no one bothered to record individual ofensive stats. (If you think defensive stats are bad in hockey, try measuring the performance of individual offensive linemen in the NFL.)
Quarterbacks and running backs are remembered just fine, though mostly on reputation (Joe Namath, enemy of stat guys everywhere) and even then they might be forgotten if they're too old. Jim Thorpe, namesake of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, was also omitted from Top 100. The only member of the undefeated 72 Dolphins to make the list spent most of his career with Cleveland. Sid Luckman was quarterback of 4 NFL championship teams, and his 28 TD passes in 10 games in 1943 remained a Chicago Bears record until 1995 when Erik Kramer threw 29 in 16 games, and despite more games and rules designed to encourage passing, Kramer's still the only Bear to beat Luckman. Guess who didn't make the Top 100?
All baseball has is history. But mostly it's Yankees history, with a splish-splash of Boston or Chicago tossed in. Which is not good for guys like Stan Musial.