Aug 24, 2023 20:06:00 GMT Neo Zeed said:

Man I'm just not sold on Otto Graham being this high. 13,499 yards, 88 touchdowns, 94 interceptions, won 3 NFL titles but also lost 3 his overall numbers in Championship Games were not great. Compared to Sammy Baugh 21,880 passing yards, played almost 100 more games in the NFL, 100 more touchdown passes, consistently led the league in several categories across career that touched 3 decades, 3 pretty different eras(including one where he had to also play defense and punt, which he did at an all pro level). Otto played in 6 NFL title games and won 3 titles Baugh played in 5 NFL title games and won 2 titles.

But when you add the numbers from the AAFL, Graham appeared in 10 consecutive championship games, winning 5 straight, and 7 overall.

I just don't feel like the AAFC should count. That wasn't the NFL and that Browns team had a lot of advantages over the rest of that league, there was no draft and anybody with any talent wanted to play for Paul Brown. This pretty much built up like a Harlem Globetrotters where it's like a fictional league where they just clowned on a bunch of teams made to make them look good. The other 7 teams you had some legitimacy on that 49ers team but the rest of the league was a wash of guys that were even less skilled than the NFL's weaker teams. All of those teams were broke and barely made it through 4 seasons(some of them didn't even make it that far) while the Browns were selling out the 60,000 seat Cleveland Municipal Stadium to give you an idea of the dynamic of the AAFC. Do I think that Browns team could have beat the NFL Champions from 46-47-48-49? Yes, but they didn't. Otto Graham did not win 4 WORLD titles in the AAFC, he was no undisputed champion, he was undisputed champion of the AAFC for 4 years. Got to give them credit they were probably the top team in the sport but I can't take those stats and wins seriously because of how weak the rest of that league was. It wasn't the NFL and it was a way different case than the AFL(which had a draft, within a couple seasons a TV contract that made every team strong and wasn't a 1 team league).

Of course you could argue against that with the fact that the NFL wasn't in much better shape those years from 1946 to 1949, there were quite a few NFL teams struggling and losing money those years, this was shortly after some of the teams either suspended operations or merged together for the War so the NFL wasn't the NFL we came to know as this mighty juggernaut, they were a struggling sports league and the quality of competition was not that great in that 4 year window compared to later(and maybe even earlier) eras in NFL history. Still no draft in the AAFC and the Browns putting together an all star type team while the rest of that league was in as poor shape as it was just doesn't sit well with me to mix those stats and rings in with NFL.

Neo Zeed taking a hardline anti-Otto stance. I don't agree, but I can appreciate the passion.

I too was once an Otto disrespecter but I grew to accept him as #2. Nobi can knock Otto's 4 years in the AAFC. Fine. He still went to 6 NFL Championships in 6 NFL seasons and won 3 of them. Tom Brady never even put up those kind of numbers! Graham was also still Top 5 all time in career QB Rating at the time of publication. And let's not forget Graham led the "minor league" Browns to a 35-10 whoopin' of the reigning NFL Champion Eagles in his very first NFL game.

If not Graham, who? Nobi went to bat for Baugh, but I see Slingin' Sammy threw more INT than TD. Otto Graham did not. Even if you take out his AAFC stats he still has more TD than INT.

Tarkenton has the numbers, but never won the big one. Ditto for Marino, who also had an incomplete career. Bradshaw has the rings, but not the spectacular numbers. Montana* does have both numbers and rings, but let's give him a few more years before we declare him the 2nd greatest QB of all time. Starr & Staubach.....I could actually live with at #2. They're the most comparable to Automatic Otto imo.

*Agree with Nobi that Montana reached God tier after beating the Bengals and GOAT status after whipping my Broncos the next year. People of my generation overwhelmingly considered Montana the GOAT* during the 90s & 00s, though olds here in Baltimore still carried the torch for Johnny U.

*Though as a 49ers hater and natural born contrarian, I went to bat for Elway using "logic" designed to annoy people. It basically boiled down "He took his team to more Super Bowls than any other QB!" with a dash of "He went out on top with back to back wins!" for further infuriation. I mean, both tidbits were technically true! At least until 2011 when I had to give up the charade. Not even sure I believed my own propaganda at first. Pretty sure it started out as a mix of favoritism and contrarianism, but over time I really did work myself into a shoot and was genuinely gutted when Brady made his 5th because it meant I had to give up my Elway=GOAT gimmick in accordance with the parameters of my own logic.

Too bad Nobi is so anti-AAFC because they had a guy named Frankie Albert who put up two monster seasons in the 40s. You could have considered him for a spot on your list.

Aug 25, 2023 0:51:50 GMT Baker said:

Neo Zeed taking a hardline anti-Otto stance. I don't agree, but I can appreciate the passion.

I too was once an Otto disrespecter but I grew to accept him as #2. Nobi can knock Otto's 4 years in the AAFC. Fine. He still went to 6 NFL Championships in 6 NFL seasons and won 3 of them. Tom Brady never even put up those kind of numbers! Graham was also still Top 5 all time in career QB Rating at the time of publication. And let's not forget Graham led the "minor league" Browns to a 35-10 whoopin' of the reigning NFL Champion Eagles in his very first NFL game.

If not Graham, who? Nobi went to bat for Baugh, but I see Slingin' Sammy threw more INT than TD. Otto Graham did not. Even if you take out his AAFC stats he still has more TD than INT.

Tarkenton has the numbers, but never won the big one. Ditto for Marino, who also had an incomplete career. Bradshaw has the rings, but not the spectacular numbers. Montana* does have both numbers and rings, but let's give him a few more years before we declare him the 2nd greatest QB of all time. Starr & Staubach.....I could actually live with at #2. They're the most comparable to Automatic Otto imo.

*Agree with Nobi that Montana reached God tier after beating the Bengals and GOAT status after whipping my Broncos the next year. People of my generation overwhelmingly considered Montana the GOAT* during the 90s & 00s, though olds here in Baltimore still carried the torch for Johnny U.

*Though as a 49ers hater and natural born contrarian, I went to bat for Elway using "logic" designed to annoy people. It basically boiled down "He took his team to more Super Bowls than any other QB!" with a dash of "He went out on top with back to back wins!" for further infuriation. I mean, both tidbits were technically true! At least until 2011 when I had to give up the charade. Not even sure I believed my own propaganda at first. Pretty sure it started out as a mix of favoritism and contrarianism, but over time I really did work myself into a shoot and was genuinely gutted when Brady made his 5th because it meant I had to give up my Elway=GOAT gimmick in accordance with the parameters of my own logic.

Too bad Nobi is so anti-AAFC because they had a guy named Frankie Albert who put up two monster seasons in the 40s. You could have considered him for a spot on your list.

Otto's AAFC stats are pretty dope got to admit, he also played defensive back and had a lot of interceptions so that is very cool. He was definitely super talented and I wouldn't argue that the Browns would have whooped all the NFL Champs from 46 to 49. The most interesting matchup perhaps would have been 1946 what could have been if a first ever World Series of Pro Football was George Halas' Bears(his first year back from War) vs Paul Brown's Browns, Otto Graham at like 23 years old vs Sid Luckman, Clyde Turner vs Lou Groza. Both teams had big strong lines, 230-240 up front to a man, still playing iron man. Would have been a battle. The Bears did have a lot of interceptions against Bob Waterfield who was the next best talent like that in the NFL(on the defending champion Rams, who had moved out of Cleveland to LA that year). Paul Brown though was playing chess compared to nfl coaches at that time were doing.

Looking closer year by year at the level of talent in both leagues and it really wasn't that far apart like I thought, interesting what WWII did to the momentum the sport had going and the bottleneck effect it had on what types of athletes were making it to that level.

I will say there was a big difference in that 1950 Eagles team that Cleveland destroyed and the 1948-1949 team that won the NFL Championship the year before. This would be like a team from another league coming in and beating the 2005 Patriots, 68 Packers, or 96 Cowboys and hanging their hat on that, and then everybody discounting that 2003-2004 Patriots run etc. because of that loss.  The Eagles in 1950 just wasn't the same team after winning back to back titles the 2 prior seasons(playing iron man football in one of the roughest eras).

Also you got to think the Eagles won the 1948 NFL Championship in 8 inches of mud and muck in the middle of a monsoon, then the next year they won it in literally 10 inches of snow in the middle of one of the worst blizzards ever for an NFL game, they won it 7-0 on Steve Van Buren touchdown. One has to wonder how those Browns would have done in those conditions, its like we learned from Madden 92 in this game everything is relative. The 49 Eagles were rock-gut tough in the nastiest conditions, they had some great young talent coming up(Pihos, Bednarick) with a nice mix of seasoned old veterans that still had it. The 49 Eagles were a different animal than what the Browns beat on opening day in 1950, they went 11-1, Steve Van Buren was the best running back pro football had ever seen, they had a killer receiver Pete Pihos, and two very strong iron men up front in Alex Wojciechowicz and Chuck Bednarik. They really had their shit together in 49 led the league with over 30 points a game on offense and #1 defense with 11 points allowed per game.

The Browns in 1950 were coming of age, they were babies in their 20's in the AAFC years and ripened just as they hit the NFL that year, while that Eagles team had their best days behind them by 1950, they had gotten old, Van Buren was pretty much shot, Wojciechowicz Hall of Famer was a major factor on the lines on both offense and defense in their 48-49 titles really played his last real season in 1949 by 1950 he was on the bench/injured for most of his last season in the league. Also the version of Steve Van Buren that Cleveland stopped on opening day 1950 was coming off of 3 seasons where he had over 200 carry’s in 11-12 game seasons, he finished with over 1,100 in 12 games in 49 averaged 4.4 yards a carry. At the time it believe that was NFL record for rushing yards. Stopping 1950 Van Buren would be like the equivalent of stopping 1983 Earl Campbell, it wasn’t the same. Van Buren was pretty well done by 1950 and retired after 51. 

But the Browns thrashing the Eagles on opening day 1950 is a fascinating game for the level of strategy. The Eagles played a 5-4 "Eagle defense". Otto picked them apart with comeback routes and sideline passes. When Philadelphia loosened up to stop it the Browns just went to hammering Motley up the gut, it was a massacre. Giants head coach Steve Owen was in the stands watching and scouting the Browns for their upcoming games that year and he came up with a 6-1-4 defense for them. From what I understand this pretty much invented the edge rushing outside linebackers that would drop back into coverage on passing plays, maybe the birth of the modern day 4-3 defense. It worked and the Giants shut Cleveland out 6-0 in their first meeting, the first time the Browns had ever been shut out. The next game between the Giants/Browns later in the year Owens used a 5-1-5 defense and beat them 17-13. Both teams tied for 1st place that year and had to play a 3rd game to decide the division winner, the Browns won and went on to beat the Rams for the NFL title(in arguably the greatest game ever played). 

Neo Zeed going deep on that Browns vs. Eagles game. Dropping knowledge that puts me to shame. Everything I know about that game honestly comes from the Pro Football's Greatest Moments book I mentioned last week. The author gave all the Great Games snappy titles and I believe this one he called The Greening of the Browns. I still don't know what that means! But I still think it just sounds cool.

Steve Van Buren namedrop. Nice. He was way up there in 100 Greatest Running Backs. Top 10 iirc. We gonna cover that one next or nah?

Chuck Bednarik also got some love in my old football books as the last of the two way standouts. 

I'm gonna have to dig around and pull out ALL my old football books. Still salty over my mom making me get rid of all my Zander Hollander Complete Handbooks whenever a new one came out. I might still have the ones from 96 or 97. but who really cares about them? By then lame real sports had taken a backseat to the greatest sport on God's green earth- Pro Wrestling. 

Aug 26, 2023 0:09:58 GMT Baker said:

Neo Zeed going deep on that Browns vs. Eagles game. Dropping knowledge that puts me to shame. Everything I know about that game honestly comes from the Pro Football's Greatest Moments book I mentioned last week. The author gave all the Great Games snappy titles and I believe this one he called The Greening of the Browns. I still don't know what that means! But I still think it just sounds cool.

Steve Van Buren namedrop. Nice. He was way up there in 100 Greatest Running Backs. Top 10 iirc. We gonna cover that one next or nah?

Chuck Bednarik also got some love in my old football books as the last of the two way standouts. 

I'm gonna have to dig around and pull out ALL my old football books. Still salty over my mom making me get rid of all my Zander Hollander Complete Handbooks whenever a new one came out. I might still have the ones from 96 or 97. but who really cares about them? By then lame real sports had taken a backseat to the greatest sport on God's green earth- Pro Wrestling. 

To be truthful I was mostly summarizing from my NFL 75 Year Anniversary Book which has a beautiful writeup on the x's and o's of the game. There was another quote in there from one of the ex-players saying the problem with the AAFC was the lack of depth on the rosters, even the good teams really had shallow rosters, and the coaches were all stuck in college football, with no pro coaching experience. 

Yes I've been patiently waiting for the top 100 RBS rankings! 

Aug 26, 2023 0:15:39 GMT Neo Zeed said:

Yes I've been patiently waiting for the top 100 RBS rankings! 

Whoops. I had no idea. Assumed you wanted to finish Quarterbacks first. Give me a half hour.

Richard Todd, a bust in the eyes of many minus maybe some nostalgic Jets fans, made a Top 100 QB's list that was released right when Mama Rad and Sperm Donor conceived this very PW shitstain. Not only that, he broke out of the bottom 10...

Hot damn the game has well and truly changed in 35 years. Jake Plummer was better than Richard Todd and in no way does Plummer's Crack makes the Top 100 now.

I don't know, I challenge everybody to open a notepad or notes file on your phone and attempt to list 100 of the greatest QB's of all time one day when you have some time to fuck off. Once you get to a certain point there are some questionable names that start cracking the countdown. There really haven't been 100 great quarterbacks yet, the position evolved out of the 30's mostly and at the time of this book coming out in 1988 are we really first seeing the true modern day quarterbacks taking it to that next level that we have now. And 1988 was the NFL's 68th or 69th season something like that. There's only been 90 years for the position to look at and in that time there have been the great ones and then there are a lot of guys that had 1-3 great years or they won that 1 Super Bowl or guys like Joe Flacco that you don't want to even see on a list like this. I think this proves that the quarterback position in the NFL is one of the hardest positions to be truly great at in any team sport. 

Since I hadn't posted a pic of the book yet in this thread...

When comparing modern day quarterbacks should we adjust for inflated stats resulted from the rules changes? I feel like at a certain point 5,000 yards is the new 4,000, and now that we have 17 games maybe 5,200 is the new 4,000.

Aug 26, 2023 12:45:43 GMT Neo Zeed said:

When comparing modern day quarterbacks should we adjust for inflated stats resulted from the rules changes? I feel like at a certain point 5,000 yards is the new 4,000, and now that we have 17 games maybe 5,200 is the new 4,000.

Agreed. I mentioned earlier how 3000 yards and 20 TD was the mark of a good season to kiddie me. By the early 2010s 4000 and 30 had become the new 3000 and 20. The inflation has only ratcheted up since then. 

Aug 21, 2023 1:35:28 GMT Baker said:

Harry Newman turned the Giants around from 4-6-2 to 11-3. He also led the league in passing and took the Giants to the NFL Championship where they came up just short against the Bears thanks to a tackle by "the legendary Red Grange." Entry ends with "Harry Newman's rookie year, a dream season, came close to having a championship ending." That's it. Nothing beyond his rookie season that ended with a championship game defeat. 

I randomly picked my "What A Game They Played" book off the shelf Sunday I just needed something to read laying by the kiddie pool outside with my little man. It's a pretty amazing book, released in 1984. Judging from context I'm pretty sure it came out prior to the 1984 season, it has a gloomy outlook on the state of the game in modern times like it was on the decline, a feeling that was pretty common around that time in 1982-83. It's crazy to me that there ever was a time when the nation legit thought the NFL was on decline but it was, fresh off of that strike the ruined the 82 season, ratings and attendance were actually on the decline there for that period from 1980 to 83 it didn't start to pick back up until the 84(many say it was the season that saved the league). 

But the book is fascinating, it focuses exclusively on 1920 to 1949 period before unlimited substitution, and it really puts an emphasis on how that alone completely changed the game. Best thing about the book is that it's all just a collection of stories straight from the mouths(or pens, typewriters?) of the men who lived it, most if not all are dead and long gone. There is a really interesting chapter with Harry Newman. He was actually hot shit coming out of college he was big deal passer at Michigan. He entered the NFL the very first year 1933 where they changed the rules to where you could throw the ball anywhere behind the line of scrimmage. I forget how it worked but there were some goofy restrictions on where you could be if you wanted to throw forward, some controversy in that makeshift NFL Championship playoff game in 1932 changed EVERYTHING. The league opening that up was such a major catalyst in the evolution of that position. 

Judging from Newman's entry in the book I don't think Quarterback was even a title for a position yet, they were just called tailbacks back then. 

Newman tore up college football throwing the ball at Michigan in 1932. So the first year the NFL opens up the passing game and the Giants really wanted to capitalize on the rule change, so in order to secure Newman they made a deal with him that he got a percentage of the gate receipts for the games. He leads them to the NFL Championship Game in 1933 where they lose to the Bears. 

All accounts in the book portray that 1933 NFL Championship Game between Chicago/NY to be like one of the hardest hitting battles there has ever been. Newman particularly puts it over as one of the greatest games in NFL history. 

So he leads the NFL in passing in the first season where they actually kept stats, has a phenomenal season, gets injured in 1934. He was on the sidelines for The Sneakers Game but wasn't dressed to play. I think he played through injuries his final season 1935 and talks in the book about how busted up that Giants team was that year, everybody played hurt.

Somewhere in there the Giants started having buyers remorse on that gate receipt deal they made with Newman. They were packing the house so he was getting some huge paydays, they tried to back out of the deal is where his career starts getting fucked up. They have a falling out over money and Newman goes on with a group of other guys to start a rival startup league the AFL(the second to call itself that). So he played in the alternate league until it quickly went out of business and he was done with football after that, started opening up car dealerships and working directly for Ford. 

He concludes that he made the wrong move and seemed to really regret the way things went, he knew he expected too much money in hindsight and I got the impression he had a lot of regrets. Perhaps could have easily been Hall Of Famer in the NFL had he stuck it out. 

Cool info Neo Zeed

I've been slacking on these football threads. Been going down an 80s-90s NBA rabbit hole for the past week or so. Throw in my fanfic project, some Hogan posting, a few busy days in real life, and I just haven't had time for these football threads. Will try to do better!

The author should have kept this series going, would be really interesting to see a top 100 for Receivers, offensive linemen, linebackers, defensive backs, d-line, head coaches. Thinking more about it the top 100 QB's book may be the origins of my fascination with top 100 lists, they are 90% cooler than top 10's. 

Sept 6, 2023 0:33:18 GMT Neo Zeed said:

The author should have kept this series going, would be really interesting to see a top 100 for Receivers, offensive linemen, linebackers, defensive backs, d-line, head coaches. Thinking more about it the top 100 QB's book may be the origins of my fascination with top 100 lists, they are 90% cooler than top 10's. 

Agreed. Would my completely insane "200 Favorite Wrestlers" list have existed without my childhood 100 Greatest books? I think not!

Sept 5, 2023 23:41:44 GMT Neo Zeed said:

it has a gloomy outlook on the state of the game in modern times like it was on the decline, a feeling that was pretty common around that time in 1982-83. It's crazy to me that there ever was a time when the nation legit thought the NFL was on decline but it was, fresh off of that strike the ruined the 82 season, ratings and attendance were actually on the decline there for that period from 1980 to 83 it didn't start to pick back up until the 84(many say it was the season that saved the league). 

This is crazy to me as well. Have to admit you're the first person I ever saw mention this. I've done zero research on the topic but I'll buy it for reasons I'll get to in a minute. That dip in popularity had to be why the USFL picked this time to mount a challenge to the NFL, right?

Only thing I want to ask about is if the NFL was experiencing a drop in popularity then why/how did the first 49ers vs. Bengals Super Bowl draw such a monster rating? To this day I believe it is still the highest rated Super Bowl of all time. That always struck me as odd. Both were midcard at best franchises up to that point while the game itself took place during an alleged slump in overall NFL interest. Neither team was historically significant or had any sort of rabid nationwide fanbase. Nor did they even have that one must see star. A young, still unproven Joe Montana was certainly no Joe Namath in terms of mainstream celebrity. Please explain!

The '82 strike was before my time and I was too young to really understand the importance of the '87 strike. Plus I only missed one week of my beloved football in '87 thanks to the replacement players anyway. Not affected= not gonna care.

But I was around during the '94 baseball strike and remember the nuclear heat it generated. "Buncha pampered prima donnas getting paid millions to play a children's game and still whining it's not enough. Player greed deprived us of the bah gawd World Series! It's downright unAmerican! Fuck 'em. I am DONE with baseball!"- At least 90% of the baseball fans I knew in 1994, young and old alike.*I don’t recall knowing a single pro-strike person tbh but I’ll err on the side of caution with that 90% number.

Poor Bobby Bonilla with his monster contract and mediocre stats had long been the poster boy for out of control contracts. The heat on Bobby Bo only increased during the strike and now I want to make a Sports Talk Radio thread lol..

*Including myself to some extent. Of course most of those disgruntled baseball fans eventually came crawling back. Also including myself. But it did take a little while. And I never did come all the way back for a variety of reasons...

From 86-94 I was a HUGE baseball fan. The Orioles were all we had here in Baltimore so they were THE team I gravitated towards more than all others in all of sports. Plus we were finally contending in '94! So I was SUPER bummed out by The Strike. Plus the O's fired my man Johnny Oates, who had turned the team around as manager, while the team itself disappointed/sucked in '95. So Strike Bitterness + Firing The Cool Manager + Sucking= Lost Interest. It wasn't until September when The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived™ Cal Ripken broke Gehrig's streak that I was 9/10 back. 

Then wrestling became my one true love so I never did get all the way back to 10/10. Not even in 96-97 when the Orioles finally made the playoffs for the first time in my fandom. From 98 to the 04 playoffs I was an extreme casual who barely paid attention. From the 04 playoffs-14 I came back a little more to become more of a diehard casual who popped huge for our Why Not II 2012 team. Since 2015 I have not watched a single inning of baseball. 

Come to think of it the 1999 NBA strike killed my interest for good in that league. To be fair I had been slowly losing interest for a few years (again, blame wrestling) but that strike was the final nail in the coffin. It's like I mentioned in the 2000 ECW thread- once I lose interest in something, or even if it falls out of the regular routine, I almost never come back (baseball being one of the few exceptions). Doubt I've watched 5 NBA games since '99 even if you were to add up all the minutes I glimpsed here and there. 

lol this post went off in all sorts of crazy, unforeseen directions.

TL;DR- Having lived through the 1994 MLB strike I can see how the 1982 NFL strike in particular could have caused a dip in the league's popularity.

Sept 6, 2023 1:38:44 GMT Baker said:

Sept 6, 2023 0:33:18 GMT Neo Zeed said:

The author should have kept this series going, would be really interesting to see a top 100 for Receivers, offensive linemen, linebackers, defensive backs, d-line, head coaches. Thinking more about it the top 100 QB's book may be the origins of my fascination with top 100 lists, they are 90% cooler than top 10's. 

Agreed. Would my completely insane "200 Favorite Wrestlers" list have existed without my childhood 100 Greatest books? I think not!

Sept 5, 2023 23:41:44 GMT Neo Zeed said:

it has a gloomy outlook on the state of the game in modern times like it was on the decline, a feeling that was pretty common around that time in 1982-83. It's crazy to me that there ever was a time when the nation legit thought the NFL was on decline but it was, fresh off of that strike the ruined the 82 season, ratings and attendance were actually on the decline there for that period from 1980 to 83 it didn't start to pick back up until the 84(many say it was the season that saved the league). 

This is crazy to me as well. Have to admit you're the first person I ever saw mention this. I've done zero research on the topic but I'll buy it for reasons I'll get to in a minute. That dip in popularity had to be why the USFL picked this time to mount a challenge to the NFL, right?

Only thing I want to ask about is if the NFL was experiencing a drop in popularity then why/how did the first 49ers vs. Bengals Super Bowl draw such a monster rating? To this day I believe it is still the highest rated Super Bowl of all time. That always struck me as odd. Both were midcard at best franchises up to that point while the game itself took place during an alleged slump in overall NFL interest. Neither team was historically significant or had any sort of rabid nationwide fanbase. Nor did they even have that one must see star. A young, still unproven Joe Montana was certainly no Joe Namath in terms of mainstream celebrity. Please explain!

The '82 strike was before my time and I was too young to really understand the importance of the '87 strike. Plus I only missed one week of my beloved football in '87 thanks to the replacement players anyway. Not affected= not gonna care.

But I was around during the '94 baseball strike and remember how much heat that generated. "Buncha pampered prima donnas getting paid millions to play a children's game and still whining it's not enough. Player greed deprived us of the bah gawd World Series! It's downright unAmerican! Fuck 'em. I am DONE with baseball!"- 90% of the baseball fans I knew in 1994, young and old alike.*

Poor Bobby Bonilla with his mega contract and mediocre stats had long been the poster boy for out of control contracts. The heat on Bobby Bo only increased during the strike (and now I want to make a Sports Talk Radio thread lol).

*Including myself to some extent. Of course most of those disgruntled baseball fans eventually came crawling back. Also including myself. But it did take a little while. And I never did come all the way back for a variety of reasons...

From 86-94 I was a HUGE baseball fan. The Orioles were all we had here in Baltimore so they were THE team I gravitated towards more than all others in all of sports. Plus we were finally contending in '94! So I was SUPER bummed out by The Strike. Plus the O's fired my man Johnny Oates, who had turned the team around as manager, while the team itself disappointed/sucked in '95. So Strike Bitterness + Firing The Cool Manager + Sucking= Lost Interest. It wasn't until September when The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived™ Cal Ripken broke Gehrig's streak that I was 9/10 back. 

Then wrestling became my one true love so I never did get all the way back to 10/10. Not even in 96-97 when the Orioles finally made the playoffs for the first time in my fandom. From 98-05 I was an extreme casual who barely paid attention. From 06-14 I came back a little more to become more of a diehard casual who popped huge for our Why Not II 2012 team. Since 2015 I have not watched a single inning of baseball. 

Come to think of it the 1999 NBA strike killed my interest for good in that league. To be fair I had been slowly losing interest for a few years (again, blame wrestling) but that strike was the final nail in the coffin. It's like I mentioned in the 2000 ECW thread- once I lose interest in something, or even if it falls out of the regular routine, I almost never come back (baseball being one of the few exceptions). Doubt I've watched 5 NBA games since '99 even if you were to add up all the minutes I glimpsed here and there. 

lol this post went off in all sorts of crazy, unforeseen directions.

TL;DR- Having lived through the 1994 MLB strike I can see how the 1982 NFL strike in particular could have caused a dip in the league's popularity.

Love it, I went down the 90's NBA trip a few weeks back it may be time for a thread. 

It was definitely a thing. I love that you countered with those ratings for Super Bowl XVI I never realized that was such a high number. I'm going to attribute it to my neilson ratings are way innacurate most of the time conspiracy theory. The more time passes by the more I believe there was no way in hell for anybody to measure what everybody was watching on their TV. Again, I have NEVER seen a Neilson box in 38 years of my life. 

I don't have my record and fact book handy but I do remember seeing(in my research for AFL fan fiction) that the attendance overall and average per game did take a dip those years. But they were still crazy good numbers, so this may have been something the media ran with, I know there were a few magazine covers with the deflated football "The NFL IS DYING!". You hit the nail with the USFL they really marketed off of that decline as their selling point it was mentioned in the Small Potatoes doc(30 for 30, the best episode, they took out Everybody Wants To Rule The World though and replaced it with generic bullshit fuck an a). 

The Timeline episode that focuses on 1984 really sold it too, like the 84 season with Marino and Dickerson and Monk all the records being broken by the new generation guys really was looked at as the season that saved football. I've also heard people talk about the 85 Bears in that context like they brought interest back in the game because they were so bad ass. We're talking about a period here before I was born so it's interesting. The NFL has only ruled the world during my entire existence. 

The 1982 strike seems really damaging, think about that almost half a season just didn't happen, we're just going with a  big goofy tournament for a playoffs, what a mess. I guess that strike would be the main culprit but also seemed like a sharp turnover from 1979 to 1980, so many legends from the 70's were gone or were too old, the whole league shifted in 1980(similar to the 99 season, always interested in those years where the whole dynamic of the league changed). 

But something I noticed was that even though numbers and attendance dropped for 1983, tv ratings too maybe, that was actually a pretty wild crazy season with a lot of action, some of the best games of NFL history happened that year, quarterbacks were throwing for 4,000 like it was nothing, 90 point shootouts, the NFL was actually pretty bad ass that year. 

Sept 6, 2023 2:30:22 GMT Neo Zeed said:

Love it, I went down the 90's NBA trip a few weeks back it may be time for a thread. 

I'm going to attribute it to my neilson ratings are way innacurate most of the time conspiracy theory. The more time passes by the more I believe there was no way in hell for anybody to measure what everybody was watching on their TV. Again, I have NEVER seen a Neilson box in 38 years of my life. 

I'd be all over a 90s NBA thread.

The Nielsen method always struck me as suspicious. They cull these all important ratings from such a small sample size. My 90s wrestling fan cousin actually was a part of their program about a decade ago. He's the only person I've ever known to participate. Might text him tomorrow to get the full scoop. Not gonna bother now since he's an early to bed type with 3 young daughters.

My biggest Nielsen Ratings conspiracy theory is Ted Turner found a way to rig it so Nitro beat Raw for 83 straight weeks. I genuinely believed this! Just could not wrap my head around WCW beating WWF. MAYBE in 96 but certainly not in 97 when Bret vs. Austin got hot. 

Sept 7, 2023 1:32:09 GMT Baker said:

Sept 6, 2023 2:30:22 GMT Neo Zeed said:

Love it, I went down the 90's NBA trip a few weeks back it may be time for a thread. 

I'm going to attribute it to my neilson ratings are way innacurate most of the time conspiracy theory. The more time passes by the more I believe there was no way in hell for anybody to measure what everybody was watching on their TV. Again, I have NEVER seen a Neilson box in 38 years of my life. 

I'd be all over a 90s NBA thread.

The Nielsen method always struck me as suspicious. They cull these all important ratings from such a small sample size. My 90s wrestling fan cousin actually was a part of their program about a decade ago. He's the only person I've ever known to participate. Might text him tomorrow to get the full scoop. Not gonna bother now since he's an early to bed type with 3 young daughters.

My biggest Nielsen Ratings conspiracy theory is Ted Turner found a way to rig it so Nitro beat Raw for 83 straight weeks. I genuinely believed this! Just could not wrap my head around WCW beating WWF. MAYBE in 96 but certainly not in 97 when Bret vs. Austin got hot. 

Unfortunately my 90's NBA phase has passed. I discovered there is a Basketball reference like football, interesting digging through the past standings and stats of a league I really know nothing about. I even got to the point where I was watching old playoff series on youtube for a little bit. I got interested in the 93 Spurs didn't know Rodman played there with David Robinson(and started dying his hair because of Snipes in Demolition Man, love it). I was surprised how little from the 90's NBA is on Youtube, way way less than NFL from that era. I guess with so many games people just weren't taping the stuff? 

I got way into the 96 playoffs, that was probably the most interested I ever was in the sport. Really fell for the Sonics to the point where I was even rooting for them over the Rockets the next year's playoff series. 

I'm with you on that Nielson ratings MNW theory, definitely feel like that is true. Really mean to tell me that many more people were exclusively only watching Nitro without at least switching over to see Raw or watching both at the same time simultaneously, they can't measure that, and with the way it works seems ripe to be rigged easily when millions in advertising dollars are at stake I can buy that for sure.  

Aww man. That's too bad. I've practically lived at Basketball Reference for the past week or so. Well, there and NBA vids on Youtube.

Eww! I was a Sonics hater. If only because my Nielsen Box cousin and best friend Rick were super Sonics fans and I always had to be That Guy. Either that or the Sonics knocked one of my teams out of the playoffs one year. For I was a serious grudge holder in those days. About the only time I rooted for the Sonics during their Kemp/Payton/Schrempf heyday was in the Finals against the stupid Bulls where Seattle suddenly became the lesser of two evils.

I still might do some NBA storytime spam tomorrow. But just one for tonight...

I only went to one NBA game- our "local" team the Washington Bullets against the Suns. Phoenix was my favorite team for a little while in between the Bad Boy Pistons & mid 90s Knicks (who were basically Bad Boys 2.0 as I was ever the heel fan). I even had a Suns Starter jacket! It was a lighter spring/fall one rather than the more iconic winter puffy coat though. Anyway, I won a contest at school to get these tix. Think it was a summer reading deal. They gave you 3 or 4 options to choose from and the Suns were the most appealing of those choices.

My dad wasn't a basketball fan to begin with. Plus it was a decent drive to the Bullets arena outside of DC and he had to get up really early for work. So I ended up going with my video game buddy Jensen who lived across the street (he was a big Genesis guy), his stepfather who drove us, and I think my brother. Date was December 6 or 7, 1994.

After all that hype the game gets cancelled! See, the Bullets shared their arena with the NHL's Washington Capitals and the ice underneath the floorboards was seeping through. It was the first cancelled NBA game in years. They offered tickets to a makeup game and I don't remember why I never took that offer. Just know that I didn't. So, yeah, the ONE NBA game I ever went to ended up getting cancelled. Just my luck.

Here's the story www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1994/12/07/bullets-suns-game-slips-because-of-ice/e26c2891-35cd-46ff-9e74-70e01e53dc12/

Sept 7, 2023 3:23:30 GMT Baker said:

Aww man. That's too bad. I've practically lived at Basketball Reference for the past week or so. Well, there and NBA vids on Youtube.

Eww! I was a Sonics hater. If only because my Nielsen Box cousin and best friend Rick were super Sonics fans and I always had to be That Guy. Either that or the Sonics knocked one of my teams out of the playoffs one year. For I was a serious grudge holder in those days. About the only time I rooted for the Sonics during their Kemp/Payton/Schrempf heyday was in the Finals against the stupid Bulls where Seattle suddenly became the lesser of two evils.

I still might do some NBA storytime spam tomorrow. But just one for tonight...

I only went to one NBA game- our "local" team the Washington Bullets against the Suns. Phoenix was my favorite team for a little while in between the Bad Boy Pistons & mid 90s Knicks (who were basically Bad Boys 2.0 as I was ever the heel fan). I even had a Suns Starter jacket! It was a lighter spring/fall one rather than the more iconic winter puffy coat though. Anyway, I won a contest at school to get these tix. Think it was a summer reading deal. They gave you 3 or 4 options to choose from and the Suns were the most appealing of those choices.

My dad wasn't a basketball fan to begin with. Plus it was a decent drive to the Bullets arena outside of DC and he had to get up really early for work. So I ended up going with my video game buddy Jensen who lived across the street (he was a big Genesis guy), his stepfather who drove us, and I think my brother. Date was December 6 or 7, 1994.

After all that hype the game gets cancelled! See, the Bullets shared their arena with the NHL's Washington Capitals and the ice underneath the floorboards was seeping through. It was the first cancelled NBA game in years. They offered tickets to a makeup game and I don't remember why I never took that offer. Just know that I didn't. So, yeah, the ONE NBA game I ever went to ended up getting cancelled. Just my luck.

Here's the story www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1994/12/07/bullets-suns-game-slips-because-of-ice/e26c2891-35cd-46ff-9e74-70e01e53dc12/

I even went to the retro game shop and dug around until I found NBA Live 99 for the 64 that’s how thirsty I got. I have 97 and 98 for the Saturn but they have aged really bad, 97 is nearly unplayable(the Genesis ports are a good time, way better). Supposedly the strike made it to where the 99 game has identical rosters from the 98 game, which was supposedly the last year before all the players jumped around and the league lost its 90’s vibe. It is a damn fine basketball game, I wanted to play through a season but my memory cards are shot