Right fucking on! I was about to start posting Caddy Shack gifs, my fucking man

1. Jim Brown	21. Archie Griffin	41. George Rogers	61. William Andrews	81. Joe Morris
2. Walter Payton	22. Leroy Kelly	42. Bill Dudley	62. Ken Strong	82. Paul Hornung
3. Red Grange	23. Willie Heston	43. Floyd Little	63. George Gipp	83. Pete Dawkins
4. Jim Thorpe	24. Charlie Trippi	44. Tuffy Leemans	64. Calvin Hill	84. Wilbert Montgomery
5. OJ Simpson	25. Curt Warner	45. Bo Jackson	65. Gerald Riggs	85. Abner Haynes
6. Gale Sayers	26. Cliff Battles	46. John David Crow	66. Dutch Clark	86. Tony Canadeo
7. Steve Van Buren	27. Billy Sims	47. Billy Cannon	67. Jim Nance	87. Charles White
8. Bronko Nagurski	28. Marcus Allen	48. Alan Ameche	68. Larry Brown	88. John Cappelletti
9. Eric Dickerson	29. Franco Harris	49. Don Perkins	69. Biggie Goldberg	89. Charley Brinkley
10. Ernie Nevers	30. Jim Taylor	50. Snake Ames	70. Chuck Muncie	90. Elmer Oliphant
11. Tony Dorsett	31. Jay Berwanger	51. Doak Walker	71. Mike Rozier	91. WHIZZER WHITE
12. Earl Campbell	32. Fritz Pollard	52. Ron Johnson	72. Frank Gifford	92. Joe Crowley
13. Hugh McIlhenny	33. John Riggins	53. Ed Marinaro	73. Lawrence McCutcheon	93. Rick Bellino
14. Herschel Walker	34. Ollie Matson	54. Chuck Foreman	74. Kenny Washington	94. Rick Casares
15. Joe Perry	35. Tom Harmon	55. Ernie Davis	75. Chic Harley	95. Beattie Feathers
16. Larry Csonka	36. John Kimbrough	56. Dick Kazmaier	76. Roger Craig	96. Frank Sinkwich
17. Doc Blanchard	37. Choo-Choo Justice	57. Eddie Mahan	77. Clarke Hinkle	97. Buddy Young
18. George McAfee	38. Ted Coy	58. Lydell Mitchell	78. Ottis Anderson	98. Mark van Eeghen
19. Marion Motley	39. Hopalong Cassidy	59. Paddy Driscoll	79. John Henry Johnson	99. Rocky Bleier
20. Glenn Davis	40. Lenny Moore	60. Mike Garrett	80. Freeman McNeil	100. Brian Piccolo

Quickie Thoughts...

Nailed it with 1-2.

Red Grange had HYPE. Do yourself a favor and read some sportswriters from the 1920s. Those dudes were gifted. They just had a way with words. Feel like guys such as Grange and Bay Bruce owe at least a little bit of their success to the writers who made them seem like these mythical, godlike figures.

This book is much more college-focused than Quarterbacks. Some of these guys never even played in the NFL.

Dickerson could be a few spots higher. Kiddie me loved some Eric Dickerson. I had his Starting Lineup figure!

Fun Fact #1: Ernie Nevers is the only player to have a team named after him.

Herschel Walker is way too high. Interesting to note writer Bob Carroll put his USFL run over huge, and Walker did lead the league in rushing in '88, making him the flavor of the month, but, yeah, still too high.

Doc Blanchard & Best Glenn Davis were cool to kiddie me just because they were dubbed "Mr. Inside" and "Mr. Outside." No, I don't remember which was which.

George McAfee is the first name I'm blanking on. Who is this jabroni to be all the way up at #18?

Archie Griffin is way too high at #21. 2x Heisman trophy winner is great! But he was a bust in the NFL. Bump him down 50 spots.

Curt with a C Warner was a solid back with the Seahawks but still feels way too high at #25. Dude is best known as the Other C/Kurt Warner!

Franco Harris, Jim Taylor, and Riggins are way too low. Franco should be Top 10 for sure.

Lenny Moore feels low as well.

Choo-Choo Justice, Hopalong Cassidy, Snake Ames and the immortal Whizzer White* have to be charter members of the All Time Great Name Team.

*Whizzer White would forever be immortalized in a bike stunt I devised which bore his name. Riding around Baltimore with the boys in the late 80s-1990 busting out some Whizzer White's in alleys on our way to the Seven Grass Hills*....I was living the best life.

*The "Seven Grass Hills" were hills in name only. I'm not sure they were five feet high. I'm not even sure there were seven of them! Only thing lamer than these "hills" was the Whizzer White bike trick itself. You basically went up a tiny, tiny ramp and then you came back down again. That's it. That's the Whizzer White. Still a great name though!

Where were we.....oh yeah. Snake Ames had a writeup as great as his name iirc.

Check out Tecmo Super Bowl legend Bo Jackson sitting pretty at #45. 

Billy Cannon, Alan Ameche, Chuck Foreman, and Lydell Mitchell all feel too low.

Fun Fact #2: You know that saying "win one for the Gipper?" Of course you do. Well, the Gipper in question is #63 George Gipp.

100 Greatest Quarterback entries Dutch Clark & Paddy Driscoll pull double duty by making 100 Greatest Running Backs as well. 

Gerald Riggs I always liked. Had at least one monster year with the Falcons and became a great short yardage specialist for the early 90s Redskins.

Add Biggie Goldberg to the Great Name Squad.

Roger Craig is WAAAAAAY too low. Bump him up 50 spots.

Houston Oiler Mike Rozier is another guy I always liked.

Ditto for Ottis Anderson, who is also much too low even taking into account his resurgence with the Giants hadn't happened yet.

Little Joe Morris was yet another Baker Guy.

Abner Haynes sighting! OK, so that Pro Football's Greatest Moments book titled a game "Abner's Boner" based on....Abner's boner. Between Abner's Boner in football and Merkle's Boner in baseball I thought Boner=Mistake. This would lead to A LOT of confusion when chatting with my more worldly colleagues. Look, kiddie Baker could tell you everything you ever wanted to know about sports and sports entertainment, astronomy, dinosaurs, and The Weird, but I didn't really get.....society.

First 1000 yard rusher Beattie Feathers averaged 8.4 yards per carry* during his monster season. That's insane! 
*Editor's Note: I actually thought it was 9.9. Good thing I checked before spreading FAKE NEWS.

Jim Crowley was one of Notre Dame's legendary Four Horsemen. Score another win for 1920s sportswriters- Grantland Rice in this case iirc. 

Mark van Eeghen feels like he should be higher. Didn't he have some big years with those great Raiders teams of the 70s?

*That's enough for now

Ricky Bell is a notable omission. He was kind of a poor man's Billy Sims with the early Buccaneers. Big star at USC. Had a 1000 yard season in Tampa. Then tragically succumbed to disease. Been a fan of his ever since watching a made for tv movie starring the younger Van Peebles in the late 80s-early 90s.

James Wilder is another notable omission. Why did Bob Carroll hate the Bucs?

Franco should’ve been in the Top 10 at least.

Paraphrasing for clarity sake- "Against Michigan Grange scored four touchdowns on runs of 95, 67, 56, and 44 yards....in the first 12 minutes."

According to a non-book source that game saw him run for 402 yards on 21 carries, score 5 touchdowns, and throw for another on one of his six passes. 

Instant reaction: Eric Dickerson is criminally low in that top 10. I'm gonna assume that's part and parcel of Eric being Eric and ruffling many a media feather but also being the only star on weak Rams and especially Colts squads that never found success.

Dickerson is still so underrated to this day. Dunno if he'd be Top 10 now but a lot of fans don't even know his name anymore.

Also, Choo-Choo Justice sounds like an OG East vs. West All-Star from Key & Peele. I wonder if he played for Chattanooga State or Our Lady of Internal Hatred....

Oh. It was North Carolina. Well that's lame.

www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/rush_yds_career_1988.htm

^List of all time NFL rushing leaders circa 1988 in case any of you want to get doubly annoyed by this list.

Aug 26, 2023 4:07:35 GMT Baker said:

www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/rush_yds_career_1988.htm

^List of all time NFL rushing leaders circa 1988 in case any of you want to get doubly annoyed by this list.

Whoa didn't know you could do that there, very cool. I did career passing yards up through 1949 and Otto Graham was already second place behind Sammy Baugh just on his 4 AAFC seasons alone, interesting stuff. 

Agree with rad on Dickerson being a few spots too low. He was the Marino of running backs when it came to rewriting the record books during the 80s. His first few years were next level. I don't think his prickly relationship with the media had any impact on author Bob Carroll though. Many of his ranking choices are odd!

Neo Zeed that career leader trick I found at Pro Football Reference has been a godsend. Accidentally discovered it last week while looking to confirm or deny a Dave Krieg factoid I "remembered." I turned out to be wrong.

Read up on forgotten man George McAfee to get a refresher. Turns out he was a game breaking speedster with the 40s Bears. Think the Barry Sanders of his day. To this day he holds some return records. Nicknamed "One Play." Not gonna lie. If the book had billed him as One Play McAfee rather than George there's no way I would have forgotten him.

Dickerson was definitely the best running back of the 80's, while OJ was the best of the 70's(a lot would say he was the best all around player of that whole decade period). With Dickerson all I ever read about was him bitching about getting paid, holding out, seems like he caused as much trouble for his teams as anything else and was one of the bigger divas of those days.

Gale and Grange I feel are too high. Grange is like the Joe Namath of running backs, him and Ernie Nevers really didn't have much of a career but they were such big draws at such a weird time for pro football when it was essentially looked at like pro wrestling(back then maybe with even less respect than wrestling). Grange and Nevers brought in those big huge box office gates that essentially built the NFL into what it is. So it's like how do you really measure their careers when they didn't really produce much for careers but the league wouldn't have even existed through the decades without them. All of this history really owes itself to those guys.

With Gale man what a talent cut short to injuries. The footage of him in the 1966-67 films that I have is really the biggest case of "poetry in motion" I can think of. Definitely something very different about the way he would run and evade tackles and slip through openings, once ever talent. But still just not enough of a career to put over some of these guys he's over.

Jim Thorpe I'm actually ok with this ranking and find it to be pretty awesome and surprising. Love it. Especially now that we know OJ got away with double murder with a knife(one of them being a woman). Maybe the writer knew all along he was a creep. For 1989 I would expect OJ to be in the top 3, maybe even #1.

I've always been pretty in love with Steve Van Buren even since I dug into that era years ago. Think about those 3 years when he was dominating, playing without a facemask, running into the line of scrimmage against a league that knows they need to take you out to win. His numbers were just phenomenal for that era for only playing 11 and 12 game seasons, knowing damn well teams were trying to kayo him in those games. To me the clincher for Van Buren was the 2 NFL titles they won largely on his back in 2 of the worst weather games ever for NFL Championship/Super Bowl. Also for how long some of his marks stood, he was a bad ass man that just time washed away and forgot about. Time keeps marching on and generations just fade out.

Steve Van Buren was pretty much wore out after 6 years, 1944 to 1949, his numbers dropped to those of mortal rb's in 1950 he still ran the ball more than anybody in the NFL that year 188 carries but average dropped to 3.3 yards per carry, 629 yards in 10 games that year only 4 touchdowns the fewest he ever had in a season, by that point who knows how many undiagnosed concussions the guy had. Think about it though the Eagles still leaned on him he touched the football more than anybody else in the league still, I think he actually missed few games and still led the NFL in carries.

Look at his 1945 stats his sophomore season, Bo Jackson numbers, 10 games 832 yards averaged 5.8 yards per carry 17 total touchdowns(15 rushing).

The next seasons his numbers took a drop in 1946 but the next year after that Philly leaned on him for over 200 carries for 3 years in a row, led the NFL in carries all 3 seasons including 260+ in 12 games in 1949 the year they went 11-1 and won the title for the second year in a row. Thats the season he set the single season rushing yards mark with 1,146 and 11 touchdowns. The 1,146 in 12 games remained the single season record for a while even after they went to 14 game seasons if I'm not mistaken. The 17 rushing touchdowns too. Plus the 2 NFL titles one in the blizzard the other in the monsoon where he won both for the Eagles almost single handedly. I got to say I think Steve Van Buren is hands down the best running back of the first 45-50 years of NFL history. That's almost half the league's existence. He should be higher. 

Aug 26, 2023 1:20:18 GMT Baker said:

Red Grange had HYPE. Do yourself a favor and read some sportswriters from the 1920s. Those dudes were gifted. They just had a way with words. Feel like guys such as Grange and Bay Bruce owe at least a little bit of their success to the writers who made them seem like these mythical, godlike figures.

First 1000 yard rusher Beattie Feathers averaged 8.4 yards per carry* during his monster season. That's insane! 
*Editor's Note: I actually thought it was 9.9. Good thing I checked before spreading FAKE NEWS.

That was the Bears unbelievable 1934 season when they went 13-0. It was the NFL's version of Murderers Row 1927 Yankees you had Grange, Feathers running for over 1,000 which was fucking unreal for that time, they scored something really crazy that year like 280 points of offense. Grange, Nagurski, Feathers, Bill Hewitt Hall Of Famer, Link Lyman Hall Of Famer from the Canton Bulldogs three-peat of the 20's, Bernie Masterson at QB, Luke Johnsos, Walt Keisling, and George Musso, they lost the Sneakers Game to the Giants on ice in the Championship. Had they won that easily would be the greatest team in NFL history(would have been their 3rd NFL title in a row).

Ran in to Dickerson at a honkytonk bar in Katy Texas about 10 years ago. I thought he'd be bigger.

Aug 27, 2023 5:47:32 GMT Neo Zeed said:

Grange and Ernie Nevers really didn't have much of a career but they were such big draws at such a weird time for pro football when it was essentially looked at like pro wrestling(back then maybe with even less respect than wrestling). Grange and Nevers brought in those big huge box office gates that essentially built the NFL into what it is. So it's like how do you really measure their careers when they didn't really produce much for careers but the league wouldn't have even existed through the decades without them. All of this history really owes itself to those guys.

Agreed. I'll confess to being a Red Grange mark going all the way back to childhood. The league was built on his shoulders. Always found it interesting how reviled pro football was before Grange. You weren't kidding with the pro wrestling comparison. He got so much heat for turning pro. To make matters worse, he had an agent!

Fun Fact: There's a character in my fanfic project loosely based on Grange's agent. They share the same initials! The other part of his name comes from an old lacrosse coach. Whether 1992 or 2023 you could on me to slip in those Red Grange references. 

You could argue Grange is still the biggest one man draw in league history. Dude did barnstorming tours as "Red Grange and the Chicago Bears." And those tours were intense. Grange signed with Chicago on 11/22/25. He debuted on the 26th. The Bears then went on to play 8 games from December 2-13. Then they followed that up by playing more 9 games just in the month of January including trips to the Deep South (which had no pro team) and the West Coast which also had no pro teams.  

And here's an interesting blurb I found at this site explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-30E

Although the first professional football game had been played thirty-three years before, the new National Football League was still in its infancy. Compared to the nobility of its collegiate cousin–second only to baseball in its place in the American heart–professional football was deemed unpure, unsporting, and unseemly, nothing more than a refuge for brawny ruffians. Grange would change that image, but not without another razzle-dazzle effort.



His decision to go pro was so frowned on by his college coach, college football in general, and the mass of the sporting press who so adored him - they all fervently subscribed to the ideal of the scholar-athlete for whom money was inconsequential and school spirit all- that Grange later admitted, "I think I might have been more popular if I joined the Capone bunch." And there was a further smudge on the ideal: Grange had engaged an agent–unheard of at the time–to make his deal: $100,000 and a percentage of gate receipts for one barnstorming seventeen-game season played in venues from New York to Los Angeles in just over two months. Not even Babe Ruth could command such a bankroll yet; the next-highest salary in the teetering National Football League was just $500 a game.

Earl Campbell should've been top 3

Aug 27, 2023 23:26:58 GMT Baker said:

Aug 27, 2023 5:47:32 GMT Neo Zeed said:

Grange and Ernie Nevers really didn't have much of a career but they were such big draws at such a weird time for pro football when it was essentially looked at like pro wrestling(back then maybe with even less respect than wrestling). Grange and Nevers brought in those big huge box office gates that essentially built the NFL into what it is. So it's like how do you really measure their careers when they didn't really produce much for careers but the league wouldn't have even existed through the decades without them. All of this history really owes itself to those guys.

Agreed. I'll confess to being a Red Grange mark going all the way back to childhood. The league was built on his shoulders. Always found it interesting how reviled pro football was before Grange. You weren't kidding with the pro wrestling comparison. He got so much heat for turning pro. To make matters worse, he had an agent!

Fun Fact: There's a character in my fanfic project loosely based on Grange's agent. They share the same initials! The other part of his name comes from an old lacrosse coach. Whether 1992 or 2023 you could on me to slip in those Red Grange references. 

You could argue Grange is still the biggest one man draw in league history. Dude did barnstorming tours as "Red Grange and the Chicago Bears." And those tours were intense. Grange signed with Chicago on 11/22/25. He debuted on the 26th. The Bears then went on to play 8 games from December 2-13. Then they followed that up by playing more 9 games just in the month of January including trips to the Deep South (which had no pro team) and the West Coast which also had no pro teams.  

And here's an interesting blurb I found at this site explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-30E

Although the first professional football game had been played thirty-three years before, the new National Football League was still in its infancy. Compared to the nobility of its collegiate cousin–second only to baseball in its place in the American heart–professional football was deemed unpure, unsporting, and unseemly, nothing more than a refuge for brawny ruffians. Grange would change that image, but not without another razzle-dazzle effort.



His decision to go pro was so frowned on by his college coach, college football in general, and the mass of the sporting press who so adored him - they all fervently subscribed to the ideal of the scholar-athlete for whom money was inconsequential and school spirit all- that Grange later admitted, "I think I might have been more popular if I joined the Capone bunch." And there was a further smudge on the ideal: Grange had engaged an agent–unheard of at the time–to make his deal: $100,000 and a percentage of gate receipts for one barnstorming seventeen-game season played in venues from New York to Los Angeles in just over two months. Not even Babe Ruth could command such a bankroll yet; the next-highest salary in the teetering National Football League was just $500 a game.

The Sandlot 2: Bertram actually moved to Chicago and fell in with some football kids the next year 1963(the year the Bears won the NFL title). They lose a football signed by Grange to some other type of beast somehow(maybe an actual bear?) with Grange coming back as a ghost in his dream telling him how to get it back(even though maybe he wasn't dead yet in 63?). On his way out the door notices a pair of Bertram's basketball sneakers and asks if he can have them. The old man in the end gives them a football signed by all the 1934 Bears, viola. Bertram getting lost in the 60's meant he started liking football more than baseball, a progressive idea back then but one that was really starting to happen. 

^Would watch

How perfect would the ending be, the old man turns out to be George Halas, they were fucking around in his old sandlot behind his place and lost their football over the fence to his pet bear. He just won the 63 NFL title but waxes nostalgic with the kids about that 34 team as he trades them that ball, Grange, Nagurski, Hewitt, Lyman, Musso, all those legends, Feathers ran for 1,000 yards, 13-0 but those almost won our 3rd title in a row but.... those damn basketball sneakers. Just wasn't meant to be. I'll tell ya what, you come by here once a week and talk football and we'll call it an even trade. Bertram grows up to be football and baseball coach in Bessimer Alabama high school where he teaches a guy named Bo Jackson.

One of these days I want to start a fan fiction with just movie ideas and all of them are made by Cannon Films.

Went down a Joe Perry rabbit hole, definitely an under the radar guy since I've honestly never read much about him, yet he broke Steve Van Buren's career rushing yards mark in 1958 and kept playing until 1963, he reminds me of a Frank Gore type, he led the league twice in 54-55 in rushing then had a long career, stretching from the final 2 seasons in the AAFC in 1948 to 1949(these numbers were included in his career marks) until retiring in 1963.

At 6' and 200 pounds he was virtually the same size as Steve Van Buren, which was pretty big guy for that time.

He missed out on all of but 1 season of college football because of the war, then landed on the 49ers in the AAFC in 1948. Looking at this 49ers team puts the AAFC into perspective. They were just unstoppable on offense in the AAFC, averaged something crazy like 36 points per game in 1948 and 34 in 1949, scoring over 38-40+ points almost every game. In 1948 they went 12-2 just dominated everyone in the AAFC... except the Browns, they lost both games to Cleveland was their only losses. Other than Cleveland and San Fran the rest of that league was pretty bad, the next best teams were 7-7.

Then 1949 the AAFC dropped from 8 teams to 7 teams and merged the divisions together because of that. San Fran beat Cleveland pretty bad in the regular season that year but got beat in the final AAFC Championship in the rematch. Joe Perry led the AAFC in rushing yards this season.

Then in 1950 the 49ers joined the NFL their offensive numbers dropped drastically. Eventually they got YA Tittle at quarterback and added Hugh McIlhenny the speedster and a bad ass fullback John Henry Johnson so that was a pretty killer trio there in their backfield. They still never did much with all that the closest they ever got was the 1957 divisional playoff loss to Detroit.

Unrelated to Joe Perry but interesting trajectory for that team for their first 20 or so years, for them being so good in the AAFC in 1948 to lose the final AAFC Championship to Cleveland in 1949(after annihilating them in the regular season unlike anybody had done up to that point). Then it takes them 20 years to have any real success with John Brodie leading them to that upset over the Vikings(defending NFL Champs), they ended up losing back to back NFCCG's to Dallas in 1970 and 1971 before losing the 1972 divisional to them in the epic Staubach comeback.

Perry led the AAFC in rushing in 1949 with only 115 carries, 783 yards averaged 6.8, they called him "The Jet" bad ass.

I'm intrigued by the AAFC now. It was a big inspiration for a lot of stuff that happened in my AFL revision history(where the merger never happened, but the NFL dies in the late 70's, with the AFL absorbing a couple teams and all of the players).

But the AAFC I read they didn't keep the stats the right way or something so the NFL never included them in the history. It wasn't until our QB thread that I really first realized that the NFL wasn't much stronger than the AAFC those 4 years, you had some bad teams in the bottom of the NFL those years that were just day to day didn't know if they were going to make it another season. What a weird time that was with the NFL trying to stay alive through WW II and being too racist to have blacks in the league, small handful of bad asses Hutson, Waterfield, Van Buren et al were able to just dominate everybody.

With the AAFC being as old as it was think about it anybody that was a season ticket holder for some of those teams is probably long gone. I couldn't tell you even what colors some of the teams had or really even the teams without google, I know there was a Buffalo Bills that was unrelated to the modern/AFL team, also a Seahawks in Miami, other than that couldn't tell you the others. Still they played 4 years with probably for sure the best football team in the country on the pro level, plus a really good 49ers team, and 6(5 in the final year) other clubs that might have had 10-15 decent for that era players and a college coach with no pro experience at all(according to quote from former player I read).

So it's interesting to think what the NFL would have looked like with the Browns and 49ers in 46 to 49. I do think the Browns would have lost at least 1 title game in those 4 years if they were playing NFL teams in bad weather. Would the 49ers have still averaged 36 points a game? Joe Perry seems legit.