Jack Dempsey v. Ike Ibeabuchi

According to the article Brown grabbed his hamstring sometime during the race. That may attribute to the slow time. He didn't use it as an excuse for losing the race trust me I`m 45 and I know the feeling

 

Yeah, I've seen that act before.

 

LOL Ok

 

Watching a few of Peterson's runs, it does make me wonder if Peterson wouldn't have been more outstanding than Brown if he had come up in the late fifties. I think he is faster than Brown, accelerates better, and is considerably more elusive. Brown I think has the edge in strength. But it raises the issue of what really is the most valuable of assets for running in that era and in this. The next best runners when Brown came into the NFL were Alan Ameche, Rick Casares, and John Henry Johnson, all power fullbacks with moderate speed. I don't notice many of those type of runners around anymore. Elusive backs are far more the running norm. Big fullbacks are around mainly to block.

 

Running fast obviously matters in the NFL.
But what the hell does it have to do with Demspsey - Ibeabuchi ??

 

Well, let's cut to the chase on the talent pool. When Jimmy Brown played for Syracuse in the 1957 Cotton Bowl, how many African-American players were on the field. I watched that game originally, and have seen film clips since, and I think Brown is the only African-American who was playing. Two teams, probably 80 to 100 players, and only one is African-American, who happens to be by far the best player on the field.

In 1960 Syracuse went to the Cotton Bowl to play Texas for the national championship. Texas, like Texas Christian in the 1957 Cotton Bowl, had no African-American players. Syracuse had three--Ernie Davis, Art Baker, and John Brown. Two teams, probably 80 to 100 players, and only three African-Americans. Does anyone think there weren't potentially more African-Americans who could have played on and improved those teams.

In 1961 Alabama and Arkansas played in the Sugar Bowl with Alabama claiming the national championship with their victory. Neither team had any African-American players at all.

The NFL talent pool was restricted for the most part to what came out of the colleges and the colleges after all were restricted to those who went to high school. Guys who had to drop out to get a job and help out the family weren't going to end up in the NFL.

Bottom line--the talent pool is not just the overall population, which has doubled since the 1950's in the US, but what percentage of the available talent pool is tapped. It was restricted back then.

As for the "alternate" Jimmy Brown theory if he were born sixty years later and grew up with modern advantages in nutrition and training and the like. I guess it is like asking what would have become of Julius Caesar if he were born in the 20th century on a farm in Iowa. Well, he would have been American and not Roman and I'm certain rather different. The historical Caesar is fascinating. This alternate Caesar is far too abstract to interest me.

 

The available talent pool in sports across time.

 

If speed was all that mattered in the NFL, Michael Bennett would be in the Hall of Fame and we would never have heard of Emmitt Smith or Jerry Rice.

 

It says nothing about it.
NFL players running fast on a football field or a track says nothing about anything beyond those sports.

 

Interesting thread, I say that as someone who has never watched an NBA game and doesn't even understand the rules of American Football. Not surprising to learn the same guys wearing rose tinted specs for boxing keep them on for other sports too.

From 1 un-annoyed brit, what does '"Willsian lifestyle" mean? He lived like a monk? Who is Wills?

 

Harry Wills lived a very clean life, didn't smoke, drink or carouse. Went on regular fasts. Had some interesting ideas on fitness and diet.

 

He did indeed,but he still died at 66 ? I'm overweight and have drunk 8 pints of beer today,,so at 68, should I consider
every year a bonus?

 

That's a strong effort.

Maybe those do-gooders don't know what they're talking about.

 

"Not surprising to learn the same guys wearing rose tinted specs for boxing keep then on for other sports too."

Yes. I thought that was what was interesting about this discussion. One point, though, is that the best players of the Brown and Chamberlain (which is also the Ali) era are physically imposing enough to bring into the modern sport world. But Dempsey is from the 1920's. Who was the best basketball center in the 1920's? Joe Lapchick at 6' 5" and about 185 lbs. Who was the best football player? Red Grange at 5' 11" and 175 lbs. Would these men be outstanding in the modern NBA or NFL?

And just on Grange, the football equivalent of Dempsey. In 2008 (!) a panel of experts at ABC picked Grange as the all-time best college football player. Needless to say, none had seen Grange live and the scratchy films of 1920's football games are limited, to say the least. Shows the power of mythology.

There is a guy who does a history of college football history site who commented on Grange's selection--

"There are plenty of backs in history whose accomplishments compare well with Grange's overall numbers, but let's look at Aubrey Devine who starred for the Iowa team I selected as national champions for 1921. Devine is nowhere as famous as Grange and makes no list of the greatest players, but his 895 rushing yards and 2211 total yards in 1921 simply blow Grange's best season out of the water. And Devine was also his team's punter and placekicker. He even had a transcendent game comparable to Grange's famous 1924 game against Michigan. Against Minnesota in 1921 Devine accounted for 484 yards and 6 touchdowns to Grange's 402 yards and 6 touchdowns."

So why is Grange so famous. In a word, hype. He got a famous nickname--"The Galloping Ghost" which sticks with us through time. Came from a poem by Grantland Rice--

"There are shapes now moving,
Two ghosts that shift and glide,
And which of them to tackle,
Each rival must decide,
They shift with spectral swiftness,
Across the swarded range,
And one of them's a shadow,
And one of them is Grange."

And once famous he joined the Bears and went on tour drawing huge crowds, including 70,000 at the Polo Grounds, which put the NFL on the map. *I have no idea what "swarded" means but that is his word.

My observation is that there are two main types of sports legends. Those like Dempsey and Grange who were certainly pretty good, but whose accomplishments fall way short of matching their fame and publicity, and those like Chamberlain and Brown, or Joe Louis in boxing, whose actual accomplishments and records are so outstanding that they rise like mountains on the prairie when looking back at the history of their sports.

It is interesting that the best known college football backfield and line are so mainly because of literary efforts.

The "Four Horsemen" was Rice again, "Outlined against the blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again."
And "The Seven Blocks of Granite."--here I must paraphrase the poem, which goes something like
"Hindy needed a million troops
to man his western wall,
but Fordham needs but seven,
for they are of granite all."