Sports Then and Now

Happy Birthday to two all-time greats: Michael Jordan and Jim Brown.

It isn’t everyday that you can say that two athletes who arguably were the best ever to compete in their sport are celebrating birthdays. But you can say that about February 17th as that happens to be the birthday of Hall of Fame football star Jim Brown (born in 1936) and Hall of Fame basketball star Michael Jordan (born in 1963).

Though it has been 47 years since he last played in the NFL, just about anyone who was alive to watch him play still will insist that Brown is the best player ever to put on shoulder pads. His combination of power and speed were unlike anything that had previously been seen in the NFL and his domination of the league during his nine year career with the Cleveland Browns has never truly been matched. He won eight rushing titles in nine years and averaged 104 yards rushing per game for his entire career.  His 12, 312 career rushing yards was a record that stood for 19 years and still ranks 9th in NFL history.

What is perhaps most extraordinary for Brown is that some have claimed that in addition to being the greatest football player of all-time, he may also have been one of the best lacrosse players ever. He was an All-American lacrosse player at Syracuse, scoring 43 goals in 10 games as a senior. He also was the leading scorer on the Syracuse basketball team as a sophomore and lettered in track.

Michael Jordan emerged on the scene as a basketball star at the University of North Carolina. He hit the shot that propelled UNC to the NCAA Championship during his freshman season and two years later helped lead what was likely the finest collection of amateur basketball players in history to a gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics.

In the NBA, Jordan eventually evolved into the best player of his generation and ultimately is considered by many as the best to ever play the game. He averaged more than 30 points per game for his entire 15 year career and won the scoring title 10 times.

Much like Brown, Jordan towered over the others in his era. Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to six NBA titles and it is likely they might have won more had he not missed nearly two years pursuing a career in major league baseball.

Unlike Brown, Jordan will never be considered as the best-ever in a sport other than basketball, but even today there is a general perception that Jordan was the greatest to ever play in the NBA.

In celebration of the birthdays of these two sports legends, I have assembled some youtube clips that highlight their greatness.

Happy Birthday to two all-time greats.

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Happy 70th Birthday to American Hero and NFL All-Time Great Roger Staubach.

Sports Then and Now wants to wish a Happy 70th Birthday to one of our favorite athletes of all-time, “Captain Comeback” Roger Staubach.

Known for his late-game heroics, Staubach was one of the iconic figures of the NFL during the 1970s.

During his nine seasons as the starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, Staubach seemed to always have the uncanny knack of making the big play needed to lift his team to victory. He led the Cowboys to 23 fourth quarter game-winning drives during his career, including 15 times with his team trailing.

The Cowboys reached the playoffs in eight of his nine seasons as the starting quarterback and advanced to the Super Bowl five times.

He was named MVP of Super Bowl VI and also led Dallas to the title in Super Bowl XII.

Staubach was a winner even before joining the Cowboys.

He spent three seasons at the Naval Academy and as a junior in 1963 won the Heisman Trophy while leading the Midshipmen to a 9-1 record and a number two national ranking. Read the rest of this entry →

Though he retired in 1959, it took until 2012 for Jack Butler to get serious consideration for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Let me start this post by saying that after watching his gleeful interview during the NFL Network Hall of Fame show I am pleased that 84-year-old Jack Butler is able to enjoy his moment as a new member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

However, in my opinion it is the selection of Butler that best illustrates what is wrong with the selection process for the Hall of Fame.

If given the chance to ask one question to the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee it simply would be: “Why is an 84-year-old who last played in the NFL in 1959 being selected to the Hall of Fame in 2012?”

I’m not really sure whether Butler deserves to be in the Hall of Fame or not, but I am sure that the Hall of Fame selectors did a bad job in handling this selection.

Because, given that Butler had never previously even been a Hall of Fame finalist, the voters either were woefully negligent in not considering him before now or they caved in to a recent campaign by fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers to get Butler into the Hall of Fame.

Either way, the true loser in this scenario is the integrity of the Hall of Fame.

This marks the third straight year that a senior candidate that had never previously been a Hall of Fame finalist suddenly found himself not just as a finalist, but as one of those chosen to enter the Hall of Fame. Read the rest of this entry →

Belichick knows the value of special teams. He signed Nick Koutouvides in week 9 to sure up the Patriots coverage units.

When analyzing a football game like this one it’s all too easy to forget about the impact of special teams. We all seem to acknowledge big special teams plays after the fact, but by the time the next week rolls around the pundits are right back to talking about offensive and defensive match-ups. Maybe it’s a simple numbers game. There just aren’t many special teams plays in any given game, and the kickoff rules instituted this year have turned a significant number of those plays into non-plays.

And then a week last week comes along and reminds everyone just how important special teams are. Danny Woodhead’s fumble on the kickoff following a Raven scoring drive that gave them the lead for the first time in the game seemed to seal the Patriots’ fate. Instead New England battled back to take a three point lead, a lead that kicker Billy Cundiff had every opportunity to erase. The 32 yard try should have been trivial for Cundiff, but he missed, and New England punched their ticket to Indianapolis.

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It's been a frustrating year for Sebastian Vollmer, but his return could bolster an improved Patriots running game.

In Super Bowl XLII Tom Brady attempted 48 passes. In the week eight meeting between these two teams Brady attempted 49 passes. It is easy for fans, media types, and even coaches to become overly enamored with the Patriots passing attack, and it’s hard to blame them. But against a Giants team whose hallmark remains the ability to generate pressure with only a four man rush it’s damn near suicidal to drop back that many times. The Giants pass rush is too good to give them that many opportunities to get after the quarterback.

To keep Brady clean the Patriots must be able to run the ball. The Giants are exceedingly likely to dare New England to run. In their first three playoff games defensive coordinator Perry Fewell has called for a rush of four or fewer men over eighty percent of the time, and given their past success using four-man pressures against Brady there’s little reason to believe this strategy will change.

The Giants front four of Justin Tuck, Jason Pierre-Paul, Osi Umenyiora, and Chris Canty are the best pass rushing unit in the league, but they lack a true run-stopper. They simply don’t have the beef on the interior of the line, and their aggressive up-field rushes leave a lot of the run responsibilities to their linebacking corps, the weakest unit on their defense.

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Will 2012 finally be the year that Cris Carter earns Hall of Fame selection?

There are few things in sports that frustrate me more than the selection process for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Thanks to a combination of egos, inconsistency and often personal, geographic or team biases, there are many deserving former NFL stars who have never made it into Canton while others of lesser quality have a plaque of their own.

In the three years I have written this blog I have spent a significant amount of time each year chronicling the inconsistencies and offering my own ideas for who should be in the Hall and how they should be selected.

But last year a very strange thing happened. Instead of picking names out of a hat, it appears that the Hall of Fame selectors actually had a thoughtful and constructive discussion on who belonged in the Hall of Fame. The result was a Hall of Fame class that in my opinion was the most deserving class that the selectors have ever chosen.

So, my question entering their annual meeting coming up on Saturday is “Can they do it again?”

Sadly, I still am enough of a skeptic to believe that last year was just an example of the blind squirrel theory and with candidates like Marshall Faulk and Deion Sanders among those eligible it wasn’t overly difficult for the voters to get it right.

In fact, you could argue that the Hall of Fame voters have already put themselves in a negative situation for 2012 because unlike last year when it was very hard to argue that there were players just as deserving left out in order to enshrine the class of 2011, regardless of who enters as the class of 2012 for almost all of the finalists there is at least one player not on the list who you could easily argue is as deserving as the player who made the list of finalists. Read the rest of this entry →