Sports Today vs Sports of Yesterday talk

[saildog]

With out a doubt, today's football teams would entirely annihilate old teams. They are much bigger, faster and athletic now. You have lineman now that can run as fast as the RB's back then.

Believe me there would be deaths

Yeah, but that is the linemen.......I'm willing to bet you can not name me thirty of them in under three minutes that ever played in the NFL without looking it up. They have always been largely (pun intended) unheralded. You could easily name 5 times as many skill players, though. Not saying linemen are unimportant or ever have been, but all of a sudden they are a case in point, even though throughout NFL history they have only been distinguished by head-to-head skill....not head-to-head size.

How about this: I honestly believe you could hand pick athletes in TEAM sports, from any era except the "Dead Ball" era of baseball, and put them head-to-head against a team made up of athletes that are playing right now and they could hold their own. Now, in football, you would have to handicap the O and D lines (for obvious reasons), but every era of any team sport has had its "freaks" that could have held their own in any situation the sport could throw at them.

Case in point: The 4 fastest men to ever play in the NFL are all older than me. All of them would have lost to Usain Bolt in the 100 meter dash, but Bolt don't play in the NFL. Bob Hayes is a Hall of Famer and won a Super Bowl Ring AND an Olympic Gold Medal. Willie Gault has a Super Bowl Ring and might have won a Gold if the US didn't boycott the 1980 Olympic Games. Deion and Bo (who ran a verifiable 4.12 40-yard dash) could have been Hall of Famers if they hadn't have split their careers between two Professional Sports (does anyone do that now with any level of success? Heck, Bo was an All-Star MVP and a Pro-Bowler....in the same year!) and Darrell Green (a Hall of Famer) beat Carl Lewis in the 100 meters.

Baseball would be even easier to pick. Micky Mantle??? No one has ever been faster from Home to First nor crushed the long ball like him....to this day.

[HardyGirl]

Well, even though I don't like sports, I do have some memories. My dad and brother used to love watching ABC's Wide World Of Sports on Sundays. The were defintely into boxing, Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell. I kinda liked the gymnastics segments, and of course Evel Knievel. I know Monday Night Football was in big deal back in the 70s. Basketball uniforms looked better b/c guys actually wore SHORTS! And baseball cards were a big deal at my school. Kids played a kind of go fish game w/ the cards, which was the only reason I collected them briefly.

[jwyblejr]

With out a doubt, today's football teams would entirely annihilate old teams. They are much bigger, faster and athletic now. You have lineman now that can run as fast as the RB's back then.

Believe me there would be deaths

Yeah for the modern players. They're too injury prone nowadays. It seems as if you even look at them sideways,they go down.