Posts from When Football Was Football podcast.
Baseball is a timeless game. We love it because the basic rules have changed little over the years and we can easily compare basic statistics for different players over the decades, such as batting average, earned run average, homers, and runs batted in. If we removed the outfield fences, the game itself could stretch endlessly … Read more
Before the television era of professional football, which certainly changed the financial outlook of the National Football League, most players still needed to work at some other profession, often both during and after the football season. In 1941, the Chicago Tribune reported that “Twenty-seven percent of the young men under contract to teams in the National Football … Read more
Fans of football history usually find the name of Ernie Nevers to be a familiar one. Maybe not a household word in 2021, but certainly one that ripples with respect with the knowledge that Nevers was one of the all-time greats in the National Football League. And yet, his entrance into the world of pro football … Read more
As we celebrate our first anniversary of “When Football Was Football” on the Sports History Network, we can look back at a wide variety of episodes from the golden days of football in the Chicago area. While we’ve covered topics such as the first-ever indoor football games held in Chicago, the individual heroics of players … Read more
One of the most important innovations in the history of the National Football League occurred in February of 1936 when the NFL initiated its very first draft of collegiate players. It was a revolutionary concept; each team, beginning with the one having the worst record to the best from the previous season, would be able … Read more