Fantasy Football…. Circa 1930s

[TanksAndSpartans]

A couple of final things I wanted to share:

-Just looking at the bolded players from the 1935 National Chicle set…. 21 from one issue from a single year out of the 78 players I chose for the entire decade is pretty darn good. Granted they didn’t project any stars (Stan Kostka was a can’t miss prospect who missed), but with only 35 active NFL players in the set, I’m impressed more than half stood the test of time.

Looking back at rounds 1-7, I would say they missed having a card on: Mel Hein, Bill Hewitt, Arnie Herber, Johnny Blood, Mike Michalske, George Musso, Link Lyman, George Christensen (included as a premium), Ox Emerson, Ace Gutowsky (included as a premium), Walt Kiesling, Red Grange (included as a premium), Red Badgro, Father Lumpkin, Joe Kopcha, Charley Malone, Ookie Miller, Ray Flaherty, Joe Carter, and Swede Hanson.

Among those 20, 3 had premiums and who knows how many may have been included in the 3rd release of cards had there ever been one….

-Finally, in terms of research, I found a great PFRA article on blocking backs. It was an unsung position for sure - Father Lumpkin was in there, but I’d never heard of Hank Bruder, Riley Smith, or Leland Shaffer. And I always enjoy an article about unsung players and in this case, an entire unsung position.

[jefferyepayne]

Very cool project, John. I'll mull it over and put together some comments / discussion points I see.

jeff

[TanksAndSpartans]

Great! Thanks Jeff - looking forward to it.

[S_GERACE]

Hey Dez,
You should develop a game, kind of like Strat-o-matic for baseball, but just include players from the 30's in it. This way you could actually play out "fantasy" games against other people or teams.

The 1971 Topps insert game would be a good place to start in developing it.

[jefferyepayne]

Is this a PPR league?

jeff

[th38larg]

How do we not have a net54 fantasy football league? Or is there one already?

[jefferyepayne]

Ok, I'm struggling with the defensive aspects of this 'game'. In traditional fantasy football, you choose an entire teams defense. Some leagues now have stats for individual defensive players as well.

What are the rules of this fantasy football game? PPR? Standard? How are defenseman awarded?

My first eye raise is that you picked Mel Hein in the first round. How does a center get points? I expected (maybe naively) that lineman would be chosen in late rounds. I would have picked Battles, Hinkle, and Strong over Hein from a fantasy perspective.

I also would be shocked that Halas would pick Friedman over Nagurski. I get the T QB thing but he loved Nags.

jeff

[TanksAndSpartans]

Hi Scott, there actually is a game and I own it: http://shop.dksports.com/downloads1920to1969.aspx - I bought the 1933 season, my reasoning being, I wanted to see what I could do with the Spartans without Dutch Clark. I think the game is great, but there wasn’t a real investment made in the Single Wing (every snap goes to the BB rather than the TB for example). I discussed with the developer and he left it open to edit pretty much everything, for example when you play the Bears, Nagurski takes all the snaps and often throws it down field and he's rated as an outside runner ...., but by the time I do all that editing - and then actually play - I think I need to wait until my 2 kids are in college. I do play APF2K8 occasionally though because I can squeeze a game in pretty quickly - everything is set up how I like it from 7 years ago

Hi Peter, I just play in a free Yahoo! league with strangers, so I’d be open to a net54 league next season for sure.

Jeff, Good point - “fantasy” is the wrong term in the sense of modern fantasy football - it’s just a fantasy draft with the goal to build the best team possible - and of course no way to prove which team is best other than debating it

Great catch on Halas and Nagurski!! - in my first version, Halas did pick Nagurski. But the second version was done after I read Friedman's bio which definitely influenced me. My reasoning the second time around was Halas was pretty shrewd - I think he would have seen that players (QBs or TBs) who could throw well were the scarcest commodity and make a business decision. Plus, I really think he only loved Luckman. Did you hear Sid read that letter on the NFL Top 100 show? (I got something in my eye at that moment.)

I thought of doing this with just 6 generic coaches, but I think using some real coaches gave it a better feel. For example, Potsy Clark liked to run and thus put a high value on players who could block for the run - Hutson, Blood, etc. would’ve been a little bored in his offense.

Do you like the Mel Hein pick better now that I said its not a fantasy points league? I’m just trying to pick a winning team on a hypothetical field. Given the style of play back then, I think the top linemen were really valuable, but that's the fun of it - I could be very wrong....

Finally, my inspiration for this was Zycho32 from here: http://www.draftcountdown.com/forum/...ad.php?t=55372- I really enjoyed reading his analysis, so I figured I'd try my hand at something similar.

Thanks guys! Anyone want to rank the teams from strongest to weakest?