1960s Pro Football Hall Of Fame

[ChrisBabcock]

My hall for the 1960s. (alphabetically) Same deal as my previous decades. If the sculptor called and said “I’ve only got enough bronze for 15 busts.” Definitely getting more difficult with the number of teams increasing!

Discuss!.... or post your own.

Lance Alworth
Jim Brown
Dick Butkus
Sid Gillman
Forrest Gregg
Lamar Hunt
Deacon Jones
Bob Lilly
Vince Lombardi
Joe Namath
Ed Sabol
Gale Sayers
Bart Starr
Johnny Unitas
Larry Wilson

[JuggernautJ]

I can't disagree with any of those guys but four coaches/contributors seems like a lot.
Maybe take one of those guys out for... Merlin Olsen? Or Jim Taylor? Or another AFL guy?

[Rupert Patrick]

I can't disagree with any of those guys but four coaches/contributors seems like a lot.
Maybe take one of those guys out for... Merlin Olsen? Or Jim Taylor? Or another AFL guy?

I agree Gillman is the one who doesn't quite fit in; with just over 300 enshrined, the top 15 per decade is something of an inner circle Hall of Famer, like the top half of the cream. I would nominate with Olsen or Len Dawson, leaning towards Dawson as the AFL is a little under-represented in players.

This leads to another problem I have with this concept, and that is with 15 busts per decade, it over-represents the 30's thru 50's and short changes the other decades. A lot of the calibre like Sonny Jurgensen and Merlin Olsen who would have made the list in the 30's, 40's and 50's, don't get in, and as we get into the 70's, 80's, and forward, more will not make the list. Fran Tarkenton won't make the list, most likely, neither will Jack Ham, or Curtis Martin. It will instead be the first ballot types like Reggie White, Lawrence Taylor, Roger Staubach and Earl Campbell. The earlier years didn't have this dilemma, I would advocate making it 30 per decade from 1960 forward.

[ChrisBabcock]

This leads to another problem I have with this concept, and that is with 15 busts per decade, it over-represents the 30's thru 50's and short changes the other decades. ......... The earlier years didn't have this dilemma, I would advocate making it 30 per decade from 1960 forward.

This thought crossed my mind as well. May increase for future decades. I went with Gillman for the innovation factor. If I were to drop him, probably Dawson would take his spot. But then I'd be at 4 QBs. Ron Mix was in the mix as well. (pun intended) I forced myself to pick one or the other between Lilly and Olsen.

[conace21]

Herb Adderley
Lance Alworth
Bobby Bell
Jim Brown
Dick Butkus
Len Dawson
Forrest Gregg
Deacon Jones
Bob Lilly
Vince Lombardi
Merlin Olsen
Jim Otto
Gale Sayers
Johnny Unitas
Larry Wilson

If I could expand the list to just 25... the next 10 would be:

Ron Mix
Sonny Jurgensen
Jim Taylor
Doug Atkins
Pete Rozelle
Joe Namath
Willie Wood
Ray Nitschke
Lamar Hunt
Bart Starr

[Rupert Patrick]

I tried to come up with a mathematical way to work out the busts per decade problem. What I did from 1920-2019 was to list the number of teams in the league for each season, including AAFC and AFL, and broke them out by decades as such:

1920-29: 167
1930-39: 97
1940-49: 129
1950-59: 121
1960-69: 232
1970-79: 268
1980-89: 280
1990-99: 291
2000-09: 318
2010-19: 320

The sum of the above is 2223. I figured upon a Hall of Fame of 150, which is about what you would have with 15 busts per decade (I added the 20s to pick up everybody thru 1929). As the Hall of Fame is currently at 306, making it half of that number forces you to only include the very best of the best. Dividing 2223 into 150 is 14.82, and I divided each of those decade team totals by 14.82 and rounded them off to the nearest whole number, which gave me a busts per decade total of:

1920-29: 11
1930-39: 7
1940-49: 9
1950-59: 8
1960-69: 16
1970-79: 18
1980-89: 19
1990-99: 20
2000-09: 21
2010-19: 22

The sum of the busts is 151, so I lowered the 2010-19 number of busts to 21 to make it an even 150. It seems fairer to me; there are three times as many teams in the NFL currently than there were in the 1930's, there should be three times as many busts in this decade. It's just one way of viewing the problem.

[TanksAndSpartans]

I like how logical this approach is, but my own experience was it got harder to pick 15 once we hit the 50s because of defensive specialization. When you choose Nagurski or Hinkle for the 30s group, you get a back and a linebacker, so its kind of a 2 for 1. In the 50s, I wanted Joe Perry and Joe Schmidt without having to take one or the other.