History of NFL record book

[Jay Z]

It looks like the first year for complete stats in the NFL was 1932. At what point did the NFL develop a record book? Simply the ability to note that a player was approaching or surpassed a game, season, or career record?

[65 toss power trap]

Rather than rewriting it, here's an excerpt from a post I edited for Quirky Research:

In the 1930s, the official guides to the NFL were published by the American Sports Publishing Company under the banner of the Spalding’s Athletic Library. This was an offshoot of their intercollegiate version which began publishing in the 19th Century. The individual and team records listed in the official guides originally took up a mere half a page, later expanding to about 3 pages.
In 1941, NFL commissioner Elmer Layden ended the contract with Spalding, reportedly because other professional leagues were also devoted space in the Official Guide.
The 1942 official NFL Record and Roster Manual — the precursor to the modern Record and Fact Book — significantly expanded the records, but listed no punts nor any other non-scoring events that occurred before 1932.

Picture of the entire record book from 1937 is at this link:
https://www.quirkyresearch.com/2021/11/ ... ly-happen/

[Bob Gill]

Interesting story about Lintzenich's punt. And speaking of punting records from the early days, in 1932 when the NFL started keeping stats, apparently the categories were scoring, rushing, passing, receiving ... and punting. A press release at the end of the season said the leader was Dick Nesbitt of the Bears, with an average of 42.4 yards. But that's the only mention I've ever seen about 1932 punting stats. I don't know what ever became of them. And the league didn't try again with individual punting until 1939.

[Bryan]

It looks like the first year for complete stats in the NFL was 1932. At what point did the NFL develop a record book? Simply the ability to note that a player was approaching or surpassed a game, season, or career record?

I remember watching Sportscenter in 1932 and ESPN reported that Arnie Herber was the first player in NFL history to have 600 passing yards and 300 rushing yards in a season (in the Super Bowl era).


All the information in this thread is great stuff. I guess in the back of my mind I always thought of when 'breaking records' became a thing in the NFL.

[Jay Z]

Thanks, everyone.

I asked because I'm working on a Coffin Corner article about that includes the chronology of a record. It's a reasonably major record, but not one of the initial ones that was tracked. So in the early days, when the initial standard was set, there would have been little in the press because there wasn't even a record book yet much less consciousness of a record being set.

[timmyb]

A couple of other landmark years for the NFL Record & Fact Book:

-1970: For the first time, the NFL Record Manual became available to the general public as Fawcett-Gold Medal distributed a paperback book edition to bookstores, drug stores and newsstands. Cover price was $1.25.

-1984: The NFL combined the Record Manual and the Media Information Book into the Official NFL Record & Fact Book, which continued to be available to the general public. The book was changed to a large format soft cover book from the paperback Manual.

[JohnTurney]

Interesting story about Lintzenich's punt. And speaking of punting records from the early days, in 1932 when the NFL started keeping stats, apparently the categories were scoring, rushing, passing, receiving ... and punting. A press release at the end of the season said the leader was Dick Nesbitt of the Bears, with an average of 42.4 yards. But that's the only mention I've ever seen about 1932 punting stats. I don't know what ever became of them. And the league didn't try again with individual punting until 1939.

from 1949 to 1959, I think, team net punting was in the Record Books 0 they took out touchbacks--and if one guy did al lthe punting for a team
you could know his net average for the year...but in 1960 they stopped and didn't do net punting until 1976, but did both team and individual..