Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

BD Sullivan wrote:

TodMaher wrote:

ChrisBabcock wrote:So... I’ll address the white elephant in the room. The NFL’s official total for Blanda is 2002, not 2000. It was even a record at one point. It seemed sort of “mythical” to me as a kid poring over lists of records. Similar to Simpson’s 2003 rushing yards. Do we, as the PFRA want to spearhead an effort to get this officially corrected? How would we go about doing that? I’m just thinking out loud here.

It's being looked into by the NFL. I have my doubts that they will change it.

In that same vein (with respect to baseball), I recall in 1981, when The Sporting News had solid evidence about a mistake that affected the winner of the 1910 American League batting race, and all then-Commissioner Bowie Kuhn could say was to claim that a "statute of limitations" for such corrections should apply.

It was Pete Palmer who for some reason was in the Baseball Hall of Fame library adding up Cobb's batting average from official game sheets for 1910 and he found the discrepancy of a game's stats being recorded twice in Cobb's statistical ledger, and if I remember the story correctly (The Sporting News did a cover story about this, if memory serves, I remember all three TV networks did stories about this when the story broke) he took it to The Sporting News to verify what he found and they reviewed it and corroborated his findings. Baseball did fix Cobb's career hit total, for the main reason because Pete Rose was in the later stages of making his well-publicized run at Cobb's career hit record, and they wanted to be sure to have the right target for Rose to aim for.

I went ahead and purchased this issue of the Sporting News from April 1981 on Ebay so I can read up on the story.

I've chosen to update my kicker database to reflect the updated statistical totals for Blanda and Tobin in 1963. Blanda remains ninth in kicking points (from extra points and field goals) with 1946, as he scored nine TD's rushing in his career which brought his total of points to 2000.

Tod, this might make a good subject for a Coffin Corner article, which would bring the issue to a wider audience.

remember the excellent article in the Coffin Corner about Jim Browns rushing records? Those were well documented and that was ignored. I suspect this will me,

JohnTurney wrote:remember the excellent article in the Coffin Corner about Jim Browns rushing records? Those were well documented and that was ignored. I suspect this will me,

That's exactly what this find reminded me of, and I've been wondering about what happened with that - I was part of the 'committee' that double-checked it. That was really great work by Brian Marshall.

I would be mildly surprised if this got changed, though it's possible. Elias/NFL is one thing, but even websites are hard to convince to be accurate. Can send in the film, gamebook, newspaper accounts and two forms of identification and still get nowhere. At least 'we' now know, and those here that like to be historically accurate know, and those with websites can have it correct on their site.

Either way, great work, Tod. Also a great reminder that there's still things to find if you keep your eyes open, there's still research to be done and still an infinite amount of history to be discussed before we ever have to devolve into discussing history that didn't happen (e.g. "what ifs") ...

JohnTurney wrote:remember the excellent article in the Coffin Corner about Jim Browns rushing records? Those were well documented and that was ignored. I suspect this will me,

Wasn't that the one about Jim Brown's 1962 season? And how a game by game check revealed he did go over a thousand yards that year?

SixtiesFan wrote:

JohnTurney wrote:remember the excellent article in the Coffin Corner about Jim Browns rushing records? Those were well documented and that was ignored. I suspect this will me,

Wasn't that the one about Jim Brown's 1962 season? And how a game by game check revealed he did go over a thousand yards that year?

Yes, but if you look at other seasons there were other plays, like the ones in 1962 that were simply scored differently than how they'd be scored now.

JohnTurney wrote:

SixtiesFan wrote:

JohnTurney wrote:remember the excellent article in the Coffin Corner about Jim Browns rushing records? Those were well documented and that was ignored. I suspect this will me,

Wasn't that the one about Jim Brown's 1962 season? And how a game by game check revealed he did go over a thousand yards that year?

Yes, but if you look at other seasons there were other plays, like the ones in 1962 that were simply scored differently than how they'd be scored now.

Jim Brown never has made anything of it to my knowledge. I saw him interviewed around 1977 in which he said you do the things to win a championship. He was contrasting himself to O.J. Simpson.