Re: Still No Gamebooks?
Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2017 3:50 pm
This was 6-7 years ago and a group of us volunteered (I don't remember who was in charge of the Gamebooks Committee at the time) and we were all assigned to call mostly teams who still had not released all of their gamebooks. I think I was assigned to call three teams, two of which were the Giants and the Rams, and I think the other was the 49ers. The 49ers told me they just sent out everything they had to us, and the Giants said they were in the process of transferring all their paper records (including gamebooks) to pdf's and they didn't know when they would have them all done and if any of them were gamebooks, and the other (I think it was the Rams) still had some of those old files back in LA and they weren't sure if any of those were gamebooks. It seems like Sean Lahman was spearheading a lot of the searching for old gamebooks, and when he left the forum, there were others who were interested in looking for them but nobody seemed to have his zeal, or perhaps his contacts.TodMaher wrote:So what were the results of calling the various teams? Do you they have them? If they do, how far back do they go? Are they not available to PFRA because 1)They're not scanned in? or 2)They don't want to make them available?Rupert Patrick wrote:I wasn't aware of this footballproject site that was hosting these game books that is now shut down. How long has this site been shut down, and who dropped the ball on this? I am a little disappointed about this, as I worked with the Gamebooks Committee in the past, calling NFL teams to try to get gamebooks.
I don't even know who is running the gamebooks committee these days. If you look at the "About the Gamebooks Committee" section on Members Only, it says "As of April 20, 2010, we have gamebooks in hand for more than 7500 games, roughly 70% of all NFL/AFL games since 1960." That was over seven years ago. There used to be a spreadsheet of what was available, but that seems to be gone now.
I don't think we've reached a point where there are no more gamebooks to be found, but I do think that those of us who have access to game film from the 1930's thru 50's should possibly look at the idea of creating "unofficial gamebooks". What I'm saying is, if one of us should happen to have some game film from the past, and the quality is good that you can clearly read the numbers on the uniforms, perhaps try to create a gamebook or at least play by play on your own from the video. I've had to do this a time or two before, and it takes time, but it can be done, and all the information is there, if you're willing to sit and watch the same play in slo-mo on your DVD player a couple times to get the player who made the run, whether it was an off tackle right or a pitch out going out of bounds on the left sideline, how many yards were gained, and who the tackler was. I've even created play by play from radio broadcasts, and it takes time, but you do it. If we can't have official gamebooks, having play by play is the next best thing I would think.