Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Rupert Patrick wrote:It looks like my suggestion to the Redskins about putting their archives online has reached the right people. I followed up with them last week and they said they are tentatively planning to go ahead with it in the following off-season.

After suggesting the same to the Packers, it looks like the Packers are now also considering digitizing their archives and putting them online.

The Colts are in the process of digitizing their entire archives (game books, flip cards, media guides, press releases, coaches film, etc.) as we speak and the goal is to put it ALL online. Their special projects guy actually wanted to talk to me about what he was doing. I mostly listened and just asked questions about what the extent of what was in the Colts archives. He wanted my input and I told him I really wasn't in a position to give input other than to say once the documents are digitized, please continue to take proper care of them.

It took three months and emails to three different people in the Falcons PR department before I got a response. I was told there will be no game books from the Falcons for the foreseeable future. They are in the process of moving their historical items to another site and their game books are in storage and they never got around to digitizing their game books. They didn't give an ETA for when this would be completed.

Like the Falcons, it took three months and emails to three different people in the Giants PR department before I got the right person. I got a couple game books from the Giants.

I finally heard back from the Panthers and got the two game books I needed from them. I now have all of their game books.

Still no response from the Bears or Eagles. Tried to contact the Cowboys, Raiders and Seahawks, never heard back. Had a bad experience trying to get game books from the Jets.

I started going thru the game books from 1960 forward, opening up each game book and making sure all four (or five) quarters were there and they were all readable. In some cases if I had two different game books for the game I was able to use the Ilovepdf.com site to cobble the two game books into a single decent game book. I also fixed the game books, flipping the pages so they are all in the right direction. If I only had one game book for the game and there was a missing page or an unreadable page(s), I flagged the game book as an upgrade. Last night I finished going thru 1992, which was the first season I found where I had all the game books and no upgrades.

From 1960-92, after going thru a total of 6.427 game books, I found a total of 302 game books for which we need upgrades. Of those 302, there are 22 for which we already have the game books from both teams for a particular game and neither is either 100 percent complete or readable. (One of these 22 game books, by the way, is the 11/18/85 Giants-Redskins MNF game when Theismann broke his leg; I got game books from the Giants and Redskins and both game books were identical and they had legibility issues) It is hoped that possibly the Pro Football Hall of Fame has a decent copy of these game books.

I am going to need some serious help deciphering some hand-written 1949 Lions game books. There are four of them for the 10/8 (at Pittsburgh), 10/23 (at Chi. Cardinals), 11/13 (at Chi. Bears), and 11/20 (at NY Giants) games, and ideally I think at least two people should be deciphering these independently to ensure they both reach the same conclusions on their own. I think as historians we have a responsibility to try to decipher these hand-written documents into a general play-by-play form as many of us are authorities on the players of this era. These game books should be being put online shortly, but if you wanted to get a look at them now, PM me with your email address and I'll send them to you. The handwriting is hard to make out on these and unfortunately I don't think we have any Pharmacists among the PFRA membership, but if you're familiar with the players of the era, you might be able to assist with this.

We have the number of game books we need from 1960-2018 down from 961 last month to 872.

RRMarshall wrote:Sorry if I missed this in a previous thread but is their any information on game books for the Cowboys or Patriots? It they are online I couldn't find them.

Rupert Patrick wrote: I did review all the game books from 1960 thru 2003; I stopped after 2003 when it became apparent the NFL was doing a very good job of quality control with regard to their game books as I went four years with zero mistakes in the game books.

I also finally had success with the Raiders. It seems my email got to their head PR guy who was a former PFRA member and when I explained our online game book library project, he thought it was a great idea and said the Raiders would cooperate in any way they could. In the next month or two we should have everything from the Raiders archives we need.

TodMaher wrote:

Rupert Patrick wrote: I did review all the game books from 1960 thru 2003; I stopped after 2003 when it became apparent the NFL was doing a very good job of quality control with regard to their game books as I went four years with zero mistakes in the game books.

Well, there shouldn't be anything missing starting in 2000. That is the year the NFL went completely digital with the gamebooks and stated using the current software.

I also finally had success with the Raiders. It seems my email got to their head PR guy who was a former PFRA member and when I explained our online game book library project, he thought it was a great idea and said the Raiders would cooperate in any way they could. In the next month or two we should have everything from the Raiders archives we need.

Not sure what would be missing from the Raiders. Joe Cronin (not the baseball player) and I made several trips to the Raiders years ago and copied all their regular season and playoffs gamebooks. I then scanned them in and gave those files to PFRA. That's what is available on the PFRA website. Maybe we missed something - it's possible.