Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

The legendary Ed Sabol was born 100 years ago today.

Is(are) Ed(& Steve) Sabol the most influential or most important person(s) in modern NFL history?

Hail Casares wrote:Is(are) Ed(& Steve) Sabol the most influential or most important person(s) in modern NFL history?

If you are going to draw the line at 1960, I would have to put Pete Rozelle on the list, along with Landry and Lombardi.

I always thought it was interesting in that if you draw up a list of the ten most important people in the history of Baseball, most of them are players (Ruth, Robinson, Cobb, Williams, Mantle etc.) but when you draw up a list of the ten most important people in the history of Pro Football, few of them are players, instead they are guys like Rozelle, Halas, Lombardi, Landry, Paul Brown, Walsh, and perhaps Ed and Steve Sabol. The only players who would crack the top ten, I think, would be Jim Brown and Jerry Rice although some might argue for Unitas or somebody else.

Rupert Patrick wrote:

Hail Casares wrote:Is(are) Ed(& Steve) Sabol the most influential or most important person(s) in modern NFL history?

If you are going to draw the line at 1960, I would have to put Pete Rozelle on the list, along with Landry and Lombardi.

I always thought it was interesting in that if you draw up a list of the ten most important people in the history of Baseball, most of them are players (Ruth, Robinson, Cobb, Williams, Mantle etc.) but when you draw up a list of the ten most important people in the history of Pro Football, few of them are players, instead they are guys like Rozelle, Halas, Lombardi, Landry, Paul Brown, Walsh, and perhaps Ed and Steve Sabol. The only players who would crack the top ten, I think, would be Jim Brown and Jerry Rice although some might argue for Unitas or somebody else.

I'd put Hutson on the list. Working with Isbell, he basically created the modern passing game: Crisp, well-defined routes and timing passes came out of their two-man workouts in the parking lot of the paper company where they both worked during the off-season. And Hutson showed that the forward pass could be a primary offensive weapon, not just a desperate attempt to pick up a first down in a long-yardage situation.

Baugh might belong on the list for much the same reason. Baugh's passing and Hutson's receiving paved the way for Paul Brown's use of the forward pass, which is the root of all modern passing attacks. (Bill Walsh gets far too much credit for the WCO; he and Brown developed it together and it was not all that different from what Brown was doing when Otto Graham was his QB.)

I honestly don't know why Jim Brown or Jerry Rice would be on the list. Sure, they were both great players, but they didn't change the game. I don't see how Jim Brown had any more effect on football than, say, Bronko Nagurski or Marion Motley or, for that matter, Gale Sayers or Walter Payton. And Rice certainly didn't affect the game in the way that Hutson did.

I'd put Bert Bell on this list too