Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

The latest issue of "The Coffin Corner" is available for download on the PFRA website.

What's In This Issue:

"State of the PFRA." Executive Director Mark L. Ford discusses election results, the PFRA website, and the 2020 PFRA Convention.

"2019 PFRA Awards." The announcement of the Ralph Hay Award for lifetime achievement in pro football research and historiography, Nelson Ross Award for recent achievement in pro football history and the Bob Carroll Memorial Writing Award for the best "The Coffin Corner" article of the year.

"Hall of Very Good Class of 2019." Biographies of the Class of 2019, written by Elizabeth Fontenot, Matthew Keddie, Jeff Miller and Matt Reaser.

"A Critique of the Official 1950s All-Decade Team" by Andy Piascik. Piascik goes into detail on each selection of the 1950s All-Decade team as determined by the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee. Were these the best players of the decade? Were there better choices? An alternative team is proposed by the author.

"The First Pro Pass, Revisited...Again" by Gregg Ficery. Additional research by the author has discovered an earlier date to the first pro pass. Who was the passer and who caught the pass? The article details that game.

"Detroit's Bid to Land Pro Football's Shrine" by Richard Bak. A detailed account of Detroit's bid for the Pro Football Hall of Fame to be located in the motor city, instead of Canton.

The HOVG is always of interest to me. Looking forward to reading the Class of 2019 bios. Deadline for nominations is usually April 30th if memory serves me right. Are we still on track for that this year now with The Virus among us? Just curious.

ChrisBabcock wrote:Deadline for nominations is usually April 30th if memory serves me right. Are we still on track for that this year now with The Virus among us? Just curious.

That's right, April 30th is still the deadline for HOVG nominations, to be sent to Andy Piascik. There's a notice about it in this issue. Stay tuned to the website and forum for any updates.

This was a great issue.

I agreed with everything Andy said about All-Decade teams. I've said similar on other boards, specifically, I recall saying something like "don't compound a mistake." One thing Andy didn't mention and I don't know if I'd publish it either, but for the Centennial class I think it was kind of an easy/lazy metric to look at for those not inclined to use other sources. Based on how it turned out though, I don't think they anyone over-relied on it. My 1st ranked among the finalists was Dilweg and he actually was all-decade and it didn't matter.

My favorite article is typically the pre-NFL one and this issue didn't disappoint. I can't believe there were back-to-back articles on the first pro-pass. I'm curious if that was planned or whether Gregg F. read the last issue and realized he could write a follow up. I should have recognized the author's name from the upcoming conference information, but I didn't until the end - it clicked for me right when I learned who the center was for that pass.

I haven't gotten to the Detroit article yet, but it looks good too.

Finally, Mark, thanks for writing up the State of the PFRA, it was really well done.

One quibble is that ONE definition of "decade" is "any period of ten years." There is also a definition that is "a period of ten years beginning with a year whose last digit is zero" (the 1950s, the 2010s, for example). Arbitrary? Everything's arbitrary. The calendar is a human construct. But creating a "team of the Decade" for the 1950s is no more arbitrary than creating one for the decade from 1964-1973.

TanksAndSpartans wrote: I can't believe there were back-to-back articles on the first pro-pass. I'm curious if that was planned or whether Gregg F. read the last issue and realized he could write a follow up. I should have recognized the author's name from the upcoming conference information, but I didn't until the end - it clicked for me right when I learned who the center was for that pass.

The back-to-back was sort-of planned. After I submitted my article, Mark Ford and I had a meeting with Gregg about another topic, but he mentioned that he discovered a pass earlier than the ones mentioned in my article. We thought it would be a good idea to publish them in back-to-back issues.

Glad that you enjoyed the issue!!