Caste article from 1991

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An interesting article that demonstrates the caste system was in full swing by 1991. Notice how the article denigrates and attempts to diminish great white players, especially Johnny Unitas.

Unitas, Berry wouldn't measure up today

by Bob Oates
Baltimore Sun Jun 09, 1991 at 12:00 am

Before and after football practice each day, Johnny Unitas spent hour after patient hour creating a football player -- a Hall of Fame-bound quarterback -- a guy named Johnny Unitas.

That was 40 years ago. On the playgrounds and practice fields of his time.

There, morning, afternoon and evening, Unitas at first aimed for -- and then played for -- the old Baltimore Colts.

Endowed with no more than modest talent, he built himself into the National Football League's most famous self-made quarterback by endlessly repeating every little thing that the good ones try to do on every play.

Mostly, Unitas threw the ball to another modest talent, another industrious, self-made Hall of Famer, Raymond Berry, who endlessly repeated every little thing that good wide receivers try do -- on all kinds of plays.

All kinds, that is, except plays requiring wide-receiver speed.

At 40 yards, Berry could hardly beat Unitas, who could not beat anyone.

Still, in their lack of ideal physical qualifications, they were not alone.


In the six or seven decades before the NFL's coaches and scouts started setting minimum standards a few years ago, dozens of good football players who were too slow, too small, too immature, too whatever, played their way into the Pro Bowl and often the Hall of Fame.

Could they do it today? If Unitas and the others were just now turning 21 and coming out of college, could they find a home in pro ball?

"It's doubtful," veteran scout Mike Giddings said the other day. "They'd still be good enough to play the game, but they wouldn't get the chance. [Most 1990s players] are so much bigger and faster and so well trained, even before their rookie training camp, that it would be next to impossible for guys like Raymond Berry and Pete Pihos and most of the other old pros."

The NFL's relatively new 80-man summer roster limit is a "mighty barrier today," according to Giddings, a former NFL coach whose Newport Beach, Calif., scouting company serves 12 pro clubs, two in each division.

"In the old days, there were often 100 or more players in a typical training camp," he said. "If you were talented but undersized in those days, or a hard worker like Unitas, they might bring you in from a college team as a free agent. But no more.

"Today in the average 80-man camp there are 53 veterans, 11 or 12 draft choices and possibly 10 young [retreads] from other teams and camps. The [retreads] have become one of the biggest sources of supply.

"That leaves only five or six places for the college free agents who didn't get drafted -- if that many. Today, if you don't meet at least the minimum standards on their charts, they won't even look at you."

Today the league could not wait for Unitas to create Unitas, as he did in the 1950s, when, standing under 6 feet 1 and weighing less than 200 pounds, he played on semipro teams when no pro club would hire him.

Nor would the modern NFL be likely to give Raymond Berry -- or Steve Largent -- the time to demonstrate that there still is room at the top for slow, diligent wide receivers.

It probably would not accept Danny Fortmann, either, or Willie Wood or Jim Otto or Fred Biletnikoff or Pete Pihos or Jack Ham or Cliff Harris or others who, in other years, earned Pro Bowl or even Hall of Fame distinction although lacking size, speed or other credentials.

It might not even accept Paul Hornung, a Heisman Trophy winner at Notre Dame, still the NFL record-holder in single-season points scored. A college quarterback but no pro quarterback, Hornung -- who on the field had more moves than speed -- was converted to running back in an era when the NFL had the leisure to make such conversions.

Leisure-time hunches are out now. Pressure is in.

The NFL, in fact, is playing a new ballgame in the 1990s with a new kind of carefully measured faster, stronger performer.

"There are precise speed and weight minimums at all positions,"
said actor Bradford Dillman, a personnel hobbyist who works with the San Francisco 49ers during the NFL's draft season. "Say you're an offensive tackle. If you're less than 263 pounds, they won't let you in training camp this year.

"They'd even throw [Hall of Famer] Forrest Gregg back -- the guy Vince Lombardi called the greatest player he ever coached. Forrest weighed a bare 250. Goodbye, Forrest."

As for the ability to hustle, the minimum 40-yard speed is 4.6 seconds, for example, for wide receivers with a D body build.

"D is an ideal body," analyst Duke Babb said at the national scouting combine office in Tulsa, Okla. "A is short and light, B short and heavy, C tall and light."

In the NFL of two or three decades ago, nobody asked about B builds, or even D. Although there probably was as much talent then, proportionately, as there is now, sports science was in its infancy.

The main difference: Until recently, there were few scouts to quantify talent, speed, strength, optimum weight or anything else.

"In the '50s and '60s, we only had one full-time scout for the whole country," said Hall of Famer Sid Gillman, the 1950-59 coach of the Los Angeles Rams.

Hall of Famer Mel Hein, reviewing his long career with the New York Giants, said: "They didn't pull out a watch and time us linebackers. They just watched us on pass defense.
 

jacknyc

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The NFL is just stupid!
They over rely on these metrics.
And we see over and over, that these metrics don't equal quality players.
According to this article, Tom Brady shouldn't be playing in the NFL.
 
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What a BS article. And of course it was in full swing by 1991. It was in partial swing as long ago as the mid seventies when running backs like John Riggins only got to carry in short yardage situations, even though he was the state of Kansas 100 yd dash champ two straight years. He had to yield to staggeringly talented backs like Mike Thomas, Clarence Harmon, and Benny Malone. The same happened to Mark van Eeghen yielding to Clarence Davis.

Again, speed is only one part of the equation. A player with poor hands or poor intelligence leading to poor route running and poor anticipation is as worthless as a headless chicken. How quick and fast is he in full pads? How many times do you see some ball carrier running for a long gain into the end zone and some idiot not only doesn't try to tackle him, he tries to impress the crowd with his speed showing he's just as fast or faster than the ball carrier? In other words, freaking worthless escorts.

4.6 seconds for a wide receiver? Lol. Tell that to Laquon Treadwell, Lil'Jordan Humphrey, Jarvis Landry, or even a great receiver like Jerry Rice. The players of old would also have all the latest nutrition and training methods of today's players. There were no fat guys back then; one of the reasons there are so many injuries today is that too many of these players are carrying too much weight for their skeletal frames.

Go watch films of Biletnikoff: he left some of those world class affletes getting nervous tics trying to anticipate what he was going to do. The NBA analogy would be comparing some point guard with world class speed to someone like Pete Maravich or Ernie Digregorio, players that had more ball handling skills than any Harlem Globetrotter ever dreamed of.
 

white is right

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The NFL is just stupid!
They over rely on these metrics.
And we see over and over, that these metrics don't equal quality players.
According to this article, Tom Brady shouldn't be playing in the NFL.
I tend to agree the league is full of automatons when it comes to scouts and for a while the Patriots exploited the other teams when it came to their orthodox views on what an NFL player is athletically let alone skills wise.

I think the league has changed their views on what a starting qb is and looks like this has overwhelmingly helped Black qb's but some of the original mold busters were White qb's like Flutie, Elway and Garcia and a few others.

I know when the league over looks you it's so hard to rise from the low minor leagues to the NFL as the barriers to rising are similar to the other pro leagues but the injury factor is so much higher than even hockey which is the 2nd most violent major sport.
 
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Don Wassall

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I was listening to Hall of Fame linebacker Jack Ham being interviewed a couple of months ago, someone who has always struck me during his post-NFL announcing career for Penn State as a typical Caste cuck. He was asked about the Combine and the supposed "bigger, faster, stronger" players of today (a cliche which has been ritually spouted for generations now) and whether he would have been able to compete in the current era. He emphatically answered yes, that if the Combine and pro days and the rest of it had been around 50 years ago, the players of that time would have adjusted accordingly through speed and strength training in order to achieve the desired numbers that are deemed so important now. There had been no emphasis on it then and so few were "workout warriors" who looked good in shorts but not necessarily on a football field in full uniform.

I have no doubt that the great Steelers teams of the 1970s would clean up playing against the product offered now. For example, they would have destroyed both the Colts and Broncos, the two teams that played that embarrassing and awful Thursday night game this week.
 
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