Red Grange

[Senator]

I was at half price books the other day and found a gem of a book called "The Scrapbook History of Pro Football". It was written around 1976 and goes back to the beginning of football and tracks the seasons in newspaper articles. It is very compelling reading.

I noticed the complete change in depth of articles and sense of football importance when Red Grange enters the scene. It was a real obvious, in your face moment. I found this website about Grange that is one of the strangest, yet oddly beautiful sites I have ever seen. Make sure you click EXPERIENCE and go slow, put some headphones on and enjoy it. This isn't a rush through, click through, I have no attention span type of site. It is shilling his bio but done very well.

http://www.garyandrewpoole.com/main.html

[Grammaticus]

The movie "Leatherheads" sort of plays off this in their fictional / comedic version of pro footballs ascention. Not a very good movie though.

I guess the story goes, Grange going pro provided a legitimacy to pro football that helped it make the move to center stage.

[Hurst2112]

My high school used to be called the Kaukauna Tigers. Around 1924, they changed their name to The Kaukauna (Galloping) Ghosts. It's been their nickname ever since. clever that the Tigers' colors were orange and black. that fit well with the ghost theme. Needless to say, our games around halloween were really sorta cool, even for this druggy, marching band dude. lol

Not the only school to do so but I'm guessing it had a midwest flair even back then, even before his legend reached across the nation.

I really dig Halas' quote to Chris Berman about Grange:

I was interviewing George Halas and I asked him who is the greatest running back you ever saw. And he said, 'That would be Red Grange.' And I asked him if Grange was playing today, how many yards do you think he'd gain. And he said, 'About 750, maybe 800 yards.' And I said, 'Well, 800 yards is just okay.' He sat up in his chair and he said, 'Son, you must remember one thing. Red Grange is 75 years old.'

[stevew]

I went to the HOF the other day. Other than seeing some busts that didn't belong coughSwannMonkcough, it was an amazing trip. I'd suggest that any fan try make the trek at least once in their life.

One thing I never knew is that a lot of the old jerseys actually had cod piece type fronts sewn in for the guy to put a cup into. Sort of like a baby one-sie. I guess they didn't have to worry about whether or not their jersey was tucked in.

[Hurst2112]

I'm really hoping to get to the HOF this year. I'd love to see Rod Woodson enshrined. I got drunk one night and leased his page on profootballreference.com

\m/

[stevew]

I gotta find info on tickets and stuff. I don't care too much about the preseason game, but it would be great to get to go to an induction ceremony. It's probably around 75 miles from where I live.

Definitely going if Hines Ward or Ben ever make it.

[Wolfpack]

A regret I've had about the time I spent living in Michigan was not making it to the HoF since it was only about 3.5 hours away. However, the only times we were ever in that part of Ohio were on the various trips we were making back and forth to North Carolina to visit family, so there really wasn't time to just stop in and look around. First it was not possible to do because my wife and I were trying to make the 14-hour drive in a day, then it became impossible because we had young children (girls at that), which meant we broke up the drive into two days, but it was taxing on everyone to be on the road for even eight hours. Didn't stop me from asking/looking at it wistfully as we drove past, but the wife wasn't budging. *sigh*