I was looking for something new to read and stumbled on Benny Friedman’s biography written by Murray Greenberg. It was great - I highly recommend it. I thought Sammy Baugh was the first great forward passer, so this was definitely an eyeopener for me. The book had lots of great Big Ten and NFL history in there too. Of course, it was from the perspective of Friedman’s career, but you definitely got a feel for who the other great teams and players were at the time. Heck, even the Ironton Tanks were mentioned. From the Chicle set alone, I recall the following players mentioned: Molenda (Friedman's Michigan teammate), Clark, Kenneally, Presnell, Strong, Rockne (coached famous 1930 game against Giants to raise money for unemployment relief during the depression (Giants won 22-0!)), Battles, Edwards, Kelly, Hinkle, Burnett, Nagurski, Masterson (maybe), Hap Moran (matchbooks).
And from a trivia perspective - who knew Red Grange had a brother who played for the Bears? Not me.
Back in post #43, Jeff did a great write up on the Spalding set, but I think it’s really interesting that most (all?) of the population of cards can be traced to relatively recent finds (90 and 96?)
Here is a circa 2005 net54 thread where at least one collector was a little skeptical because the finds were so recent. Are collectors mostly ok with that now?
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthr...t=78201&page=2
I'm guessing I may not be alone, but when I looked over the checklist, I didn't recognize many names. College football was way more popular than the fledgling NFL so it wasn't surprising that for:
PEGGY FLOURNOY, ED GARBISCH, HOMER HAZEL, and SWEDE OBERLANDER
I didn't find any NFL record.
Similarly:
WALTER KOPPISCH, ED MCGINLEY, BO MCMILLAN, HARRY STUHLDREHER, BRICK MULLER, and EDDIE TYRON
had short NFL careers.
Two players contributed to NFL championship teams:
ED WEIR, 3 seasons in NFL incl. the 26 champion Yellow Jacket team
GEORGE “Wildcat” WILSON, 4 seasons in NFL incl. the 28 champion Steam Roller team; For more info on Wilson, see Jeff’s post #6 (different set)
And of course Grange, Nevers, and Friedman (better late than never) went on to the HOF.
Jeff/Carl and everyone have already done a tremendous job posting images, but is there any way I could see the bio backs for Friedman and Wilson? I'd love to read those. Thanks.