CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Five => Big Ten => Topic started by: OrangeAfroMan on May 07, 2025, 09:00:34 PM
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Do you think doing a top 100 players at each position would be doable?
Is it a fool's errand?
Inspired by Bill James' Baseball Almanac, which was inspired by him and a friend wondering if there were 100 better catchers all-time than Mike MacFarlane, how difficult might this task be?
Have I posted this before? I'm getting deja vu as I type this.
Anyways, it's the off-season and it's a long summer.
If I did this (or we did this), I'm of 2 minds:
1 - all players considered for the list, or
2 - make it P4/P5/Pwhatever only, and set the 1-year wonders aside on their own list (G5 could have their own as well).
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I assume most here would prefer 1, but if anyone has an opinion, speak up.
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100 might be a little much for some positions, or a little light for others, like O line, etc. Probably would need a top 500 for that position group.
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that's a lot of work, something fora fulltime guy or crew of guys
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We could start with this century.
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I wonder of the value of lists and rankings, generally. But have at it.
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Might want to decide up front if you want to allow a recency bias or not.
I'm of the opinion that almost all modern day athletes would blow the doors off of the old-timey fan favorites, if for nothing more than advances in training, nutrition, etc. And, frankly, we have the entire pool of talent in more modern times which gives us a better creme da la creme. Prior to a certain point, we only had the white kids, and the best of a smaller population almost certainly isn't going to produce the caliber of athlete as will the best of a larger population.
Others, of course, prefer to rank players according to their time, i.e., how good they were for their day. Which is really hard, I'd think, since we don't have a lot of footage to evaluate for that.
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how about just a top 100 players overall? I nominate Charles Woodson to be on that. he was really fucking good.
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I usually think about how players ranked "in their time". I played volley ball against the starting tight end at UGA, nice fellow, good TE, but he would get mashed in today's game.
Was Charlie Trippi a good offensive back? Of course, in his day he was. He weighted 186 pounds. In today's game? Safety maybe? He would bulk up.
Was Fran Tarkenton a good college QB? 6'0" and 190 lbs.
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This century. Maybe the '90's. Tough to go further back. Everything is so much different.