Episode 4 - The NFL Draft

In the beginning, there was college football. Saturday stadiums filled with smoke and sound. Marching bands roared. Legends were born in leather helmets and bloody jerseys. College ruled the land, far behind in its shadow. Professional football took its first uncertain steps. Leagues in name only. Teams rolled and folded like poker hands. Players were signed in bars, paid in cash and replaced by mourning. There were few rules. No fairness. Just money. For the teams that had

it. But in 1936, inside a smoke -filled ballroom at the Ritz -Carlton in Philadelphia, a desperate man with a dead last football team made a bold proposal. What if the worst team picked first? That man was Bert Bell. That idea, the NFL draft. No cameras, no red carpets, just paper, pencils and hope. And in that moment, the future of pro football was rewritten. This is where the spectacle began. This is how the league found its balance.

This is a Sporting Almanac podcast. morning ben morning jack good to see you face to face in my living room yes very nice to see you too happy easter happy easter to you too thank you for my egg you're very welcome i hope you enjoy it and i've only eaten about half of mine so far which is restrained by uh my standards so uh we'll start off as usual roundup of uh previous weekend sporting action so starting off with our main event um we had a Good evening watching

the snooker on Saturday night. We did. A bit of a shock in play. As we know, we talked about last week, Curse of the Crucible, where the previous year's winner never wins and never retains their title. And Kyron Wilson, last year's champion, got knocked out by 21 -year -old Chinese player Li Paifan in a deciding frame in a very, very good performance from the young man. And a good fight back as well from Kyron Wilson after he looked dead and buried in the game. Great game

all round. We enjoyed that, didn't we Ben? We did, yeah. We were the only two people watching it in the pub, which was turning some heads because we were reacting unceremoniously. Well, I'd say probably a bigger reaction than people used to for snookers in the bar watching snooker. Yeah, no, it's good, but I do think you made a mistake,

Jack. I think referring to it as a shock. is a misstep considering it is absolutely regulation for the reigning champ to go out indeed yes fair play i mean obviously in in terms of uh ranking places it was a shock in terms of um expectations it was a shock but in terms of the crucible curse it's bang on the money yeah so if you did bet on karen rilson as we told you not to um well egg on your face indeed yeah There's also some other fun news from qualifying in the World Champs,

with a chap from Wales getting two 1 -4 -7s in the same game in qualifying, therefore securing himself a bonus of £147 ,000 without even qualifying for the tournament. Impressive. So that was good. I can't remember the chap's name. I'll see if I can find it. Jackson Page. Jackson Page, well done. In other sporting news... Both Arsenal teams, as expected, into the semi -final of the Champions League. Lovely. The ladies had a difficult

first leg, though, against Lyon. So they're having to come back from 2 -1 down in the away leg, which may be a bridge too far, but we shall see. Yeah, going away to Lyon will be a challenge, to say the least. But, you know. Yeah, you never know. And Liverpool are one win now away from the Premier League title. Which is good news for you. Good news for me. Yeah. Was there any other sport on this weekend that needs recapping? Yes. There was the Saudi Grand Prix. Yes. Oscar

Piastri won the Saudi Grand Prix. The IPL is ongoing. The Butler, 97, red. The Red Roses won again in the Women's Six Nations. So it's a Grand Slam decider against France, which will be... It's not a guaranteed win. Yeah. Anyway, so... What's coming up? So as we've already mentioned, a big game this weekend in the women's Six Nations, the England Red Roses against France in a Grand Slam decider. So go the Red Roses. Yeah. And you said Eubank Junior versus Connor Byrne in

the boxing. Should be some fun. Otherwise, I think it's a fairly quiet week. Obviously, you've got your regulation fixtures in the football, the rugby, the county championship, the IPL and cricket. There's a skipped week in the Formula One, but they're going to Miami after that. And I think that's probably it for your headline events this week, actually. Fairly low -key weekend after a bumper Easter. But there is one big event coming up this week. There is, Jack. Where are

we going? This week, I couldn't be happier. This week, we are going to Green Bay, Wisconsin for the 2025 NFL Draft. It's very exciting. It is very exciting. And you're very much going to be driving this one because this is your wheelhouse. I think it's fair to say and for me to concede that you have a much wider pool of knowledge than I do when it comes to American sports. And perhaps your first love of American sports is American football. Yes, I would say so. I've

been reading a lot of books on this. I've been doing a lot of research. I'm very, very excited by this one. With no further ado, shall we crack on with the NFL Draft? Let's. And, you know, why don't you start as we like to do, Jack, by just giving us the basics. Giving you the basics. So the basics are the NFL Draft is an annual event in which all the NFL teams, in reverse order of how they finished the previous year, pick from incoming college players to join their

teams. The best players in college football the previous season will all be available to pick. And in order to keep the league balanced, keep the league fair, and I'll go into the history of why they do that shortly, but in order to keep it balanced and fair, they pick in reverse order of how they finished the previous season. So the team with the worst records, which this season is the Tennessee Titans, will pick first.

And the team who won the Super Bowl, which last season was the Philadelphia Eagles, will pick last. We'll pick 32nd, I should say. And it goes over seven rounds. And each team will pick in that order unless they have traded their picks or they have been, in a couple of cases, punished by having picks withdrawn. I believe the Atlanta Falcons were a bit keen on Kirk Cousins and approached him earlier than they should have done. So they've lost a round five pick, for example. But yeah,

that's basically how it works. It was created to level the playing field. Bad teams get early picks. Good teams get to pick later. Meaning the star players from college football should find themselves at the worst teams and should keep the league relatively balanced. It's a boss idea. I absolutely love this about American sports. Like the draft system just stops basically rich oligarchs, investment bankers from just buying out sports as a hobby and dominating it. I think

like the most... The NFL wins by any single franchise is only like seven or something. I think it's the Patriots with six followed by the, oh no, level with the Steelers with six, yeah, and then the 49ers with five and the Cowboys with five behind. So yeah, in over 50 years of the NFL in the Super Bowl era, started in 1967, there have been, no team has won it more than seven times, which when you compare it to, let's compare it to the Premier League, for example, in the

past. 30 years has been dominated largely by two teams out of Manchester, so it goes to show there is benefit to doing that. And the same with a lot of other sports leagues around the world. And no one's ever won it three times in a row? No, no one's ever won it three times in a row. It has been defended, but never done three times in a row. It would have been three times in a row this season had the Kansas City Chiefs. Not being absolutely pummeled by the Eagles.

I think this happened a couple of times recently as well, wasn't it? The Patriots made a couple. Yes, yeah. Three times in a row. Yeah, but it's a hard league to dominate and the reason behind that is the draft. There is salary caps as well. It's a league designed for fairness and I can go into the history and I can tell you why it's a league designed by fairness because it was a league created in the first place essentially

to strive to find a bit of balance. And that sort of mentality has been taken forward over time. Yes, boss. Shall I dive into the history then? Yeah, where it all began. Where it all began. Well, as I said in the intro, where it all began was college football. College football was the biggest, in the early 20th century, in the 1910s, 1920s, two sports dominated American sport more than any other. Baseball, of course.

Naturally. And college football. which in certain parts of the country it certainly still does, especially in the south, in Texas. College football was a resoundingly amateur sport. There was big links between college football and the Olympic movement. A lot of college players would play football in the winter and would do athletics, either decathlon and events like that in the summer. So you'd end up with a lot of Olympians coming out of it, such as Jim Thorpe, famously.

who was a gold medal winner at the 1912 Olympics and also a college football star. On the back of this, the early days of professional football in America was there were professional clubs, they would pay players and they would pay players in order to get their fans in. They'd pay a star like Jim Thorpe, for example, to come and play for them, advertise it heavily and try and get as many fans through the gate as they possibly

can. But what they'd find was it was impossible to maintain a sort of level of fan affection for your team. when the bloke who played for you this week would be playing for the other team the week after. Guns for hire. Guns for hire. And while they would get a lot of people through the door, these big names, there was no consistency. The bidding wars between the teams was costing the owners a lot of money,

and it was to no one's benefit, really. The fans weren't getting as good a product as they want, and the owners certainly weren't, because they were having to pay too much money for inconsistence.

inconsistent staff i mean that's a pretty wild setup i guess it's very american though just basically try and put on the best show possible hire people as and when they become available yeah so so in 1920 i mean the professional football was barely a footnote it's just a ragtag collection of teams struggling for survival scraping together rosters however they could but that tide was turning because um in 1920 in canton ohio there was an try and bring some structure to the chaos.

Originally called the American Professional Football Association, it was at first little more than a loose collection of small town teams, car dealerships doubling up as meeting houses for the owners, and players who generally worked second jobs during the week and would just supplement their income with the money made from football. So the first season of the APFA in 1920 had 14 teams

playing in it. and see if you can use your mind and work out which of these teams are still in the NFL today, because there are a couple of them. The Akron Pros, the Buffalo All -Americans, the Campton Bulldogs, the Chicago Cardinals, the Chicago Tigers, the Cleveland Tigers, the Columbus Panhandles, the Dayton Triangles, the Decatur Stalys, the Detroit Heralds, the Hammond Pros, the Muncie Flyers, the Rochester Jeffersons,

and the Rock Island Independents. I reckon one of those two Chicago teams, the Cleveland team, the Buffalo team. I think that's probably the best I can recount. Chicago Cardinals. Now the Bears. No, Chicago Cardinals, now the Arizona Cardinals. Ah, okay. So the Chicago Cardinals later became the Louis Cardinals and then became the Phoenix Cardinals and then the Arizona Cardinals. So in the classic history of American sports.

And also the more surprising one of those was the Decatur Stalys, who, as you correctly pointed out, now known as the Chicago Bears. Yeah, I thought the Bears would still be kicking around. I'm surprised that Buffalo not. No, no. That's not the Bills. Buffalo were a little bit down the line. But yeah, so there you go. And over the next few years, more familiar names would join the league. The Philadelphia Eagles would

join. The Pittsburgh Pirates initially became the Pittsburgh Steelers would join with little success at first. And the Eagles would become fairly influential in our topic. They certainly would. actually lends us quite nicely to moving on to the next stage. So from 1922 onwards, the league structure stayed relatively the same. Teams playing an undefined number of games per season. And at the end of it, they'd look at the records and try and decide who the champion

was. It was very, very all over the place like that. But in 1922, they did make one decision which has stuck to this day. They renamed the league the National Football League. It's quite

famous now. Quite famous now, indeed. professional football teams were getting college players to play for them affecting the college players eligibility and obviously that was shall we say royally pissing off the colleges as you can imagine so there was a lot of fight back from the colleges and the NFL or the the APFA as it originally was was founded on several principles one was making sure games were getting scheduled consistently One was making sure that there was better control

over the selecting of college players and the use of college players and making sure it was after their college careers have ended that they were being used and also just to generally promote the game of American football. So the draft was a natural progression to this. At the time, the NFL was a mess of imbalance. There were a handful of successful franchises, the Chicago Bears and New York Giants. They could sign whatever player they wanted. Money talked. There was no rules

to stop them. The weaker teams, last year after year, with no way out that they could see. And Bert Bell and his Philadelphia Eagles, his team were broke. His stadium was half empty every week. He couldn't attract talent no matter how hard he tried. So he proposed something radical. A college draft where the worst teams pick first, the best teams would have to wait their turn. He called it a system of competitive parity. And the other owners, surprisingly, agreed with

him. That is boss, though. That's some people with the interests of their sport in mind and not their own self -interest. And that is definitely lost in most sports. It was an understanding that what benefited the league as a whole benefited the teams themselves. Fans do not want to go to watch a sport where it's a foregone conclusion every week, where there's lopsided scores. They know there's no chance for their team to succeed.

They don't want to support a team. They don't want to turn up week on week when the team's getting back. That still happens to this day. Even in a popular sport like the NFL, teams who are struggling struggle to sell out their stadiums, and that's no good for anyone. Having a competitive league, while it might make it slightly harder to achieve success, which is the ultimate goal of sports, it makes it easier to consistently

achieve. You bounce the books. It's good because, like you say, even when you're getting smoked, there's a way out. It might not happen overnight. It might take a little while. That's it. You've touched upon it. It's that word, that most important word in sport. Hope. Exactly, man. That is spot on, really. It's the New York Jets, of whom I am unfortunately a fan. Every season when you're 2 -7 or whatever you are, when the season's gone,

it gives you hope for the next year. You know you can go ahead and you can start looking at the mock drafts and start planning for the next season and start thinking about what you're going to do with that top five pick that you're inevitably going to end up with next season. Jacksonville Jags. Exactly. It's hope. It gives you something

to look forward to even when all is lost. It gives you reason to be optimistic when in any other sport, in any other country in the world, There just wouldn't be any New York Jets fans left because it's been so long since they've had any real success. It's not the same thing because obviously the NFL is a franchise system and there isn't a relegation promotion aspect to it. But it's the same principle as the pyramid structure of domestic football. There's a way

to the top. There is a way to the top. And that gives you your fans hope. It romanticizes it. It allows you or it builds up a tolerance, should we say, for performance or struggles. But that also makes like that is part of sport, isn't it? That's part of the reason why you and I love it is because it makes the good times sweeter when you've been rubbish. It does. Like if you dominate all the time, then you become entitled.

And that's no good for anyone either. But anyway, sorry, we're digressing because we get philosophical about this stuff. We get romantic about this stuff. Romantic's the right word. But no, I think it's unreal. And I think Mr. Bell deserves a lot of credit for his suggestion. And to be fair, I think all the other owners in the league at the time also deserve a lot of credit for seeing the bigger picture because you wouldn't have

the iconic, the long -lasting, the majesty. of the nfl that you have today without that proposal yeah it was it was a difficult start they were struggling with um stability teams coming teams leaving um teams going broke and it it was one of the key factors i think in stabilizing the league and allowing it um to get to the point there's only been since since this point in history since just before the war it's only been a small handful of teams maybe three teams i think they've

dropped out of the nfl since then They have gained teams over the years. Obviously, leagues expanded, expansion drafts, entire leagues being absorbed into it, which we'll come to. But yeah, I think one of the key reasons has been the draft. And as I said, the first one was held on the 8th of February, 1936. So now we've got the draft. Yeah. You want to start telling us about the draft? The Ritz -Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia, the first NFL draft. Nine teams, nine rounds,

81 total selections. As I said, no combine, no scouting departments, no television coverage, no red carpet. Teams relying on newspaper clippings, word of mouth, gut instinct. Sounds a lot like what it's still like today, to be honest. They just put some frills and bows around it. Yeah, gut instinct certainly still plays a part of it, and sometimes for the best, sometimes for the worst. I mean, players weren't even told

they were drafted. Some of them only found out weeks later when they read it in the newspaper. That's absolutely mental. It's incredible. That is actually mental. I've got another goof story. The very first pick, number one pick of the very first draft, was a man named Jay Berwanger. He was picked, as you would imagine, by the Philadelphia Eagles, Bert Bell's team, who had the first pick. He was a halfback out of the University of Chicago, and he was the first ever winner of a trophy

known as the Downtown Athletic Club Trophy. which was at the time reserved for the most valuable player east of the Mississippi. But the following year was expanded to the whole country and was named after the recently deceased athletic director of the Downtown Athletic Club, John Heisman. Oh, that guy's kind of famous these days. And yes, it has been awarded every season to the best college football player. The Heisman Trophy, the first ever winner, Jay Berwanger. He was

drafted number one by the Eagles. He was a bona fide star. He was fast, tough, nationally known. He was the kind of player their team could build their franchise around. There was one problem, though. He didn't want to play. He asked for $1 ,000 a game, which was a high price, especially in the Depression era that this was, and the Eagles simply couldn't afford it. I think he wanted $15 ,000 for the season. They offered,

I think, $13 ,500, which seems like... Small change nowadays, even with inflation taken into account. So they traded his rights to the Chicago Bears, who couldn't meet his demands either. So in the end, Jay Boehringer never played a single down in the NFL. What an idiot. Instead, he took a job working for a rubber company. He did quietly admit later that he regretted not playing, but by then he had moved on and so had

the game. He kept his Heisman Trophy, and unsure what to leave it, he left it as, Ant's house, and she used it as a doorstop for years. What a dope, man. I mean, yeah, it's a different era. The same trophy now rests in the University of Chicago's Hall of Fame. So, there you go. Yeah. I mean, he's got his place in history, I guess. It counts for something. Yeah. He was the first. He was the prototype. I wish someone did that today. I know. So, there we are. That was the

very first draft. As I mentioned, it's still going on to this day. It's a well -regulated system. It's designed to give every team a shot at success. Teams are able to trade their picks as well. If you want to acquire a player during the season or before a season, you can use your draft picks to trade for them, or you can trade within the draft itself and move yourself higher

in the draft. some teams are better at doing that than others some teams certainly are and uh the draft rotates location every year nowadays and this year as i mentioned it is in green bay wisconsin um which is the smallest city to host an nfl club and one of the main long -term success stories of the league very successful also very bloody cold in green very cold especially in february yeah especially in april now isn't it and they uh When Green Bay get to the postseason,

when they get to the playoffs and they get a home drive, it is often a factor, I suspect, in their ability to progress. Just a home field advantage, just your classic home field advantage, like minus 20, snowing, horrible. Indeed. I might be exaggerating slightly with attempts, but still. No, no, you're definitely not. So each team is limited by time. So in the first round, you get 10 minutes. In the second round, you get seven

minutes. The first round is held on Thursday, and then later rounds are held on later days, but all the attention is on the first round, really. If time expires on a pick, the team don't lose the pick, but the next team can jump ahead of them and can pick before them. I've read about this a few times. It's quite fun. It has happened. Yeah, it has happened. It's kind of interesting. It means you just missed the opportunity to draw someone. if someone else picks him before you,

right? Essentially, you lose your spot in the draft. You move down one, someone can sneak in before you. Yeah, and then you can just slip it. You could still make a selection. It must be annoying for everyone if you get out of sync, to be honest. It shouldn't happen, but it does happen. Especially because, as I mentioned, you can trade during the draft. So if you're knee -deep in trying to get a trade through, then yeah, it can take over. You also get compensatory

picks as well. So this is linked to... free agents if teams lose free agents and are deemed to have been put at a disadvantage because of it um they may be awarded extra picks which are later in the draft rounds three to seven um so yeah if you're a new you might be coming on to this jack so i might be jumping the gun slightly but when they do have expansions and there's new franchises they automatically get first pick yeah and you also have an expansion draft where this is a

second type of draft that can occur where uh teams have can protect a certain number of their players, but then the new team gets to pick from the remainder. So it means they will have a competitive squad from season one is the idea. So everything is, everything is aimed at, um, uh, consist at, uh, fairness. Yeah. Nobody gets a competitive advantage through finances, which is usually where the disparity emerges. There's some traditions linked with the draft as well. Um, famously you

have mystery irrelevant. Oh, yeah. The very last pick in the draft, and it's a bit of a tongue -in -cheek title. But some have gone on to success. Most recently, Brock Purdy in 2022, who has had a very successful start to his NFL career with the 49ers, including playing in the Super Bowl. Yeah. Although he lost. He did lose to... Who did he lose to again? Chiefs. Yeah, I was going to say. I thought it was the Chiefs. I was going to guess the Chiefs, but... It would be... A

good guess. Yeah. So teams sometimes bring in celebrity fans, maybe military members or even mascots to announce picks in the draft as well. The only one that I know of off the top of my head is I know that Bradley Cooper is a massive Eagles fan. Yeah. If anyone has ever seen Silver Linings playbook, they weave that in quite heavily into that storyline. Well, anyone who's ever watched a Philadelphia Eagles game, he's usually there. He certainly was there for the Super Bowl

this year. But yeah, it's become a massive televised

event. Hundreds of thousands of fans. attending in person but as i mentioned it wasn't always like that um so what we're going to do is we're going to take a a decade by decade walk through the history of the draft and whistle stop i'll tell you yeah just a whistle stop i'll tell you a few cool stories i'll tell you a few notable picks whether they went on to achieve success or otherwise and um then we're gonna have a go at discussing some of the better picks and some

of the worst picks indeed some of the uh The draft busts. Yeah. I'll start off with a comfortable place for us, Ben, the 1940s. Oh, this is our sweet spot. Are we going four for four? We are going four for four. Let's hear it. So over 600 NFL players served in the war effort, and some of them never came back. Other players, such as Chuck Bedmerick, who was drafted in 1949, had already become a war hero. before he was even drafted and before he even went to college.

In the 1943 draft, famously included players who were already in uniform with teams gambling on futures they may never see. It was a strange time, but the league kept going during the war, ostensibly for the benefit of the morale of the people. I think there's a certain amount of justification for that. America's a big place. It kept going with replacement players. other players getting opportunities who might not otherwise. Would have felt pretty... No, do I comment on that?

I don't know. What's that? I was going to say, very able -bodied chaps still playing in the National Football League whilst other able -bodied chaps giving up their place in the National Football League. Yeah, it's a fair comment. I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of people who made that comment at the time. In fact, there certainly were plenty of people making that comment at the time. But there were obviously good reasons as well for... people to still be on the home front during the

war effort. Yeah, of course. And a lot of them were. I'm being a dick. A lot of the players were working during the week and just playing at weekends. All I was trying to comment on, Jack, is I would rather be playing in the National Football League than on Iwo Jima. I think that is a fair comment indeed. So drafts continued despite the war. Many draftees, as I said, went straight into service. And the 1943 draft, as

a result, had a... Had a record 32 rounds as teams desperately tried to fill their rosters that were depleted by enlistments. And it was common for players at this point to debut years after being selected for obvious reasons. In order to keep going, some teams even merged and became single teams. The Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers united to become a single team who were called the Steagles. I like it. With player numbers so low, they merged

for one season. It was wartime improvisation at its finest and was described by one of their players as the NFL taking two bad teams and making them worse. Worst of both worlds. So I've got a couple of notable war stories because, after all, we love a war story. We do. And these are two very good war stories, I think. So the first one is about a man called Alblosis. Alb? Al Blosis. Oh, okay. Nice. Al Blosis. So, Al. Yes. He was, shall we say, a towering figure. He was 6 '6

and 250 pounds. He was an immovable force in the offensive line in New York for the New York Giants. He was drafted in the fifth round of the 1942 NFL Draft. So perhaps it's not a man that you want to come across either on a football pitch or a battlefield. No. His massive frame made him a very imposing offensive tackle in the offensive line. And in his rookie season,

he quickly became a starter for the Giants. For two seasons, he powered through defences, showing the same strength that made him a track and field star as well at college. I bet he was devilishly handsome too. His presence was undeniable. But war changed that. War changed the direction his life takes. He was desperate to join the military. So as we were saying, there's reasons people might not be in the military. And one reason for Al was he simply was too tall to join the

military. That's mental. They had a size limit for practical reasons. Tanks. Yeah, for simply fitting within certain transport vehicles and also for other logistical reasons. You couldn't serve on the front lines as a man of his height. But he kept pushing, he kept pushing, kept asking for active duty. And as you can imagine, he was a persistent man. And eventually he was inducted into the army in 1943, initially serving, as you probably also would imagine, as a physical

instructor. But he wasn't happy with a desk job and he underwent officer training at Fort Benning. And during his officer training, he set an army record for the longest hand grenade throw. So I should point out that when I say this guy... Well, who's keeping those records? I love it. I should have mentioned when he was in college, he was a shot putter with 17 .61 meters. But

no one shot puts grenades. And earned him a place on the US track and field team and in the track and field hall of fame years later, believe it or not. but he could throw a grenade 94 yards and 2 feet, which is a bit over 80 metres, which is a heck of a throw. So he also could have been an outfielder in baseball. He probably could have been, but he was nicknamed the Human Howitzer as a result. Which I think is a very good and very fair nickname. That is very good. So he

was a second lieutenant. He has a gun arm, he's 6 '6", weighs the same amount as a car, was a monster on the defensive line. held a record for shot -putting and throwing grenades. And demanded to be a front -line soldier in the army. Interesting dude. Which he got. He was assigned to the 28th Infantry Division as a second lieutenant, I should say, because it's the American army,

not a second luf -tenant. His platoon was in the Vosges Mountains of France, scouting enemy positions, and on the 21st of January 1945, two of his men went missing during a patrol. Without hesitation, Al volunteered to search for them alone, despite the dangers of the enemy lines. Sorry, did you just say alone? Alone. Okay. He was never seen again. That's unsurprising. Jesus. Do we know what happened to him? So he was initially listed as missing in action in April 1945. It

was confirmed that he had died. His body was never recovered, but his legacy and his sacrifice. Of course, live on. That's a miserable ending, mate. You were gearing me up for like, I don't know, whatever the high medal of honour stuff. I've got another story. I'm sorry for Al. Yeah. The New York Giants retired his number, which was a rare gesture at the time. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1986.

And his story even made the comic books where, as I said, he was immortalized as the human howitzer. But the New York Giants number 32 is still retired to this day. That's boss. Yeah. That's a nice ending. There's an athletic center in Germany, United States Athletic Center, that was named after him as well. So, yeah. He's got a legacy and rightly so. Yeah, he was a man that when duty called, he left behind a very promising career for a higher call of service. And paid

the ultimate price. So that's Al Blosus. Al Blosus is a pretty wonderful dude by the sounds of things. Yeah. I have another story anyway. A second story. I'm not going to say whether this one ends happily or not. Oh, okay. So this one starts in 1937 at Notre Dame. Notre Dame, you mean? Notre Dame, I do apologize. 40 ,000 fans watching Notre Dame versus USC. Score was tied. The Fighting Irish. Full -back Mario Tonelli, wearing number 58, burst into the open field with a dazzling 68

-yard run. He tore towards the Trojan goal line and bringing the Fighting Irish to the cusp of victory. On the very next play, he drove the ball in himself, touched down, the stadium exploded with joy. The run will go down in Notre Dame history, but for Tonelli, a different future was ahead of him. I can't possibly guess what it might have been. He was the son of Italian immigrants from suburban Chicago. He'd suffered burns over a lot of his body when he was a child.

Doctors saying he might never walk again. But both his father and Mario himself didn't accept that. He walked, he ran, and he became a football star. So in 1940, he was drafted with the 195th pick of the draft by the Chicago Cardinals, his hometown team. But when the world itself began to burn... Mario set aside his game. That was very nicely done, can I just say. Thank you. Saying he has a duty to serve. He joined the army in 1941. And on December 7th, 1941, he was

stationed at Clarkfield in the Philippines. And later that day, bombs fell on Pearl Harbor and the United States were drawn into the war. Pearl Harbor's quite a historic moment. So he... The garrison there held out for five months until the 9th of April 1942. He held out with his brothers -in -arms, starving, sick in the jungles of Bataan. And then came the Bataan Death March, which you

may have heard of. That doesn't sound nice. 60 miles with no food and no water, men collapsing from first, shot in the back if they slowed down. Mario Tonelli was, at the time, 200 pounds of muscle and resolve. He was stripped of everything except one item. his Notre Dame class ring, which he still had on him. A Japanese guard spotted it, demanded it. Tonelli refused to hand it over until a friend whispered to him, no ring is worth dying for. So reluctantly, he handed his ring

over to the Japanese guard. But just a few moments later, this is one of the best things I've listened to this. A few moments later, a Japanese officer approached him and in perfect English said to him, did one of my men take something from you? Tonelli nodded and said, yes, my Notre Dame ring. And the officer handed it back to him saying, I studied in America at USC. I saw the game in 1937. I know who you are and I know what this ring means to you. Whoa. And then he walked away.

So just in that second, an enemy had become a

fellow man, a lifeline. That's also, I mean, like if anybody knows anything about the general history of... the japanese's conduct in world war ii they were not renowned for their empathy or their humanity at various stages so i mean i'm not i'm casting aspersions on all japanese soldiers there but those sorts of stories are fairly rare i think yeah that's pretty cool um he kept the ring hidden anyway for three and a half years through the marches through the

torture through through the marches through torture through starvation uh he survived he survived forced labor he survived camps He contracted malaria, beriberi, parasites. At night, he stared at the ring and remembered who he was. And in 1944, he was packed into the belly of a Japanese hell ship to spend 62 days in darkness, in the stench with no food, no hope, and eventually made it to a labour camp near Yakachi. When he was registered, he was handed a uniform and a

prison number. It was number 58, which was the same number he wore. That's taking the piss. I like how life does that. At that moment, he said to himself, he was going to make it. Well, you would, yeah. And he did. Yeah, damn right. That summer, American planes flew overhead. One dropped a can of cigarettes with a handkerchief parachute. It read, hostilities have ceased. We will see you soon. That was August 1945. That's cute. Barrels of food, medicine, cigarettes came

after that. When he was liberated, Mario Tonelli weighed 98 pounds. Whoa. But he was alive, and he still had his ring. Jesus Christ. It's funny, though, isn't it? Like, that story, I mean, that's actually a nice story. Thanks, Jack. But I do think, like, I don't know. Again, without over -romanticizing, which is dangerous, but it's fun. When people say, like, sport gives people hope. Yeah. Like, I do think, like, It can become

a bit of a cliche. Lots of things give people hope, depending on, obviously, your preferences and stuff. But stuff like that, I think, is just really hard to articulate. Like how that... I don't even know what I'm trying to say. I know exactly what you mean. You don't really need to. It unites. I mean, obviously, a Japanese officer... may or may not have certain things

in common with an American soldier. But to have been in that moment, shared an incredible moment that was well -reported, that was well -acknowledged, and is still remembered to this day, is incredible. I think it's because it's fun at its core, right? Like, it's all about joy, enjoyment. Honor. Yeah, exactly. Respect. Yeah, it's all about the good things. At its best. I mean, obviously, sport sometimes strays into its worst. But at its best, it's all the things that people unanimously value.

And I think, as you say, it's very hard to deny those common denominators and those factors that bring people together sometimes. I think that's why it's cool. Anyway. Absolutely. Anyway, Mario Tonelli, he returned to Chicago. He gained just enough weight to play one more game for the Cardinals. He was only in for a couple of plays, but it meant it was enough to get him his pension, which was obviously a very nice gesture from the coaching

team in Chicago. He turned to service again after that in public life, 42 years of work for Cook County in Illinois. And he died in January 2003, a hero well -remembered by both Notre Dame and football fans. Notre Dame. Yeah. Number 58, Mario Tonelli. Good story. Yeah, that's a very good story. And we've done it. We've, we've, we've the war in. Although this one was probably one of more, more easier. Yeah. I really liked that story. That is a very cool story. Very good story.

Yeah. So that takes, that's the forties, I assume. I've got a little bit more for the forties. You can't, can you, can you better that? No, but this is going back to pure history. This is not,

I'll move away from the war now. Okay. But. One thing that happened shortly after the war, there had been rival leagues to the NFL before the war, but just after the war, there was another serious attempt to form a rival league, which was the All -America Football Conference, the AAFC, which was established partly in response to the NFL's dominance and the desire to create an alternative league, but it was most notable for featuring three teams particularly, which

were... The Cleveland Browns, the San Francisco 49ers, and the Baltimore Colts. Yeah, this is a fairly important bit of history. Yeah, around four seasons, and this is actually a good contrast because one of the reasons it failed was because they did not have a balancing system. They allowed the richer teams to sign up all the best of players, and the Cleveland Browns won every single championship.

It struggled financially as a result, but it did come up with some innovations which impacted the NFL in later years, such as different player recruitment methods. and it's comparative play as well, grew attention to professional football, and also let other potential league starters know that it was possible. There was an opportunity there if you got your balance right. So the NFL

expanded once the AAFC folded in 1949. It expanded and absorbed those three teams I mentioned, the Browns 49ers and Colts, who remain in the league to this day, albeit Baltimore Colts are now in Indianapolis. Another Baltimore team would emerge, though. Another Baltimore team would emerge and we will come to more Baltimore later. In fact, very soon indeed. So there was also a significant impact that the AAFC played in integrating African -American players into professional football.

The NFL had largely excluded black players prior to the end of World War II. The AFC, though, was more progressive and several teams signed several African -American players, most notably the Cleveland Browns under coach Paul Brown,

who did name the team after himself. signed standout black players such as marion motley and bill willis and when they were integrated themselves into the nfl they took the players with them and integrated the nfl in doing so um when they were absorbed into the nfl in 1950 so there's a positive that came out of it yeah that's pretty cool and obviously um african american players The impact they have played on the NFL is immeasurable. I don't know enough about American racial history,

but there seems to be a theme emerging. Yes, a fair bit. Maybe a more positive spin on it, and this might be an extremely ignorant thing for me to say, but it does seem as though sport led the way again, though, in terms of... Well, to a certain extent. You can say for positive and negative reasons. Ultimately, what it comes down to is if owners are willing to look over their bias because they want to win. I'm not suggesting the motivations were pure, but at

least the opportunities may have arisen. Obviously, Jackie Robinson is rightly lauded to this day for breaking the colour barrier in baseball. It was celebrated a few days ago, actually, April 15th. Every year is Jackie Robinson Day in the MLB, where every player wears his number, number 42. And the rest of the year, no one wears number 42 anymore. It has been retired league -wide. So it's something. But yeah, I mean, we could do a whole episode on that stuff. We could do

a whole episode on that stuff, yeah. Honestly. Nevertheless, that sets you up for the 1950s. And this is probably... Not long to go, guys. Just 70 years. Oh yeah, we'll be fine. Stick with us. Yeah. 1950s was probably where NFL... Some call it the golden era of the sport, as you would imagine, but it's probably the era in which the NFL truly started to become the biggest sports league in America, or certainly

worked towards it. And we're going to take a trip back in time to the soot -stroke neighbourhoods of Pittsburgh once more, where a boy with a buzz cut in a dream grew up hauling coal to put food on the table. His name was Johnny Unitas, and by the time he left the game, they called him the Golden Arm, which I think tells you a lot about him. But at the time, before a history -making day in 1958, he was just a skinny kid

trying to prove he belonged. Johnny U's story doesn't begin with trophies, it begins with tragedy. His father died when he was just five years old, his mother worked multiple jobs to keep the family afloat, and at just eight years old, he was hauling coal after school to help out. He wasn't big when he got to college, or when he was trying to get into college. He barely scratched 130 pounds soaking wet. 5 '10", 130 pounds, trying to play quarterback and wasn't getting much attention.

Notre Dame took one look at him and said he was too small, but Louisville took a chance on him. Even there, it is alleged that the coach initially mistook him for the water boy when he first walked out onto the field. But he did grow, not just in height, he hit 6 '1", but in resolve and in ability too. 6 '1 and 170 pounds, I think he was, 180 pounds maybe. By the time the 1955 draft came around, the Steelers were willing to take a punt on the hometown kid in the ninth round,

the 102nd pick overall. Chance to become a hometown hero? Not quite. They didn't even let him suit up for a game, not even in preseason. They had three quarterbacks on their roster ahead of him, and they never took a chance on him, never looked at him, and they cut him before the season began in 1955. And he was understandably... Frustrated by that. Yeah, I'd be pissed off. When the coach cut him, he said to the coach, I wouldn't mind if you'd taken a look at me, but you haven't.

You didn't give me a chance and you're just cutting me. He had a baby at home and bills piling up. So he went to work on a construction crew whilst moonlighting as a semi -pro quarterback for the Bloomfield Rams, playing offense, defense, and special teams. If there was a snap to be played, Johnny Yu was there for it. I'd like to know if Johnny Yu looks back on that period more fondly than he does on his NFL career, which presumably is going to be forthcoming. There is more coming.

But yeah, I mean, he led the Rams through an undefeated season and their championship, albeit in a minor semi -professional league. But as a result of that, word got out. And one day, Don Kellett of the Baltimore Colts picked up the phone. The Colts weren't NFL royalty. In their three seasons since entering the league again, a team called the Colts originally entered the league, as I mentioned before. They actually folded and a new Baltimore Colts came up in 1953.

But they never won more than five games in a season since they entered the league. They were not big shots. But with Johnny Unitas on the center, everything changed. From 1957 to 1971, the Colts never had a losing season. Johnny Unitas once threw touchdown in 47 consecutive games, which was a record that was untouched until Drew Brees passed it in 2012. He was no slouch either. And he did it in a brutal era for quarterbacks,

which is now called the dead ball era. Minimal quarterback protection, receivers jammed and hit all the way downfield. No domes, obviously, exposed to the weather, no turf, just cold, mud and pain. Yeah, that sounds pretty cool, to be fair. Better than today's game where you... Half a millisecond late. I think there's a reason people refer to it as the golden age. I think there might be old -timers out there who probably like the blood and the mud and the spit and the

tears. As long as it's not barbaric, but the way they're protected these days is just a bit dark. Yeah, they certainly are. You could argue they're overprotected now, but again, that's a debate for another day. Yeah, I should probably quickly say, for those that are uninitiated with American football, a losing season is basically a season where you lose more than you win. American football, how many regular season games are there

now? 17 now so if you have a 9 -8 record that would be a winning season an 8 -9 record or worse would be a losing season there you go essentially thanks Jack yeah so when I say the Colts never had a losing season between 1957 -1961 they always won more games than they lost which is usually gets you around and about the playoffs yeah usually a 9 -8 record nowadays you probably be in the playoffs one every two seasons yeah yeah depends on other factors but if you get 10 -7 you're

normally in the playoffs But then a game came, or a game in the era came that would change the NFL forever. It was December the 28th, 1958 at Yankee Stadium. The Colts had finished the season with the best record in their division and had reached what was then the NFL championship game. They were playing the New York Giants, the all -conquering New York Giants. There was a national TV audience and there was 15 future Hall of Famers on the field and even more on the sidelines.

on the sidelines for the Giants. Their offense was being called by Vince Lombardi, who would later become a legendary Green Bay Packers coach. Also, the trophy is named after him. To say Vince Lombardi is a legend is not a statement. The Lombardi trophy is a trophy given to the Super Bowl winners after the Green Bay Packers won the first two Super Bowls. Their defense, the Giants' defense, was coached by Tom Landry, who also became a legend for the Dallas Cowboys and

the Super Bowl winner. And on the Colts' sideline, there was Weeb Ubank, who was the future coach of the New York Jets when they won their one and only Super Bowl, Super Bowl III. The game was a slugfest. The Giants had a 17 -14 lead late in the fourth quarter. The Colts were pinned back on their own 14 line. This is where Johnny U wrote his name into history. There's something they have in football that they call a two -minute drill. That is... It is literally a drill you

will do over and over again. And it is for a situation where you are near your own goal line with two minutes on the clock and you have to get it down the other end to score a touchdown or a field goal to save the game or to win the game. And it is something that is practiced relentlessly today. And Johnny Unitas demonstrated a perfect example of it in difficult circumstances in this 1958 NFL championship game. Threw passers forward. Raymond Berry, his major receiver, caught a couple

of them. He moved the team forward with surgical precision. He was controlling time as he did it. And in just over a minute, he drove the Colts 86 yards to set up a field goal and force overtime, which is the first sudden death overtime ever in an NFL championship game. That's fine. Which is a rare occurrence, even in the Super Bowl to this day. From there, Unitas orchestrated a drive that took the breath out of Yankee Stadium.

13 plays, 80 yards. down to the Giants' one -yard line, and then he handed it off to Alan Amici, who ran it over the line for a big hole created and sealed the game and sealed the NFL championship for the Colts. 23 -17, the first sudden -death NFL championship and the first time the entire country had seen professional football essentially as something to be cherished. It wasn't just a game. It was the moment, it has been argued,

that the NFL became America's game. 45 million viewers watched it on national TV, which was unheard of in 1958. Yeah, yeah. Didn't even know that many people had TVs. Yeah, exactly. It transformed the league from a second -tier sport into, I mean, almost a national obsession. And right at the centre of it all was Johnny Yu. Cool, commanding, unbreakable. Grit, vision, determination. Never say die attitude. He was called the first modern quarterback, dictating play with his arm,

passing forward. On this cold December twilight in front of millions of fans, he became a legend. That is a good story. He comes up again. He won a Super Bowl later as well, albeit at the twilight of his career. He missed a lot of that game as well because he got injured. As I mentioned as well, this was a time where quarterbacks did not have the protection they got now. They were hit and they were hit hard. When they did, there were injuries coming. It is relatively rare.

for quarterbacks to get injured nowadays. Well, it's extremely rare, isn't it? Because they get so looked after. I mean, again, me and you chew the fat over this stuff in a way that presupposes a degree of knowledge. For anyone who is interested, a quarterback is just the guy. He's like, every play goes through him. He's the most important player on the pitch. Think of Fly Half in rugby,

if you're familiar with rugby. trying to compare it to another sport maybe even football it'd probably be your central midfielder um yeah like the most iconic dude like yes yeah the team leader everything um the quarterbacks have much higher uh draft capital as they call it they go for uh much higher in the draft than other positions traditionally and teams will often take gambles on quarterbacks that they wouldn't necessarily take in other positions it is the key positions

only play on offense yes Yeah, it's an interesting thing. It was probably around this time in 1958, that sort of time, where you would have players who only played offence or defence. It was called the two -platoon system. There's a geezer in this year's draft who can do both, isn't there? I will be coming to it. Yeah, there is. It's fairly rare that you get players who play offence and defence because it is such a demanding sport and it's such a specialised sport. There's not

really any benefit to it. But back in the day, certainly in the early days, the 1920s and 30s, you'd have 11 players who'd start the game and finish the game. And they'd have positional offense and defense. That changed. Eventually, they liberalized the substitution rules so you could sub out your whole team essentially between players when you switch from offense to defense. And you'd still have players playing both, but maybe your quarterbacks or maybe your key running backs or whatever it

be would only play one of the two. It changes over time, but it is. I think it's a cool thing because it also opens up opportunities for more people. It does, yeah. Different skill sets. People get, like you said, specialists in certain positions or roles, certain body compositions. Yes. Better opportunities, that sort of thing. A bit like rugby in that sense. There's a position for everyone. There's a position for everyone, exactly. It doesn't matter whether you're a big

guy or a small guy. You can be a punter. You can be a field goal kicker. You can be a quarterback.

yeah some of my favorite players in the NFL are kickers especially kicks and punters because you look at them and be like there is no way you're a professional sportsman in your life your lanky look and everything but hey if you can nail a field goal from 60 yards you're a sportsman in anyone's book so precisely yeah so I took us off on a tangent there only because it's a highly technical sport that I've not even got my head fully around so I imagine that we

need to make it a little bit accessible every now and again We've only got six decades left anyway. 1960. So the single most important thing to happen probably in the history of the NFL happened in the 1960s. In fact, why am I even saying probably? The single most important thing to ever happen in the history of the NFL happened

in 1960. And what was that? In 1960, a group of frustrated and quite wealthy businessmen, many of whom had been denied NFL ownership as the NFL were reluctant to expand from their 12 -team setup that they had at the end of the 50s. decided instead to start their own league, as has happened previously. Only this time, what they had that other leagues didn't have was extremely deep pockets and the patience to let there be losses for the first few seasons before they

established themselves. The league they formed was called the American Football League, the AFL. As I said, they were ambitious, well -funded, ready to disrupt the status quo and ready to break the stranglehold that the NFL had. on domestic professional football. It was mocked as the Mickey Mouse League at first, and even by the business themselves, they called it the Foolish Club when they first started up, fully aware of the amount of money they were putting on the line to do

so. But one of the main ways the AFL managed to establish itself as a successful league in the early days was through the draft. The AFL draft happened, well, often it happened on the same day as the NFL draft. They used to... sort of jockey for position within it because players could be drafted by the AFL and NFL and at that point a bidding war would begin to try and get the players to play for you. So it was the same draft? No, at first it was two different drafts.

So just declaring for the same talent, weren't they? Yeah, so guys just declared to both drafts. Right, okay. Yeah, so in the early days, someone like a major star like Billy Cannon, who was a 1959 Heisman Trophy winner, he signed with the AFL. in the end, for the Houston Oilers, who are now the Tennessee Titans, for a record signing bonus. Even after making a handshake deal with the NFL's Rams, sparking a contract controversy went all the way to court, but was

found in the favor of the AFL. And things escalated from there. The AFL and NFL began bidding wars over top prospects. Players like Tommy Nobis, dominant linebacker from Texas, were offered staggering sums by both leagues. Nobis eventually chose the NFL, the Falcons, in 1966. And then came Joe Namath, the flashy quarterback from

Alabama. The AFL's New York Jets shattered records by signing him for $427 ,000, which was the largest contract in the history of football at the time and really validated the AFL's legitimacy and made Joe Namath a national star and made the New York Jets into the champions in the end. So there you go. Your New York Jets. There you go. The NFL owners were increasingly alarmed

by this. To deal with sort of the skyrocketing salaries, age and manipulation, they start creating a hand -holding program, essentially a coordinated effort to babysit potential draft picks before the draft to A, stop AFL scouts or owners getting their claws on them, and B, to keep them separate from the media furore that was going on before

the draft itself. They'd essentially hire lovely resorts or whatever else and... stick them in there just put them in there with a minder yeah well the NFL tended to have a minder the AFL tended to get flashy results because as I mentioned deep pockets they were rich yeah and yeah it wasn't working for the NFL though veteran NFL players as well who were suddenly earning less than the new rookies with the rookies having to be paid so much more to get to agree to contracts

started showing resent against them there was rising discontent in locker rooms Rookies having played down were driving sports cars and cashing bigger checks than pro bowlers. And so we got to the point where Dan Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers said, the bidding wars were ruining us. The AFL team seemed to have money to burn. Which they did, by the sounds of things. It all escalated. So for a while, an unwritten agreement existed between the leagues, which was essentially

don't sign each other's players. So it was an unwritten rule where if someone was drafted in the AFL, they'd stay in the AFL. If they went to free agency, They were a free game for AFL teams, but NFL teams would leave them alone. Basically, once you were in a league, you were in that league for life. This ended in 1966 when the New York Giants of the NFL broke ranks and signed Pete Gogolak, who was an AFL star kicker from the Buffalo Bills. Gogolak wasn't just any

kicker. He was the first soccer -style place kicker in pro football history and helped revolutionize both the position and that style of kicking. His signing infuriated both leagues. He'd go on to become the Giants' all -time leading scorer with 646 points, which I believe he is still to this day. As a kicker? As a kicker, yeah. Jesus Christ, how many field goals does he kick? Oh, plenty. I mean, I might whilst you're talking. Yeah. But don't forget extra points as well.

Oh, yeah, true. I don't know if I'd be able to do it, but go on. But as I said, the move ignited an absolute firestorm. So the AFL retaliated by targeting big -name NFL players. They were... signing players before their contracts even expired in the NFL, like getting pre -contract agreements in place. Behind the scenes, there were cooler heads who saw the writing on the wall. Both leagues were bleeding money. It was to no one's benefit. And there started being secret talks in the background.

Maybe, maybe it would be better if we just joined forces here. So competition was great for players. It was devastating for the owners, especially the more traditional and less wealthy NFL ones. Quiet talks began between NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and AFL executives. Most of the owners, though, were kept in the dark over this. As talks intensified, the AFL Commissioner Joe Foss was forced to resign because he was viewed as too

soft. He was replaced by the absolutely not too soft Raiders coach and owner Al Davis, who had personally expressed no intention of merging. Davis believed the AFL could win the war, so he doubled down. He made sure... Pre -contract agreements were signed with NFL stars like Mike Dicker, John Brody, even if they wouldn't join until their current deals ended. Mike Dicker, who would go on to become a coach. Yeah, he would. And Rozelle and the NFL owners panicked. This

arms race, as I said, was unsustainable. Some negotiations carried on even behind Al Davis back, and it eventually led on the 8th of June 1966 to an announcement that the AFL and NFL would be merging. And what's that resulted in? For the purpose of this episode, the most significant thing it resulted in was from 1967 there would be a common draft. There would be a single draft from 1967. The leagues would stay in their current alignment and only playing games internally during

the regular season. But there would be an NFL -AFL championship game every season, which was later rebranded the Super Bowl. And there we are. There we are. That's the modern format. So there's a man called Lamar Hunt who came up with that name. And Lamar Hunt is an excellent guy. I could go, again, I could do a whole episode on him, so I'm just going to skim through it. But he's a famous executive in both American football for these purposes. He's one of the

architects of the AFL. He also was instrumental in forming Major League Soccer and the American Open Cup, the US Open Cup is named for him. And was also instrumental in taking the steps to form the organizations, which eventually became the ATP as well. Oh, really? Yeah, so the tennis... He's a love sport then. Tennis tour, yeah. So he's in the Hall of Fame, I believe, for all three sports, for soccer, for football, and for tennis. So I'm going to refer to it as soccer

and football for this episode. Yeah, I know, which is a little bit vomit -inducing. I apologize to everyone who doesn't like that. But I think for this episode, it's appropriate. So yeah, the two leagues merged in June 66. And from 1970, they merged fully, becoming a single NFL with two conferences, the AFC and the NFC. Al Davis was furious. He was an opponent of Pete Rizal for decades as a result, but the deal held. Poor

Al. Yeah. Christ, a river, pal. The first two Super Bowls were both won by the Green Bay Packers. who were the NFL champions and they won quite comfortably in both games too. So there was a lot of question marks around at that point saying, is the NFL just going to be far too strong for these upstarts? However, as I mentioned, Super Bowl III, Joe Namath, the New York Jets delivered 16 -7 win over the Baltimore Colts. who just a year later would actually join the AFC as part

of the merger. So they move across from the NFL to the AFC, where the Indianapolis Colts remain to this day. I missed something about Johnny Unitas I like, actually. Well, just tell us about it. I'll tell you about it. Why not? So Johnny Unitas was a Baltimore Colt, and he lived in

the city of Baltimore. a obviously a massive fan of the team in the city and in 1983 when the Baltimore Colts were moved to Indianapolis he along with other ex -players obviously this is about 25 years removed from this greatest win ever and only a decade or so removed from their last Super Bowl win which Unitas was also a part of they were disgusted as you can imagine and from that day forward Johnny Unitas refused to acknowledge the Indianapolis Colts saying

he When he was put in the Hall of Fame, he said he would only accept being put in the Hall of Fame if he was listed as a Baltimore cult, not as any part of the Indianapolis cult. That's cool. And then in 1995, 1996, in a strange set of circumstances, the Cleveland Browns sort of half moved to Baltimore and a new franchise was formed. Eventually, the Cleveland Browns would restart up again. but their players and personnel moved to Baltimore and formed the Baltimore Ravens.

And right there, front and center for the first game, Johnny Unitas was there for the Baltimore Ravens, which I think, the one thing I hate about American sports, I hate moving teams around. I was about to talk about this with you, but yeah. What I love about sport, one thing I love about sport is the idea that I can go and sit in the cop and be surrounded by people whose granddad's sitting in the cop. Yeah, yeah. It's like a community culture. Whose granddad's sitting

in the cop. whose granddad's probably sat in the cot when it was first opened in the 1900s. The sense of belonging. Tell stories they were told by their granddad to their grandkids. Word of mouth. They have this shared history, this shared love. And the only offer to move a team to an entirely different state, in many cases, an entirely different side of the country. I can't imagine how much that would hurt, but if you were in Baltimore, you'd grown up, you'd

watched that 1958 championship game. 25 years later, seeing your team moved. with all the love and the memories and the adoration you have for that. I can imagine the Ravens coming again was a big thing, but it's gotta be bittersweet because it's still not the team that you originally. Yeah. Yeah. I mean like, It's the worst thing about American sports. It's not even subtle. We should definitely explain this. Basically, because the NFL is a franchise system, the league

owns the teams effectively. You have owners and stuff, but the league is ultimately in charge of who is allowed to enter the league and where

they're based and this, that and the other. What that effectively means is that you can for want for a better phrase bid to move a team to another location sometimes the NFL won't allow that to happen because they do recognize the historical significance of some of the teams that have been in the league since the beginning so if you try and move those they often get vetoed but generally speaking you are allowed to move so like St. Louis Rams are now the la rams and i think they

were originally the la rams they moved to st louis and then back again um they're originally the cleveland rams oh there we are and then jack just explained a good example obviously with with the baltimore colts and indianapolis um there's plenty of examples of it but basically it just means you could just be supporting a team for 25 years and then they up sticks and bugger off uh to the other side of the country

uh And you're left without a team. And if you did that in the UK, because this is an alien concept to UK sports fans. Nearly. Nearly an alien concept. Well, Wimbledon. Yeah. But, like, cause bloody riots. Yes, well, I mean... Not for a club of Wimbledon's stature, but if you try to move Liverpool somewhere or Manchester United or, you know, Arsenal or, you know, even Chelsea and, well, plenty of other clubs. But, like... Yeah, imagine if you tried to move Newcastle

out of Newcastle or Leeds. Oh, you wouldn't get as far as the city walls. Yeah, it just wouldn't happen. It's a pretty annoying thing. It is. But anyway, again, just a little bit of context for people. Yeah, it's something that happens. It's something that no one likes. It's happening

right now with... For those of you who may have seen the film Moneyball, moving to a different sport, the Oakland Athletics have had many years of hardness, low budgets, occasional success, as highlighted by that film, but they're currently in the process of moving to Las Vegas. The Oakland Raiders, who were the Oakland Raiders, have moved to Las Vegas as well. Oakland is not an affluent city. No, it's going well for the... It's going well for the club. It's going well for the owners.

But it's nice for the people of Las Vegas to have these sports clubs to watch. And obviously new memories will be created. But, God, it must hurt. It must suck, man. It must hurt so bad. Especially the Oakland Raiders have such a bold history. Like Super Bowl wins. John Madden coaching them to a Super Bowl win in the 70s. Yeah, I think another Super Bowl appearance about 20 years ago as well. Yeah, they've got a real big history. It is what it is, but... It is what

it is, yeah, yeah. It's my least favourite part about his sport. And Johnny Unitas, going back to him, he has a statue of him. There's a couple of statues of former NFL players outside the Baltimore Ravens grounds. One of them is Ray Lewis, who is a Baltimore Ravens legend. Won a couple of Super Bowls with them. And the other one is Johnny Unitas. Despite having never played for the Ravens, he is a Baltimore legend. I love that. That's boss. I love that as well. It's

nice to have the link. And he was a regular attendee at Raven's Home Games until his death. So, yeah. That's nice. So where have we got to now? 70s? Oh, we're still in the 60s. Still in the 60s. I just wanted to quickly touch on another sad story. So the first ever African -American winner of the Heisman Trophy was a man named Ernie Davis. He had a difficult upbringing. Had a lot of talent, obviously, and ended up at Syracuse University.

He played for them between 1959 and 1961. And as I mentioned, he became the first African -American winner of the Heisman Trophy, leading the nation with an average of 7 .8 yards per carry as a running back. I'm just throwing random stats. No one knows what the fuck that means. He was good. He was good. And his senior year was just as successful. Ended with a Liberty Bowl victory over Miami. But his, as I said, first African -American to win the Heisman Trophy. He earned

the Walter Camp Memorial Trophy as well. And his achievements even caught the attention of President John F. Kennedy. who sent a message honouring Davis for embodying the finest qualities of competition, sportsmanship and citizenship as well. So yeah, he was selected first overall pick, as you imagine, by the Washington Redskins. But unfortunately, his path to professional football took a dramatic and sad turn when he was diagnosed with leukemia. He was in remission for a brief

period. joined the Browns and Paul Brown, the aforementioned Cleveland Browns coach, drew up game plans and practices without physical contact. He made an appearance during pre -season. He ran out to the field with a spotlight following him. But it was his last moment in the sport as on May the 18th, 1963, at the age of 23, he sadly passed away from leukemia. Fucking hell.

So yeah, sad story. I saw his immortalized as a film called The Express, made about him, and is obviously very much remembered as a trailblazer for African -American athletes, and certainly not the last African -American player to win the Heisman Award. No, definitely not. Just a quick thing there. So as the 60s went on, as the NFL grew, the Super Bowl era started, the modern era of the NFL. Changes were made to how

teams went about scouting. As I mentioned in the original, in the old days, it was read newspaper articles, go off word of mouth, get some tips from your contacts. Yeah, largely that. But a man named Jill Grant came along who was an executive on the Dallas Cowboys and an integral part of the Cowboys rose to prominence. in the 60s and

70s. They were only founded in 1960, but quickly became a force and eventually became famously the biggest, according to some reckoning, the biggest sports club on the planet, the Dallas Cowboys, the richest sports club on the planet. America's team. America's team, exactly. With, yeah, a lot of success, a lot of history. The famous cheerleaders as well, whichever one. Documentary on that. Yeah, documentary on Netflix about them. If you haven't seen it, I'd recommend it. It's

very good. But he was, Jill Brown was credited with revolutionizing NFL scouting. One of the first to use technologies such as early computers and data analysis to aid scouting and evaluating talent. Obviously a practice that will become common throughout the league. He also maintained an extensive network of scouts and took an innovative

approach to player evaluation. which allowed them to draft and develop key players, which contributed to the team's success, including figures like Roger Stalbeck, Tony Dorsett, Randy White. In addition to his work with the Cowboys, he contributed to the NFL draft and helped shape the event into what it is today with his scouting network and the influence other scouts took from that. So yeah, it was instrumental. And another man who, I'm going to move into the 1970s now,

just about. Just into the 1970s. Another man who was key in revolutionising scouting and teams' approach to scouting was a man named Bill Nunn, who was a sports writer at the Pittsburgh Courier, which was a famous... You told me about this guy. A famous African -American newspaper. Yeah, it's a good story list. Famous African -American newspaper, very well respected. He was a basketball

player in his youth. He played on the West Virginia State basketball team where his team went unbeaten and included future NBA legends such as Chuck Cooper, who was the first black NBA draftee, and Earl Lloyd, who was the first black player to play in the NBA. Bill Nunn declined an offer to play for the Harlem Globetrotters to instead go and work for the Courier. So he rose from sports writer to managing editor. So he was a

gun basketball player. He was instrumental in highlighting talent from historically black colleges and universities, HBCUs, through the publication's Black College All -America team. His unique insight into overlooked players led to... Other teams, not the Pittsburgh Steelers, who are his local team, but other teams approaching him and asking him for advice in the past. But his local team, the Steelers, never called him in all this time.

When he eventually got asked for a meeting with Dan Rooney, who was the son of the owner, Art Rooney, but obviously a key figure and later became the owner, took over from his dad. Dan Rooney asked for a meeting and Nunn was very blunt with him. He said, I never felt welcomed by you all. You never showed an interest in what I was doing in all this time. So in response to that, Dan Rooney made him an offer, scout for the team, and basically offered him a job.

Reluctantly, after a lot of thought and soul -searching, Nunn did agree to that. By 1969, he was doing the job full -time and the Steelers had added a secret weapon. It feels like a great example of someone who's like... You can't whinge and then not take the chance, right? I guess

so, yeah. That doesn't excuse the Steelers for being useless, but for ones faced with the opportunity, I guess you can't moan about having never been given an opportunity to scout for the team and when they offer you the head scout job, not take it. I think it was in all this time, I think is the main thing. And also, and you were right to use the word useless attributed to the Steelers.

The Steelers were useless. They had... being a member of the NFL since 1933, and in all that time, they'd had exactly eight winning seasons between 1933 and 1971. There seems to be a correlation between that upturn. They'd only made the playoffs once in 1947 and lost immediately, never won a playoff game. And in the, I think, 35 years the team had been in existence, they'd got through

15 head coaches in that time. Now, I think one of the best measures you can say of how the Steelers changed, and as I mentioned before, six... six Super Bowl wins they've got. So they've obviously been successful. In the, what would it be, 55 years. So first 35 years, they went through 15 head coaches. In the 55 years since then, they've gone through, they're on their third head coach in that time. Which is incredible. The first one was Chuck Knoll, who they hired in 1969.

And with obviously Dan Rooney being more forward thinking, Chuck Knoll was a cerebral, no -nonsense, a guy with experience with the Baltimore Colts as well. And they said they were going to build through the draft. They're not going to trade for veterans. They're going to try and build

a team. And that's what they did. So using scouts like Nunn and recruiting heavily as well from historically black colleges and universities, they, in the draft, got picks like Joe Green, famously called Mean Joe Green, who was a tough, violent, and dominant cornerstone of the team. Mel Blount, Dwight White, Franco Harris, Jerry Moon Mullins. These are names that will mean a lot to certain people. They mean nothing to me. I know. They mean something to me. I've got

a soft spot for the Steelers. In 1969, Chottnall's first season, well, before they'd even start building, they had a bad season. They came joint bottom of the league. So it went to a coin toss between them and the Bears to decide who would get first pick. The Steelers won. So they got the first pick in the draft and drafted one Terry Bradshaw. I've heard of him. You've heard of him. And four Super Bowl rings later shows why

that coin toss mattered. That's wild. Yep. So from there, 1972, the pieces were in place and they pulled out of it an 11 -3 record, which was their best season ever. Made the first playoff appearance since 1947. As I mentioned, they never won a playoff game. They had a vicious defense, a creative offense. The team had some swagger. And then came December the 23rd, 1972. So it was an AFC divisional round game between the Steelers and the Raiders, the Oakland Raiders.

John Madden was coaching them. The legend that is John Madden was coaching the Raiders. The first half was a grind. It was 0 -0 at halftime. 0 -0 at halftime. The Raiders had pulled their quarterback. The Steelers held a slight lead late in the fourth quarter. It was 6 -0. But then a late Raiders touchdown made it 7 -6. And same old Steelers, the fans were saying. Same old lovable losers. Always the bridesmaid, never

the bride. Exactly. But with the game on the line, Bradshaw dropped back on fourth down, fired a dart under pressure. With just seconds on the clock, fourth down, everything on the line in the game. He threw a pass towards his receiver, Frenchy Cure. That's a good name. It's a good name, yeah. Fakura? I have to be very careful pronouncing that. Well, I don't actually. The podcast is marked explicit for a reason. But

it came off. It is questionable who it came off because the rules were in place that had it come off Fakura, had it come off him, it would have been a dead ball. But I've seen the replay enough that I think it came off Jack Tatum, who was the Raiders' safety. The ball sailed towards the floor. and was about to hit the deck, which would have ended the game. Whereas rookie fullback Franco Harris plucked it off his shoelaces and ran it in 50 yards into the end zone from there.

Is that the one that you call the... It's the immaculate reception. Yeah. It's one of the most, probably, I would say probably the most famous play in NFL history. It is incredible, given that everything was on the line at that moment, given the amount he had to run, given the line he took. He wasn't even supposed to be there. Franco Harris was supposed to be on the other side of the field. For some reason, it had come over. Yeah, so incredible. Game over. Art Rooney,

who is the Steelers' owner, missed it. He was in an elevator at the time. Really? He'd given up on the game. What an idiot. Don't leave the game before a full time. How many times do people need to be told? They didn't win anything that year. They won their playoff game. They won their first playoff game. They lost in the AFC Championship game. But it changed the franchise forever. It

was a sign. It was a moment of destiny. And from 1972 to 1979, they became probably the NFL's first real dominant dynasty, winning four Super Bowls. They drafted or developed about 10 Hall of Famers in that time. and a team that defined the toughness, loyalty, and blue -collar grit of the city itself, built on a foundation of scouting from less -than -known colleges. This

is what I'm saying, Jack. What I'm taking from that is that, basically, if you listen to people who are paying attention to the talents that are out there, and you organise your... franchise, club, whatever you want to call it, in a way that encourages professionalism and excellence, then you can go from the bottom to the top. That's quite literally what you were saying at the beginning. If you take an elite approach. Yeah. Then the draft gives you a route back through to the top.

You get your Bradshaw as your first round pick, albeit on a coin toss. You've been shit forever. You've been churning out coaches. You get a guy in who is well -known, to scout and identify collegiate talents and then you set yourself up with some consistency and professionalism and your fortunes turn around. That's the whole point of the draft, right? Crazy, isn't it? Crazy concept. I like that. Bill Nunn was an amazing bloke. He won six Super Bowls in the end as a

scout. He remained at... Where did he go afterwards? No, he remained at the Steelers in this century. Yeah. He died in 2014. He oversaw all six of the Super Bowls. Yeah. And he was inducted into the... Probably belatedly inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2021 after his death. But, no, I mean, a deserved inductee. Yeah. That's boss. It was boss. I'm going to break it up now a little bit. Yeah. Because we are... I appreciate this is going on a long time. I don't mind. I

think this is all good information. But a few quirks of the NFL draft, a few quirky picks through history. I'm just going to give three out because I quite like these three. So firstly, we've got a man named Kelvin Kirk, who is Mr. Most Irrelevant Ever, who is the lowest draft pick ever in the league. So we know Mr. Irrelevant is the lowest pick. The 1976 draft had more draft picks than any other draft in history. It used to go on

way beyond the seventh round. He was the 487th pick of the draft, making him the most irrelevant Mr. Irrelevant ever. He was drafted actually by the Steelers, but he was cut by them pretty quickly. He spent seven years playing in the CFL in Canada, the Canadian Football League, 6 ,500 yards receiving, and later worked as an artist for the Ottawa Citizen before his premature death in 2003 after he had a heart attack while playing basketball. So there you go. Most irrelevant

Mr. Irrelevant of all time. So Rosie Brown is the next one who's kind of got the opposite story. He was picked low. He was drafted 321st overall in the 1953 draft by the New York Giants. But he's one of the most notable late round draft stories in NFL history. Not only did he make the team, but he wanted to become one of the most dominant linemen in the league and eventually made his way into the Hall of Fame on 321st pick. He was a Pro World Garden tackle for the Giants

for 13 seasons. Key player in their line for years, known for his powerful athletic play. Apparently he could run as quick as some running backs, but he was built like a proverbial. Made it into the Hall of Fame in 1975. A big boy. Yeah, yeah. Picked in the 21st round. So as I said, drafts used to go on a lot longer. That was the 21st round. Yeah. And the final one I'm going to point out is a chap called Happy Fella. Happy Fella, who was a kicker in the NFL. It's

a good name. Who was known for his positive demeanor and hence his nickname, Happy. He played college football in Texas and he set school record 55 -yard field goal. He was drafted by the Eagles, but despite a promising start, he was played by a quadriceps injury, which limited him to just one season with the Eagles. And he made only six out of 20 field goals in his rookie year and struggled later. But nevertheless, good name. Very good name. Happy fella. There you

go. So speaking of quirky picks, I believe you've got some lists for us. And now would be a nice time to slot them in. I've done a lot of talking so far. Well, that's all right. You know a lot more about this subject than I do. And you can feel the passion, Jack. Thank you. Yeah, no, I mean, like, you tasked me with having a look at some of the top... Well, having a go at picking five... of the best players to be picked late, basically. As in like goldmine finds, late picks

that actually did very well. And also five first round failures, like duds. Draft busts. So where would you like to start? Let's start with the negative. I always like to start with a negative. You know that about me. Well, these are in no particular order. I'll leave it to you to determine which of these is the worst. But the first chap that I came up with was Ricky Williams. Yes. Ricky Williams, to be fair, he was a very good

college player. He set the National Collegiate Athletic Association record for rushing yards and won the Heisman Trophy. So that's important context when it comes to assessing how poor this pick was. I don't think that his pick was necessarily a bad one based on talent and statistics and collegiate record, but it was for the way in which it was manufactured. He was effectively picked by the New Orleans Saints. With Mike Dichter as head coach, the aforementioned Mike Dichter,

who you were talking about earlier. They had had two consecutive seasons with a 6 -10 record, so two losing seasons in a row. And leading up to the 1999 draft, Dichter decided that he wanted Williams to play for the Saints. At an NFL owners meeting held two months before the draft, he publicly stated that he would trade his entire draft to acquire Williams. Other teams had doubts

about Williams. williams's passion for the game and also his judgment in hiring a a chap called master p as his agent who i think was a rapper and entrepreneur but was not uh not a sports agent so um so yeah anyway uh true to his word dicta did end up drafting um williams for all of his other draft picks in fact they went one further than that they tried to trade all of their picks in 1998 to acquire either at one Peyton Manning, who turned out to be quite good,

or Ryan Leaf, who turned out not to be quite as good. But they were rejected. And so when it came to 1999, they decided that they wanted to move up from their draft position. I think they were maybe 12. But anyway, they wanted to secure Williams. In order to do that, they traded every single pick that they had plus two of their first three picks for the 2000 NFL draft for the fifth overall pick for which they used to

select Williams. That's incredible. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, the second round pick had already been traded to the Rams to get Eddie Kennison. But this was the first time one player was the only draft pick. for an NFL team that's incredible it's never been done before or since and it really paid off because the Saints struggled to a 3 -13 season in 1999 The second worst in the franchise's history. And Dictor was understandably fired.

Yes. Williams played three seasons for the Saints before he was traded to the Miami Dolphins where he proceeded to fail three drugs tests before retiring in 2004. He briefly returned but had another anti -daping violation. Played one season in Canada before retiring for good and never being heard of again. So, yeah, whilst you might understand why someone would have drafted Williams, I'm not sure I would have done so in such circumstances.

I mean, Williams is obviously almost certainly a big contributor to this, but the league generally has moved very far away from using high draft picks on running backs because they are so volatile, because they get hit so hard so often that they are prone to injuries, as well as, obviously... There's not always a direct... Speed and space in the open can get you a long way in college. Not necessarily always the case in the professional game. So maybe don't use nine draft picks. Yeah,

that is... Actually, I'd heard of Ricky Williams. I did not know they went in that big for him. That is bad. Yeah, that's bad, yeah. So I've given you one from a trade perspective. Now I've got one from an age perspective. So number two candidate is Brandon Whedon. Whedon was selected by the Cleveland Browns as the 22nd pick in the 2012 draft. He became the oldest player ever to be taken in the first round. He was 28 years old. Impressive. So two years before the same...

So he was picked two years before the Browns would then go on to pick Johnny Manziel. So that would give you an indication as to how well it went for Whedon. In his first game, he threw four interceptions and had a passer rating of 5 .1. Oof. Which is low. It's not good. So again, to explain passer rating, call it a score out of... 153, I think it is. 153 is the maximum. So call it a score out of that. So five is bad.

Let's just say we're getting to the point now where we're going to get some quarterbacks retiring for the first time with a score over 100. And that is Aaron Rodgers. And that is just insanely good for an entire career. Unless he wrecked that by spending two years at the Jets, obviously. But yeah, so 100 is considered extremely good anywhere in the 90s. and you've probably had quite a good career. Yeah, well, he didn't. No. During his time with the Browns, he only had

a 55 % completion rate. He threw more interceptions than touchdowns. That's a record he would barely improve throughout his career. I think he finished with 31 touchdowns and 30 interceptions. Solid. From 25 starts and 35 games. But that also included 75 sacks for 452 yards. Yeah, and this is sort of the problem. Obviously, I'm not going to defend him or say he was high quality necessarily compared to the average. Or offensive line, rather. Also, if you've got no offensive line, there's only

so much you can do as a quarterback. Yeah, exactly. You've got no protection. Well, he basically got sacked for a 14th of what he threw for. Yeah. In his career. That'll do you. Including 15 fumbles. Yeah, it was inevitable. He survived six years, mainly as a backup at the Titans, Texans and Cowboys. But to his credit, because I've gone in a little bit here on Mr. Whedon, perhaps unprovoked and unnecessarily so, he was originally a baseball player, although he never made it to the bigs.

I was going to say, there's normally a couple of reasons why someone would be drafted at that age. They've either tried another sport or they've been in the army. There's often another one as well. Or the armed forces, I should say. And then gone to college. Yeah, so he was drafted by the Yankees. but traded multiple times, never made it to the bigs, then went back to college, played football. I mean, that's interesting. Yeah, definitely interesting. Fair play, actually.

He was basically above average at both baseball and American football, but not that good at either. Well, if you're comparing it to NFL standards and baseball standards. Professional -wise, yeah. I mean, he dabbled. He certainly dabbled. He was a sportsman. He just wasn't... He didn't excel in either. Nice. So, yeah. So, you've got one for age. You've got one for trading, and then you've got one for mindlessness. I don't know. I don't understand how to explain this

better. But Bo Jackson. Oh, yeah. Bo Jackson, a month before the 1986 NFL draft, a Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner, an Alabama Illuminae, Hugh Culverhouse took Bo. on a private jet to visit the team and to get a physical during his senior baseball season. And Jackson was told by the Buccaneers that the trip had been cleared by the NCAA and the SEC, but it hadn't been. And yeah, the SEC barred athletes from being professional

in one sport and amateur in another. So he was declared ineligible near the tail end of his senior baseball season. And Jackson told ESPN that he long believed that the Buccaneers had deliberately tried to sabotage his collegiate baseball career because of the season he was

having. And he was so angry at the Buccaneers' actions that he vowed never to play for them, going on to tell Culverhouse, if you draft me if you want, so you can draft me if you want, but you're going to be wasting a draft pick. I can promise you that. So he made that very clear. And then what did the Tampa Bay Buccaneers go and do? Did they draft him? Not only did they draft him, they selected him with the first overall pick of the 1986 draft. Impressive. And he, though,

true to his word, refused to play for them. He said that he believed that the failure to obtain the NCAA approval was deliberate. They were trying to get him to play football instead of baseball. I think Jackson's collegiate baseball coach, who was a chap called Hal... Baird is on record as saying that no one from either camp had mentioned the trip to him, but he feared the worst when Jackson told him the trip had been paid for.

Baird maintained that had he known about the trip, he would have told Jackson about the rule that barred him from playing professional football while being an amateur baseballer. But anyway, Jackson turned down a $7 .6 million five -year contract in favor of a $1 million three -year contract with the Kansas City Royals. And the Buccaneers forfeited his rights before the 1987 draft. That's the Kansas City Royals baseball.

I should mention Bo Jackson. We were talking about that chat before, who was quite good at two sports. Bo Jackson was exceptionally good at two sports. And that is how this story ends. Was not that enamored by playing football after his experience in 86. So rather than attend the 87 draft, he went to sleep. Found out in the morning that he'd been drafted in the seventh round. 183rd overall by the Los Angeles Raiders. Al Davis. Yeah. Who by then were the Los Angeles

Raiders. Before becoming the Oakland Raiders again and now being the Las Vegas Raiders. Yeah. I'm being a bit unfair here, I think, on one Gabriel Riviera. You're not, though, because I know why. But you go ahead. By comparison, shall we say. This is coming from the perspective of a bust because of the conduct of the player himself. The Pittsburgh Steelers selected Riviera in the first round, 21st pick overall of the

1983 draft. Riviera's selection was notable because the Steelers decided to pass on hometown hero, University of Pittsburgh quarterback Dan Marino. So that was their first mistake. And having played

just six games. for the Steelers on October the 20th 1983 Riviera was paralyzed in a car wreck and so you're probably immediately balking at why I'm having a go at Gabriel Riviera because that seems like a horrible turn of fate for him but he was drink driving and he crossed into the path of another vehicle whom he collided with and suffered very severe injuries paralyzed himself from the chest down Never played again, obviously, in his career, ended there and then.

So, yeah, really, I think that's more notable, less so for Riviera's decision to drink drive and end his own career prematurely and more for the fact that the Steelers overlooked Dan Marino. And then the final one I had for you, Jack, for you to pick from was Jamarcus Russell. Yeah, I did assume this was going to be the last one. Jamarcus Russell is being picked for performance reasons. So that's the motivation behind his selection in the top five busts. So Russell selected

first overall by the Raiders in 2007. He was very inconsistent. There was questions over his professionalism and his work ethic. And to illustrate that or underline that point, he was released by Oakland in 2010, so three years later. And he attempted numerous times to re -enter the league with another team, but he was never given another opportunity. And I think a couple of people had tried to warn the Raiders off signing

him. The former Detroit Lions general manager and Raiders linebacker Matt Millen said in 2015 that he had warned the Raiders owner Al Davis not to draft Russell because he had been removed from a pre -draft interview for being overly distracted and not paying attention or basically

not taking it seriously, I think. And the Raiders head coach himself, Lane Kiffin, also stated that he didn't want to draft Russell and preferred... the future pro football hall of famer wide receiver calvin johnson uh who would have been a bad choice yeah to say and after firing him in 2008 al davis acknowledged that kiffin had opposed drafting russell but um justified his selection because he said that kiffin was indecisive towards his preferred pick um but it started pretty badly

for russell uh After failing to reach a contract agreement with the Raiders, he held out through the training camp and into the first week of the 2007 NFL season. And then he eventually signed a six -year contract worth 68 million with 31 .5 million guaranteed. So he did quite well in that sense. Raiders head coach didn't immediately then pick him because he hadn't been in practice, which I think is understandable. And then by 2010, he was described as annually and incredibly

overweight. Everything you can possibly have contributing to what not to do as an NFL player, especially a quarterback. I think he also had some off -field indiscretions of which I'm not familiar with the particulars. They released him when they traded for Jason Campbell from the then Washington Redskins. He's often considered one of the greatest NFL draft busts. He finished his career with a passer rating of 65 .2. Terrible.

His first year was 50. And yeah, he threw 18 touchdowns in his career, but was intercepted 23 times. He fumbled 25 times. So being a quarterback, obviously everyone needs to study the playbooks, needs to study game film to try and gain advantage over your opponents. So they'll give players game film to go back and watch overnight. It's basically homework to do. And they were so convinced that... that Jamarcus Russell wasn't watching

the game film. That one day they sent him home with blank tapes and asked him the next day, oh, did you watch the film? He's like, oh yeah, it's really good. Yeah, it's great. That's amazing. It's just like everything that can go into making a, yeah, what not to do as a first round, first overall pick. Jamarcus Russell, ladies and gentlemen. Incredible stuff. Yeah, I think to wrap this up, his tenure was so bad that for several years

after he He played in the NFL. Nobody at the franchise would wear his number at the Raiders, which was the number two. I don't think that didn't last forever. Someone ended up taking it. The opposite of a retired number. Yeah, exactly. Voluntarily rejected. A shunned number, yeah. So yeah, out of those, you make of that what you will. Do you want me to pick one? Because I'm picking Jamarcus Russell. The other one, there's factors at play. There's no excuse whatsoever.

A, for the Raiders to have drafted him. They should have known better. And B, for him himself to not take that opportunity. Oh, that's incredible. And Al Davis should have known better. I would probably put the Tampa Bay in there as well because they were literally told, don't pick me. I won't play for you. Yeah. Oh, yeah, fair enough. At least he was a good player, though, Bo. Yeah. Although he had a much better baseball career. Do you want to hear the top five late picks?

I do want to hear the top five late picks. These are possibly in order, so I'll do them in reverse. In fifth, this is a little bit controversial. You mentioned him, actually, when we were chatting about this the other day, but I picked Jason Kelsey. Yes, I think he's brilliant. Yeah, brilliant pick. Because he was selected by the Philadelphia Eagles in the sixth round, 191st overall in 2011. He's a center. And he didn't miss a start from 2014 until the end of his career. A franchise

record 159 consecutive starts. He also won a Super Bowl, Super Bowl 52 in 2018 against the Patriots. One of my favourite Super Bowl ever. And made a second Super Bowl final, Super Bowl 57 in 2023, losing to his brother against the Chiefs. Slightly more famous brother. Yeah. Slightly more famous girlfriend. Yeah, slightly more famous girlfriend indeed. Taylor Swift, for those who don't know. I mean, yeah, he basically made six

first -team All -Pros, seven Pro Bowls. But the thing I really love about him is he had a 13 -year career and was a one -club man. He was an ever -present... And they love him. Yeah. They love him. We're in a city that has extremely passionate sports fans, shall we say. Yeah. as we saw the other day watching The Turnaround. If you haven't seen The Turnaround documentary on Netflix, please watch that. It's a baseball documentary, but it is one of the most wonderful

pieces of short film making I've ever seen. Yes, very good, isn't it? But yes, Philly fans are mad. Sports mad city. So to endear yourself to them is no mean feat. So who's I go second? I think I went Shannon, sorry, second, fourth. I went Shannon Sharp. Ah, yes. I like this one because he played Division 2 college football, which undermined people's perceptions of him. And he was also considered too big to be a receiver and too small to be a tight end. What? Yeah,

Scouts don't know anything. In that in -between zone. No, exactly. He was eventually selected in the seventh round with the 92nd pick by Denver. 192nd. 190 seconds, sorry. What did I say? 90 seconds. We've got to say seventh round would be deeper than that. 190 seconds. His first two years were very underwhelming because he was picked as a receiver, but then they converted him to a tight end and sort of the rest is history

really. He remained with Denver until 1999. He won two championship rings, so two Super Bowls that is, and then after a two -year stint with the Baltimore Ravens where he won another championship ring. Oh, yeah. who returned to the Broncos. And he played there until 2003. And he's regarded as one of the greatest tight ends of all time. That's a great shout, that is. I really like that one. Yeah, he ranks third in tight end receptions,

receiving yards and receiving touchdowns. It was also the first NFL tight end to amass over 10 ,000 receiving yards. It's a Hall of Famer, 2011. Very nice. So Shannon Sharp. I did have these the other way around, but I'm going to switch them. So second, I put... Sorry, not second. I'm getting these wrong. It's fine. They're just numbers. Third. Richard Sherman. Yes. Yeah. Seattle Seahawks selecting Sherman in the fifth round, 154th overall. Yeah. The 2011 draft. Sherman

was the 25th cornerback drafted. And whilst watching the draft... at home with his family Sherman was livid about the players who he perceived as inferior to him getting drafted before him and if anybody's ever seen any clips of Richard Sherman or heard any interviews with him he is not short on confidence he is a very intelligent man famously intelligent man very capable of using his words During his time at the Seahawks, Sherman was part of the Legion of Boom, which

is one of the great monikers. I love that. The defensive unit at the Seahawks. A secondary, as they say, that led the NFL in pass defense in 2013 and 14. His unit, the Legion of Boom, helped the Seahawks win the Super Bowl. They won 43 -8 over Denver, which is... well matched the third largest margin of victory in the history of the Superbowl. Should have won two Superbowls. Seahawks. Yeah. They blew that one against the Patriots where they decided to throw from the

one yard line. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was wild. Yeah. Yeah. And that would, you were, in fact, I didn't know that was the game, but I did say the Seahawks made the Superbowl the following season. I lost a very close game to the Patriots, but that is the circumstances. Yeah, after playing for the Seahawks, he went to the 49ers for three seasons. He made another Super Bowl appearance there, which is the one with Brock, I think. Or maybe that's a bit earlier. I don't know.

You might know. Where was that? Sorry. Sherman went to the 49ers and made another Super Bowl appearance. No, it would have been earlier than that. Yeah. But anyway, he's really good. It would have been the first time Mahomes won it. Oh, nice. Yeah, they beat the 49ers, I think. Yeah, but he's... He was the NFL Interceptions leader in 2013. He's just basically one of the greatest cornerbacks full -time. Yes. Great call.

Magnificent call. I'm very interested to see how they go from here, actually, if that's number three. I can't actually... I know who number one is, but I can't think who number two is right now. So number two, I pick Joe Montana. Oh, yes, of course. Yeah, yeah. So I'd like... He wasn't really rated by many scouts. We'll come to our opinions on scouts, I'm sure. He was very good

at college, but they just didn't rate him. And then in the 79 draft, San Francisco 49ers selected him at the end of the third round of the 82nd pick. He was the fourth quarterback taken behind Phil Simms, Steve Fuller, and some chap called Thompson, whose first name I can't remember. Yeah, and I think the thing that I really liked about Montana is he recovered from a career -threatening

injury in his back. He had a spinal disc injury, but he went on to become, well, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. He won two Super Bowls before his injury and then perhaps more impressively two after, which is why I also think he's number two. Basically. And he was the first player to be named the Super Bowl MVP three times. Two of those were won after his injury. He holds the Super Bowl career record for most passes

without an interception. 122 in four games. Impressive. And has an all -time highest passer rating of 127 .8, I think, in the Super Bowl. And yeah, 1993 he was traded to Kansas City Chiefs. where he played for the last two seasons and led the franchise to its first AFC Championship game. And he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2000. So that's Joe Montana. And probably considered the greatest quarterback of all time by a lot of people. Until? Until. Number one. Number one.

Any guesses? I think there's probably people who don't know a whole lot about American football who could probably have a pretty good guess about that one. But put us out of our misery, Ben. Thomas Brady. There we go. I don't actually know if his first name is Thomas, but I full -named him. I bet he's got a couple of middle names as well. He looks the type. Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. There we go. There we are. Perfect. Selected in the sixth round, which is absolutely

disgusting. I mean, yes. But also, have you seen some of his footage of the NFL Combine? So the Combine, I should say, I haven't really mentioned this yet, is they have like a day where they do put rookies through a lot of drills and see how fast they can run, see how agile they are, see how the throwing is and stuff. And if you look at videos of Tom Brady from there, A, he was slow. He was incredibly slow. He never got that much quicker during his career. But also,

he looked like a lanky dweeb. Like, I can see why he was drafted low. That's what even Mr. Croft said. Yeah. Yeah, so Robert Kraft, who's the owner of the Patriots, he said when he first met Brady, I think this is true anyway, he said that he had this image of Tom Brady coming down the old Foxborough Stadium steps with a pizza box under his arm, and he described him as a skinny beanpole. And when he introduced himself

to me, he said, Hi, Mr. Kraft. And he was about to say who he was, but I said, I know who you are. You're Tom Brady. You're our sixth round draft choice. And Kraft recalled Brady responding, he looked at me dead in the eye and said, I'm the best decision this organization has ever

made. Correct. Very correct. The thing that's really insane about it is he was picked 199th overall, sixth round of the 2000 draft, using a compensatory pick that the Patriots earned due to the loss of punter Tom Tooper to free agency in 1999. I didn't know that. He and his family, so Brady and his family, believed he'd be drafted in the second or third round. And they were watching the draft on TV. And six other

quarterbacks were drafted before him. And Brady was so embarrassed, he says he briefly left his family home during the sixth round and cried when recalling the experience. He basically said that when the Patriots notified him that he was being drafted, he was grateful not to have to become an insurance salesman. Incredible. Yeah. Even the Patriots. It might be the case that if they hadn't, he might have had to. It's not even the fact that he was picked that is incredible.

It was how he then became the Patriots starter. It was because they were playing the Jets in 2001. A couple of weeks after 9 -11, I think maybe the first round of fixtures that went back on after, obviously they were all cancelled after that for obvious reasons. But they were playing the Jets and Mo Lewis, who was the Jets linebacker, level Drew Bledsoe, who was the Patriots quarterback, with a good hit. We'll call it a good hit. It was such a good hit that Bledsoe was rushed to

hospital. It was discovered that Lewis's hit had sheared a blood vessel in his chest. Jesus Christ. Which had him bleeding out internally, a pint of blood every hour. Whoa. So, A. Thank God he got the attention he needed there. But being meant that Tom Brady had to come in as the starter from then on out. And Bledsoe would never regain his place because Tom Brady led the Patriots to a Super Bowl and they won it.

Incredible. It's a staggering story. It's one of those stories that simply, I mean, it has so many pieces that need to come together. But then, Tom Brady obviously goes on to win seven Super Bowls in the end, six for the Patriots, hence best decision you ever made, correct? And obviously one for the Buccaneers as well, before signing a ridiculously large contract to be a broadcaster. Am I a Brazilian supermodel? Yeah.

So the Patriots, that Super Bowl that year, against the St. Louis Rams, as they were then, now the Los Angeles Rams, formerly the Cleveland Rams. They were favourites by 14 points. Why are they ahead? I think, was that the year they were the greatest show on turf, they were called? That's a cool name. Which is a great name. Kurt Warner. Kurt Warner's incredible. I can't mention Kurt Warner in this episode because he was undrafted.

That's wild. If it wasn't for the fact this is the lowest draft picks ever, you'd probably have Kurt Warner at number two on this list. He was undrafted, came in, led... Led a Super Bowl win for the Rams and then obviously led them back to the Super Bowl here. Great show on turf offense. But yeah, Brady. You said you can't mention Kurt Warner, but you got him in. Yeah, I got him in. There's been a lot of films about him. He's a strange guy, but I like him. Kind of likable.

But yeah, and Brady kept his cool in a difficult situation. Drove them forward and after the Rams had pulled them, the Patriots had a lead. Rams pulled it back to level. Brady kept his cool, drove them forward. I think the field goal went over as time elapsed to win it. Good Super Bowl. That is a good Super Bowl. I don't know how to put Brady's accolades into a succinct summary. Here's the GOAT. Let me try. Seven Super Bowls, you said. Three and four years between 2002 and

2004. He also lost in 2008, 2012, and 2017. Usually against the Manning. Yeah, and they're quite good. Won three and five between 2015 and 2019. Then again in 2021 with the Bucks, where he beat Mahomes. He's a five -time Super Bowl MVP. He's a three -time NFL MVP just this regular season. In 23 seasons, he made 10 Super Bowls, seven wins, and another four conference finals, which means that half of his seasons made conference

finals. Yeah. Played till he was 45, NFL passing leader for yards, for completions, for touchdowns. It's insane. He wasn't wrong when he said that to Robert Kraft. Yeah, he wasn't wrong. And the thing that's really crazy is even the Patriots nearly didn't pick him. They were deciding between Brady and a guy called Tim Ratte, who was later entered the league as the seventh round pick or 212th overall for the 49ers. And Ratte would go on to make 18 starts over eight years, accruing

63 sacks. Yeah, but I mean, at that point, you're picking backup quarterbacks. They didn't pick him round six and thinking this guy's going to win us some Super Bowls. let alone six. Six. Incredible. It is an incredible story. And like him, I hate him because I know he's got his detractors as well. Yeah. Deflategate. It's an incredible story. Yeah. Yeah. A story for another day, perhaps. I mean, we're putting the hours into this one. I'm not sure we've got time for much else. No,

I know. But yeah, those are my five, man. I mean, you're not going to disagree with Brady. No one's going to disagree with Brady unless they've lost their minds. No. But yeah. I think the draft is one of the coolest things. And I think for me, what it serves to demonstrate is at least those, I know it's a very small sample size, only picking five, but what it serves to demonstrate to a certain extent is that the scouts don't know what they're doing. I think to a certain

extent, yeah. I mean, I actually, I graphed this out and I might put some of the graphs up on our blue sky or somewhere. Yeah, you should. Because they're quite interesting. They're very interesting. Yeah. You get outliers. And there is certainly a trend towards performance early in pick. Obviously, Brady's a massive outlier. You get other players who are outliers, many of whom you've mentioned, who do well despite

a low draft pick. Generally, a lot of the times when you're drafting, it is fairly obvious a player's going to do well if you draft them in the first round. It's no big shock. And it could be the case that you end up with players like Patrick Mahomes, who went, I think, 15th pick or something like that. Aaron Rodgers went 32nd pick. who obviously end up being great players who get picked low in the first round. Jerry Rice, I think he was about 16th pick, best receiver

of all time. But at least these guys are going first round. At least they're going first round. I mean, the outliers are rare and you can call them exceptions, but it's more, honestly, the amount of duds that get picked early on. Players like Jamarcus Russell, who despite being warned, despite Al Davis had 50 years of experience behind

him. more than that 60 years of experience 60 -70 years of experience behind him to make that decision and has made a foolish decision obviously with I'm guessing the backing of his scouting team or wherever else but it's it's incredible that you look at someone like Tom Brady and you think in hindsight why was he overlooked he was overlooked because he looked like he did and because he didn't look like the type he didn't look like he had the muscle mass or the speed

or anything like that to make up for it but the important thing is and always has been his brain his ability to stay calm under pressure and it is obviously hard to quantify that sometimes compared to speed compared to passing arm or wherever else but like I just find I find there's some insane decisions that yes we're looking at the benefit of hindsight but even at the time how do you come to that decision trade all your draft picks for one running back or two go for

someone who everyone's warning you against like that but we're also looking at the benefit of hindsight from the perspective of an amateur mate I'm not watching collegiate football week in week out I'm not accruing all the statistical data like and I'm not saying I would do better personally because that's an absurd claim but what I'm saying is that if you hold yourself out to be a scout like and your profession is the identification of talent you would think

that there would be a a greater hit rate. Yeah. I think it just serves to illustrate that when someone is 20, 21 years old or in other sports younger, you have no idea if they're going to be good or not. Yeah. With the very except like with few exceptions, like where someone is genuinely like freakishly talented. Yeah. Beyond their, beyond their developmental years. But yeah, most of the time you're guessing. It is a lot of guesswork.

And even when you look at some of the top players from this year's draft, we've already mentioned Travis Hunter, who's a chap who can play wide receiver and cornerback. That's fun. As fun as it sounds, and as fun as it is, the reckoning is he's probably going to get drafted by the Browns, number two overall, because I think the Titans will go for quarterback, probably Cam Ward, maybe Shadow Sanders. But yeah, Travis Hunter, he ends up at the Browns. Are they going

to play him cornerback and wide receiver? I'd be very interested to see what they end up doing. Because he'll end up getting specialised. He'll end up getting made into another piece of the jigsaw. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope he doesn't. He is insisting upon being considered a two -way player. You just don't get two -way players in the NFL. And you get occasional ones, like sometimes Gronkowski used to play in defence for the Patriots. He'd go in as a safety or whatever.

Sometimes, obviously. You've got players who've played a bit of wide receiving when they were cornerback, like Deion Sanders. Yeah. That'd be fun. Deion Sanders, who was Travis Hunter's coach at Colorado Buffaloes. Yeah, so. Oh, that's boss. I'm excited about this year's draw. I'm excited to see where the pieces fall. I did have a bit more to go through in this, some of the more modern stuff. I was going to talk about

Andrew Luck. I was going to talk about... Peyton Manning a little bit, but I think we can save a few things for another day. We have gone quite long here. We'll be doing the Super Bowl as well. Absolutely, of course we'll be doing the Super Bowl. Might even do one for the playoffs as well. Yeah, I think that just about covers it. I think that comfortably covers it. So this year, the first pick, as I mentioned, is Tennessee Titans,

then Cleveland Browns. The Jets are set to go, I think, seven for overall this year, which is... we've been higher but uh yeah the jets uh i think now's the time i'm i'm i'm moderately well this is the thing this is what the draft does and this is what uh football does particularly well the nfl does particularly well i am excited about next season the jets fan notwithstanding the fact i've been excited about the past few years it tricks you every time and it then it it builds

you up for disappointment afterwards but um seven for overall pick Get ourselves a nice big lineman probably and go from there. See where it takes you. Yeah. I think that is the beauty of it. Everybody gets a start fresh. Everybody gets excited. Dirts have just picked up Justin Fields, the quarterback. QB. Yeah. He had a difficult first few seasons, but he also had a terrible O -line as well. Probably had a few things that weren't necessarily going for him at Chicago,

so we'll see how he goes. Anyway, I'm digressing now. Well, you know, it's something to look forward to. And do you know where we can see it? Yeah, so if you're in the UK, it will be on Sky Sports, Sky Sports NFL specifically. If you're in the United States, I'm going to assume it will be everywhere. I don't think I'll have to tell you where to watch it if you're over there. Also, I don't know. Everywhere. It is taking place, yeah. You will know who has been picked number

one for sure. It's at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin from Thursday the 24th of April for the first round and later rounds Friday and Saturday up to the 26th of April. Nice. I can't wait. So, yeah. Well, that's the NFL draft. Yes.

Yes, it is. comprehensively covered in just two hours yeah if you managed to stick that out with us um thank you yeah very well done um hopefully it was reasonably informative and would have i think we covered all bases yeah giving you an insight into stuff that perhaps you didn't know before um where are we where are we going where are we going the week after then next week where are we going next week so next week staying stateside we are staying well somewhat stateside

actually we're gonna go we're kind of splitting our um Oh, no, wait. I'm getting ahead of myself. You are getting ahead of yourself. I am getting ahead of myself. We are definitely staying safe next week because I'm extremely excited by this one as well. I'm going to have to force myself to pronounce it properly as in the American way because I really want to say the Kentucky Derby. I believe it's the Kentucky Derby. So I'm going to have to pronounce it like that. The subtleties.

I might be wrong, but that certainly seems to be how it's pronounced. The Kentucky Derby from Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, which is another horse race. A lot of history. A very famous horse race. Yes. On the 3rd of May. Cool. Can't wait. That should be fun. If you like horse racing or you liked our national episode, come back. Yeah. As many stories about the Derby as there is about the national. A lot of history, a lot of controversy, a lot of stolen horses,

drugged horses, everything in between. So it'll be a good one. Yeah. Nice. Shall we leave it there? I think so. It's good having you over, Ben. Yeah, thanks. We're off to York City in a second, so. We are off to York City in a second. And I've enjoyed doing this podcast in person with a fat rascal from Betty's in York and a cup of tea. A very traditional English morning. Two cups of tea. Two cups of tea. Because it lasted so long. Anyway. Nice. If you stopped

by us, thank you very much. And we'll see you next week in Kentucky. Yep. Bye -bye. Bye, guys. Once again, thank you for listening to the Sporting Almanac podcast. I appreciate it, especially this week as it was a very long episode. If you enjoyed it, give us a like, a subscribe or a rating or wherever you get your podcasts from. More importantly, please tell your friends. There's honestly no better advertising than word of mouth. Our theme tune is Oh Yeah by Harmonia Productions.

You can find us on Blue Sky at at the Sporting Almanac or drop us an email at the Sporting Almanac podcast at gmail .com. Good luck to everyone running the London Marathon this weekend. I'll be there cheering you on. We'll be back next week. And until then, stay curious. Sport is nothing without the stories that make it. Goodbye.