The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s lasting blemish

The Green Bay Press-Gazette all-pro teams, chosen from 1923-35, certainly confirm why many of the 23 players who started their careers in the 1920s were inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

As explained in last week’s website post, those selections were the only all-pro teams of that period based on annual polling of coaches, club officials, game officials and sportswriters conducted by the paper’s George Whitney Calhoun in 12 of the 13 years. Sports editor Art Bystrom picked the team in 1932 based on feedback from players on five NFL teams and his own observations.

That’s why there’s arguably no better gauge of the best players of the NFL’s first 16 seasons.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame didn’t induct its first class until 1963, 34 years after the league’s first decade ended. In 1969, when 16 members of the Hall of Fame selection committee, representing each NFL city at the time, picked the 1920s all-decade team, all 18 selections had last played more than 30 years earlier.

One of the selectors for the all-decade team was Jimmy Conzelman, who played and coached in the NFL throughout the 1920s and represented St. Louis, then home of the Cardinals. Arthur Daley of The New York Times, another committee member, had started covering games in the 1920s. Dick Cullum of the Minneapolis Tribune might have done so, as well. He was on the staff of the Minneapolis Journal in 1921, when the Packers and Minneapolis Marines were in their first year in the then American Professional Football Association. But eight of the other 13 voters were younger than 15 in 1929 and another wasn’t born yet.

PRO FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME PLAYERS FROM THE 1920s

Here are the 23 players and the years they were inducted:

1963 – Johnny Blood, HB; Red Grange, HB; George Halas, E; Wilbur “Fats” Henry, T; Cal Hubbard, T; Bronko Nagurski, FB; Ernie Nevers, FB; Jim Thorpe, HB; 1964 – Conzelman, QB; Ed Healey, T; Link Lyman, T; Mike Michalske, G; George Trafton, C; 1965 – Guy Chamberlin, E; Paddy Driscoll, QB; 1966 – Joe Guyon, HB; Walt Kiesling, G; Steve Owen, T; 1967 – Ken Strong, HB; 1981 – Red Badgro, E; 2005 – Benny Friedman, QB; Fritz Pollard, HB; 2020 – Duke Slater, T.

The charter selections were made by a committee of 14, again, representing each NFL city at the time. Twelve were sportswriters, including Baltimore’s Paul Menton, who officiated NFL games from 1923-38, and two were ex-players, Conzelman and Davey O’Brien, who didn’t begin his brief pro career until 1939 and represented…