karen lotz;501935 wrote:I really don't want to turn this into a ND/OSU pissing match again, just asking a question.
Do you also think all of the records from when wooden shafted golf clubs were used should be ignored?? What about when baseball players didn't wear helmets? Or when there was a jump ball after each basket scored in basketball or when dunking was illegal??
With golf it's a little different because it's not just the clubs that have changed. There are just as many tournaments today, just as many people in the field each week, and as players have gotten longer, so have courses, so a par 5 is still a par 5. My guess is that scoring average may be slightly lower today than 40 or 70 years ago, but probably not by much.
Baseball is a horrible example because the equipment and the game itself has hardly changed in 100 years. Still 90 feet to first, still 3 strikes and your out, and still 6 outs for an inning. What has changed is steroids, and most agree that those records aren't legitimate.
With basketball, there's definitely an easy line to draw for the birth of modern basketball with the advent of the three point line and again with the institution of the shot clock. Obviously scoring was going to be much lower before these two things were put in place. There are definite eras in basketball, so it's definitely okay to draw lines for statistical comparison reasons.
With football it's the same thing. Yes, a national championship is a national championship, but is a championship for the 1910's as impressive when football was only 20-30 years old, and there were less than half as many schools with varsity football as their are today? It's honestly a bit ridiculous to count them the same. Also looking back all the way definitely skews the numbers when programs like Notre Dame and Michigan began playing varsity football 20+ years before everyone else. If we really wanted to debate this we should end the conversation with Princeton and Yale because they have twice as many national championships as Alabama who has the third most all time. But does anyone consider them to be the two greatest football schools of all time? Nope. Combined they only have one national championship after WWII. No one considers their titles to have the same weight or value as teams with more recent championships.
1946 is a good cutoff point and most recognize that year, or one very close to it, as the beginning of modern football because it was after the end of WWII and it's when football began to really resemble the game we see today. College football may be the most difficult sport to find a dividing line for. Maybe you could choose the legalization of the forward pass or the beginning of the AP Poll as a dividing line, but that isn't even perfect. Most however recognize the first full season after WWII as the start of the modern era of football.
