Leuchtenburg on Bush-as-Hoover

If William Leuchtenburg says something about American politics, you should pay serious heed. He is almost certainly right. At The New Republic Leuchtenberg addresses the comparison that some are making between Herbert Hoover and George W. Bush. Bush comes out on the short end of the comparison.

I have been lucky to get to know Leuchtenburg over the last few years, to the point where I consider him a friend and something of a mentor. There is no finer historian or human being.

George Fredrickson, Rest in Peace

The incomparable historian George Fredrickson has passed away. Other than advisors and professors and those senior people to whom I owe my career, there are three other historians in whose debt I'll always feel simply because of their presence in the field. One is C. Vann Woodward. Another is John Hope Franklin. And the third is George Fredrickson whose unparalleled contributions to comparative history profoundly shaped my own work.

I am proud and honored to have contributed an essay a couple of years back to a special issue of Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies devoted to Fredrickson, especially since he contributed an article as well. I am at work on the early stages of a book in which I am exploring bus boycotts in the United states and South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s. My original idea for this project came from an aside in one of Fredrickson's books, several of which I refer to almost religiously.

In the end, historians leave a body of work behind. George Fredrickson's is unsurpassed . We never met in person, but I feel that I owe him a profound debt of gratitude.

Most Overrated NFL Player Ever?

Some time ago Tom and I were on the phone and we got into a discussion about overrated professional athletes in history. After poring over page after page of statistics neither one of us could quite understand why Bill Walton is as highly rated as he was. A good player? Absolutely. At times (when he was healthy) a great player? Probably. And maybe you can even say that he was one of those guys you just had to see, although when the numbers indicate otherwise you are going to need more than that to convince me. In any case, I am not here to bury or praise Bill Walton. If you are so inclined you can go to Basketball-Reference and do all of the comparisons with any centers you can name. let's just say that we dug deep into our imaginations and found an awful lot of good but not great guys who compared favorably or at least closely with a guy given props in the NBA's all-time top fifty players, a claim that seems tough to sustain.

In any case, I finally went out and bought The ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia, something both a fan and a historian really ought to have. Yes, all of this stuff is available online, but reference sources like this still matter. In any case, I did some perusing and one of the guys I have always thought was the most overrated player of all time and yet who is a Hall of famer brought up in a lot of best of all time conversations came to mind and I compared him with a guy I always loved who was tough and gritty but also luckless and battered. Tell me what you think (and don't cheat by scrolling down):

Player A: Played 149 games, 135 as a starter. He threw 3593 passes and completed 1879, or 52.3%. His average yards per pass was 7.5, he threw for 26,886 yards. He threw for 182 touchdowns but 208 interceptions. He was sacked 252 times for 2014 lost yards. All of this adds up to a 69.6 quarterback rating. He also ran for 2176 yards and scored 35 touchdowns in his career.

Player B: Played 140 games, 64 as a starter. He threw 3762 passes and completed 1886, or 50.1%. His average yards per pass was 7.4, he threw for 27,663 yards. He threw for 173 touchdowns but 220 interceptions. He was sacked 150 times for 1425 lost yards. All of this adds up to a 65.5 quarterback rating. He also ran for 140 yards and scored 7 touchdowns in his career.

OK -- so here is what I see based on the numbers: Two decent, at times good quarterbacks with fairly serious flaws. Player A threw slightly fewer passes for slightly fewer completions and slightly fewer yards. But he has a higher completion percentage (albeit marginally so) and a higher quarterback rating, a byzantine statistic that is difficult to assess but that often is at the apex of quarterback assessment tools. He threw more touchdowns and fewer interceptions, though the ratio is obviously bad for both guys. Player A was a much better runner -- indeed something of a weapon where Player B was obviously a statue, even if Player A was sacked more and for more yards.

Looking just at the numbers it would be hard to make a passionate case for either guy, but again, just on the numbers, I'd probably favor Player A slightly. It might make a difference to know that Player A appeared in one Super Bowl and got trounced (and he got abused). Player B won his lone Super Bowl appearance.

But with those numbers, can we agree that one of these guys ought not to be considered an all-time great, the other a marginal guy?

Player A?

Steve Grogan of the New England Patriots, a gutty, tough as nails guy. He played with a damned neckroll because he took so many shots.

Player B?

Joe Willie Namath. One loudmouthed promise, a fur coat on the sideline, an Alabama pedigree, and a whole lot of hype gets you a guy who might have been better than Steve Grogan.

Ladies and gentlemen -- Joe Namath is my nominee for most overrated NFL football player of all time.

Self Indulgence Alert

History New Service has posted and distributed my latest op-ed, "In Historical Truths, the Road to an Open Society." Hopefully it will come to a newspaper near you (let me know if it does). My piece has its origins in a dcat post, Ding, Dong, Pinochet is Dead from earlier this month. Since as much as anything I see dcat as a place to post mini-op eds and to work out ideas, I suppose this is an example of how that can work ideally. In any case, enjoy, and feel free to comment.