Jeremy Crowhurst wrote:
Despite the occasional hand-wringing to the contrary on this site and others, "All Pro" means Associated Press, and anything other than AP should have an asterisk.
Hand-wringing? Why insult those who disagree with you?
The case has been made that it's simply false that " "All Pro" means Associated Press". No one in the AP only crowd has ever offered any evidence that makes that statement credible.
However, those who disagree with you, and who you think are "hand-wringers" for some unspecified reason,
have offered evidence. The evidence of the
Official NFL Record and Fact Books who have never just published the AP teams. Ans when they did publish one team, an official team, it was the PFWA.
Then there is the evidence of
Total Football: The Official Encyclopedia of the NFL. In those volumes they published more than just the AP teams.
There is the Pro Football of Fame who uses the official sources: the
Record and Fact Book and/or
Total Football for their bios.
Then there is the NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement, which specifies which teams may be used for the purpose of bonuses.
While it's true that the AP Awards are given out in the NFL Network, always remember that the NEA Awards were given out on CBS, then the official NFL broadcast network, but it didn't make them "official". A TV show does not do that. Also, the AP All-Pro teams are not awarded on the NFL Network. The Pro Bowl teams are. They are the closest thing to "offical" All-Conference teams
So, pardon the hand-wringing. My view is that those who reject the "AP only" school of thought are being true to the mission of the PFRA, which is research and record and write and discuss the history of the game and not take the position of "recentism" which ignores facts prior to maybe the year 2000. Any historical look at All-Pros, and actually current look, given the evidence just cited, shows any evidence that "anything other than AP should have an asterisk"
Actually, the intelligent look at it would say that when someone is listed as an AP All-Pro in an article the asterisk should be there, meaning *there are other All-Pro teams accepted by the NFL, NFLPA, and Hall of Fame but we're too lazy to look them up.
Now, Jeremy, if you can find a statement by the NFL that the AP is the official All-pro team, by all means, I am willing to listen. Or if you have some expertise in this are that some of us lack, again, please share.
But if you expect to make a flat-out errant statement, punctuated by an insult and not be challenged, then that's fine, but it's wrong. There have been too many players who were consensus All-Pro (making PFWA, SN, NEA, UPI) and missed the AP team (maybe were second-team) for the AP only school of thought to prevail.
I can think of the case of Andy Robustelli. If one goes by AP only (as Pro Football reference does) he's one of the best defensive ends ever in that category. But while he had the APs, usually Gene Brito or maybe Doug Atkins were the UPI and NEA All-Pros, making two of the three accepted All-Pro teams (as per the
Record and Fact Book) and then you couple it with stats and film and you can see that Brito and Atkins were the better players it is the ideal example of the folly of "Ap only".
My personal view, and others are free to disagree, is that the way to look at All-Pros is Consensus All-Pro. Using Total Football as a guide, as the Hall of Fame does, see who was on the majority of teams for a given year. It is how I tried to organize the Wikipedia ALl-Pro teams 8-9 years ago, so people could see who the Consensus All-Pros were.
When I do my tables I use 3 levels, Consensus All-Pro, First-team All-Pro, and Second-team All-Pro. But that's me.
Again, sorry for the hand-wringing. But I'll take that over ignorance anyday