Chapter 1: The Concepts and Problems (Problems 1 thru 5)

This book is my opinion. I have tried to stay logical and coherent. Yet logic can be thrown right out the window when you ask people to compare cars to motorcycles. My son shows this point oh so well. While I was working on this book I asked my son, who is 18 years of age, “how do you think Jim Thorpe (Yes, that Jim Thorpe, the Native American athlete that won Olympic medals and is considered by most critical thinking sports fans as one of the top athletic competitors the U.S. has ever produced) would do if he was to play for your high school football team?” My son looked me in the eye and said, “Jim Thorpe would not even be named All District.” What the...? Was he serious? I don’t know. My son is very knowledgeable about sports. He does not get emotional and tries to stay in the realm of reasonable. My son is an example of the two forces at play for all of us. The first and most powerful is the “If I saw you play you were good, and if I didn’t see you play you can’t be as good” syndrome. For the majority of those that watched Michael Jordan play basketball but did not watch Oscar Robertson play they say that Michael is better than Oscar. I feel that my theory is vindicated by the fact that the next generation of kids are now saying the LeBron is better than Michael.


The second force is media marketing. The marketing of Michael Jordan in conjunction with Nike was a true force to behold. When ESPN has a television show that names the “Greatest Athlete of the Century,” then tells us that it is Michael Jordan, that influences a lot of LIFs (Low Intellect Fan). Never mind that ESPN (Tony Kornheiser) decided to create a totally new definition of “athlete” and it just so happened that Michael Jordan fit this new definition thus allowing him to win this kangaroo court contest. For me this raises the question: “if Michael Jordan is the greatest athlete of the century, why did he bat .202, in minor league ball, and have a .952 fielding percentage while attempting to cross over into the baseball world? Why didn’t the ‘Greatest Athlete of the Century’ make it to the Major Leagues?” Why didn’t the ‘Greatest Athlete of the Century’ make his way to the top level of any other sport? By the way, if you want to find the greatest athlete that the world has ever seen, go to the Internet, then to YouTube, and look up Babe Didrikson Zaharias.


There are factors at play in this that I did not foresee when I thought this crazy idea up. Six foot one inch guard Austen Rowland is a perfect example. Austen first went to Delaware in the 99 – 00 season. At that time Delaware was in the AEC (American East Conference). Then in his junior season Delaware joined the Colonial Athletic Conference. Austin then transferred to Lehigh in the Patriot Conference. Because of Austen’s decision to transfer, and because one of the colleges that Austen went to decided to transfer to another conference it is possible for Austen Rowland to be chosen to play on three separate teams in this theoretical contest. Below are some more of the headaches that I encountered during the course of this work.

1. Schools that switched conferences:  If a school had a great player that made the list it was possible for that player to have played in two separate conferences.  (Example:  J. J. Berea started in the American East Conf. and then Northeastern joined the Colonial Athletic Association for his senior year.  

Even better examples are the careers of Sedric Webber and Granger Hall.  Both of these fine players have done something that no other collegiate basketball player can claim.  They have both been named Player of the Year for two separate conferences.  Granger Hall initially was in the East Coast Conference when he played for Temple.  His sophomore year he was awarded Player of the Year honors.  After his sophomore season, Temple moved to the Atlantic 10 Conference.  It was at the end of his senior season that he was named the Atlantic 10 Player of the year.  

The same can be said for Sedric Webber.  Sedric was named the Player of the Year for the Atlantic Sun Conference (at that time the conference was called the Trans-American Athletic Conference) as a junior playing for the College of Charleston.  At the end of his junior season, the College of Charleston moved to the Southern Conference.  Sedric was then named Player of the Year for the Southern Conference.  Sadly, neither player made the final cut for the all-time conference teams for this book.

2. That crazy World War II.  Now, I am not attempting to downplay the significance of World War II, or any war for that matter (I am a History teacher for the love of God).  It is the impact that the war had on statistics and honors for some of the past players that must be taken into consideration.  Let us look at one of the greatest basketball players in history, Bob Kurland.  Bob Kurland played for Oklahoma A&M and won the NCAA Championship in 1945 and ‘46.  Then the 7’ 0” future two-time Olympian outdueled George Mikan of DePaul when the NCAA champions played Mikan’s NIT champion Blue Demons in a NCAA Champion/NIT Champion match up to name the only true National Champion ever crowned.  Kurland and his team won that game and Ray Meyer of DePaul called Kurland “the greatest player.”  Yet, when I put together the Missouri Valley Conference team I discovered that Kurland only made the All Valley team one time.  Did this mean that Mr. Kurland was not good enough to make the list of Missouri Valley greats for other years besides the one he did make?  No, unfortunately, for the 43 – 44 and 44 – 45 seasons no All Valley teams were compiled out of respect for those in war.  Thus, Mr. Kurland does not have three All Valley team selections helping his resume.  So, what to do?  I am sorry, but I am going to give Mr. Kurland the benefit of the doubt and say that he would have been on the All-Valley team for those two vacated seasons.  From my point of view, I have no other choice.  In the American legal system juries are asked to be a finder of fact from the evidence placed before them.  In some situations they are also asked, “what would a reasonable person do” in the given situation?  Well, a reasonable person would conclude that the great Bob Kurland would have been selected for those two seasons.  

3. For some conferences I felt compelled to go back in their past and use players even though the conference did not officially exist yet (for example, the Ivy League, which was officially created in 1954.  Unofficially, the same schools were playing in a conference under another name).

4. Because this is about choosing the greatest college players from each conference, how should I weigh the players who only played for a year or two then turned pro?  Does a player who played in college 4 years, averaged 18.8 points per game, 9.2 rebounds per game, and 2.6 assists per game carry the same weight as a player who played one year but had slightly higher statistics in one or two categories?  I decided to lean (and this is not a big lean, but a slight “oh, the wind is pushing me” lean) in favor of the three and four year player.  When faced with the dilemma of which player to choose, such as a one year college player averaging 22.5 points, 8.9 rebounds, and 3.4 assists, or a four year player at 19.2 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 3.2 assists I decided to use the very unscientific cliché “even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then” as the deciding factor in determining which player to select.  In other words, I leaned towards the kid with the longer career.  Yet in the case of a player such as Cedric Maxwell, I am forced to choose the player with relatively less playing time.  For the first 3 years of his career, Maxwell played for UNC Charlotte, which at the time was independent.  Then for Cedric’s senior year the school joined the Sun Belt.  Cedric’s numbers were so good in comparison to others that I had to take him; plus, he did play four collegiate years.

5. What about the 3-point line and the shot clock?  How do I incorporate those players who did not play with these additions to the game?  Should I make it so that the first half of the game will be without these two items and then have the second half played with them?   Also, what about those players that achieved their statistical totals when there was no three-point line in the college game?  They are at a disadvantage statistically against those that played after 1986 when the NCAA adopted the three point shot.  For example, J.J. Reddick’s statistics certainly benefit from the fact that with every three-point shot that he made he earned 33 percent more points than fellow ACC basketball player John Roche of South Carolina, whose college career spanned from 1968-1971. This problem was the toughest for me to deal with.  I decided that it would be based on my opinion.  At first I thought I might try to find a mathematical way around this dilemma.  But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I would need every game ever played to have been recorded.  Then, I would have to have a computer program written that would put a three-point line into the game (like the first down line you see on televised pro football games) to see if the player’s shot was from the correct distance.  “Ain’t gonna happen!”  It fell to me, and once again, to my opinion.  

Since this dilemma was only about points per game, I decided I would try and evaluate a player using the “what might have been” system.  I looked at John Roche’s points per game (22.5) and knew that Roche would have had a higher point per game average if he had the 3 point line.  Also, I knew that J.J. Reddick, who averaged 19.9 ppg, would have had a lower (much lower) point per game average (16.6 ppg).  I chose John Roche, and left Mr. Reddick off the team.

As for the shot clock, its impact on the statistical aspect of the game is equally significant.  In 1973, Tennessee beat Temple 11 to 6.  Approximately twelve years later the NCAA put the 45-second shot clock into the game  (about eight years later they lowered it to 35 seconds).  In my mind, however, this was not as big a dilemma as the 3-point shot problem.  When teams slow down the scoring (intentionally stall) it certainly lowers a player’s statistics.  But, in my mind there are two differences.

In the modern era of basketball, post 1960, teams that had great players did not try to stall the game.  First of all, most teams wanted to unleash the potential that an outstanding player possessed.  If they slowed down the game it diminished the number of times the player had to touch the ball. To ask Larry Bird, Sean Elliott, Lennie Rosenbluth, or George McGinnis to run 4 minutes off the clock each possession down the court would not be a very prudent offensive strategy, and as a result it did not occur frequently enough to be statistically noteworthy.  I’m aware that in some instances this technique has been deployed (Georgetown 37, SMU 36, 1984) but not enough to change the choice of a player. The 3-point line, however, was a factor in every game.  Therefore, the stall tactics that might have been used were far less influential on player’s stats.  But ultimately the design of the game and the tactics utilized prior to the 1960s did have some influence on statistics, a phenomenon that can be highlighted with the following two examples.

The first comes to light when we again take a closer look at Bob Kurland.  During Bob Kurland’s career “big men” just weren’t around (I am defining big men as 6’ 9’ or taller). In other words, there just weren’t that many giants in the college game.  So, as a natural consequence, opposing coaches experimented with many different tactics to control his game (including the despicable comments of Kansas coach Phog Allen when he told the press that Kurland was “a glandular goon.”  

In the 1945 season Oklahoma A&M won a game against the University of Oklahoma 14 to 11.  Yet in the 1946 season, Kurland’s A&M team played St. Louis, with Kurland tallying 58 points.  Several times during Kurland’s career neither team scored 30 points, yet, on many other occasions, Mr. Kurland led all scorers with 30 or more points.  Because of this pre-60s dilemma, I had to be very careful not to exclude a former great player because he averaged 17 points a game and someone from 2007 averaged 21 points a game.

The second problem is the jump ball problem.  Many of the older generation of college players played when the rules stipulated that after each made basket the ball was to be returned to the middle of the court for a jump ball.  This means that many of these past great players may have averaged 14.5 points per game despite their team possessing the ball 10 to 15 times less than the opposing squad.  There will be an example about this later.