4th-and-1 said:
i am in my early 30's. i had friends that played college ball and i have been pretty atheletic myself.. i really think that the game has really changed in the last ten years. the numbers that i knew were good back then are average now. there are alot of highschool players that could match evenly on paper with the physical aspects of the teams you mentioned..
if you were to pull out 40 times, weight reps, ect, i think that teams get better every year.. schemes also get better every year..
i think that we are looking at some of the best teams in college football history right now, and next season we will see some better than these.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Speed and strength measured by how many iron circles you can pick up is not the end all and be all, this is college football. Football is about tough men in a tough game doing tough things.
College football players today are mentally weaker than at any time in the past. They are soft and sissified compared to players of the past.
Show me just one player who will rip his ear off to continue playing in a game today. Bully Vandegraff tried his best to rip his off.
Besides this whole comparison of earlier football players with modern football players is useless.
Football teams in the 20's,30's,40's,50's,60's,70's,80's, and 90's were as good as the competition was in those decades.
In the early days of college football, it was literally a death sport. The game was almost literally seen as a battle, a real battle.
Dead players were carted off the field every week, it was commonplace and for many years wasn't given a second thought.
In the same way we can smugly say that players today are better athletes than any before them, if fans from back then were still alive, they would laugh at the touchy feely, feel good rules enacted to protect human life.
So, you have to ask yourself if those players from back then were allowed to play in our day and time, would they be able to follow their breakneck and hardcore rules to neutralize our speed and supposed strength of today?