OOTP Developments Forums - Browsing Through Old Newspaper Clippings

BROWSING THROUGH OLD NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS- THE FALL OF 1951

THE IDEA

I have always enjoyed finding old sports newspaper pages online and just reading about various events. I have done several historical replays in the past and been running some in a few sports for quite some time with FHM6 and also a pair of older basketball games. I decided it would be interesting to try and duplicate that newspaper style with my leagues and when I created a college football league starting in 1951 for solo play I thought that would be as good a year as any to start.

So I of course fired up OOTP and started a 1951 historical league to join a FHM6 hockey league, a Fast Break College Basketball and Fast Break Pro Basketball league as well as football with the DDS series. The two OOTP development games are a breeze for historical baseball and hockey, which makes me appreciate just how good they are. With a fair bit of editing I think I got the basketball and football to where it would be at least acceptable as a pseudo-historical sim.

I actually started the FBCB league about 6 months ago, beginning in 1901 and adding schools and conferences as well as a large number of real coaches and players as they debuted in real life. It is still mainly fictional players of course (with about 150 teams), but there are a lot of familiar names thanks to the ease of the in-game editor. For the NFL I took the historical mod that is available for the game and created a 1950 league and simmed out until pre-season 1951. For the college game I created a modified 82 team universe with each school having 10-30 real players including names like Frank Gifford, Johnny Unitas and Rosey Grier. I also created a 1951 high school senior class (using the 1956 NFL draft as the source for players) for recruiting and it is headed by Bart Starr and Earl Morrall. The conference alignment is not exact, it is more of an early 1970s set up but it works for my purposes. There were still a lot of two-way players so I can't duplicate that but I think with modifiers I got the scores to be somewhat believable for the era. There are limitations of course but it works for my purposes. I will also include major boxing matches using the Title Bout TBCB game from OOTP Developments.

I will likely keep running these leagues in some format for quite some time - like I said the basketball one I have been playing for 6 months real time - but I am not sure how long I will keep doing these reports. That depends on my interest in making them and feedback I get as well I suppose. It really started just as me messing with paintshop and powerpoint to see what I could do to mimic an old newspaper layout.

THE BACKGROUND

So let's head back to 1951, September 1st to be exact and the first newspaper issue will appear below. In real life 1951 gave us 'The Giants Win the Pennant' on Bobby Thomson's shot heard round the world but there will be no such drama here unfortunately, as the Dodgers have a healthy lead atop the National League. The American League might give us some excitement down the stretch as the Yankees, with an aging Joe DiMaggio, an in his prime Yogi Berra and a rookie Mickey Mantle, and the Indians, led by pitchers Bob Feller and Mike Garcia, are battling it out for the pennant. We can also focus on Ralph Kiner's quest for 50 homers. As of September 1st the Pirates slugger leads MLB with 43 round-tippers - or 4 more homers than his lowly Pirates have wins on the season.

Both the NFL and college football are just about set to begin. The Los Angeles Rams defeated the Cleveland Browns in my 1950 NFL title game. The Rams have the reigning rushing leader in George Taliaferro as well as a young QB by the name of Norm Van Brocklin while Cleveland is led by veteran signal caller Otto Graham. The college game is starting it's first year in 1951 with my edited rosters so they key players include QB Babe Parilli of Kentucky and Jack Scarbath from Maryland as well as RB's Hugh McElhenny of the Washington Huskies and USC's Frank Gifford. One to keep an eye on is freshman Johnny Unitas who has just joined the Pitt Panthers. In real-life Unitas played for Louisville but the Cardinals did not make my list of 82 schools included in the modded league so I decided to place him with the school from his hometown. On the defensive side of the ball we have freshman Rosey Grier set to debut at Penn State while Tennessee will be strong led by defensive end Doug Atkins, who would in real life go on to have a great NFL career, primarily with the Bears. Notre Dame will always be a threat but the Irish are coming off a bad 4-4-2 season in real life. Notre Dame's best years may be a season or two away as future Heisman Trophy winning running back Johnny Lattner is on the team, but just a sophomore this year.

In my hockey league, the Detroit Red Wings are the reigning Stanley Cup Champions after ending Toronto's four year run last season. The Leafs had actually won 6 of the last 7 Cups prior to exiting in 6 games in last year's Finals against the Red Wings. Detroit's playoff run was keyed by a 19 year old rookie goaltender by the name of Glenn Hall, who took over when another young netminder by the name of Terry Sawchuk went down with a late season injury. Toronto still has the league's best offense led by converted defenseman now a center, Red Kelly. Kelly won his first Hart Trophy (he already owns 3 Conn Smythe Awards) and led the NHL in scoring with 91 points in 70 games last season.

Finally in basketball, the Big Ten has evolved into the dominant conference in my universe which began in 1901. Only Mississippi, with a pair of National Titles, has broke the string of Big Ten teams winning the NCAA tournament 14 of the past 16 years. One reason for that is I might have set the Big Ten conference prestige just a little too high but the main reason is most of the created real players I have added to the game come out of Pennsylvania and the mid-west so they are getting a lot of top recruits. Illinois is the defending national champion after beating Georgia in the title game last season. The Illini's top player is senior guard John Rennicke, who in real life played 1 season for the Milwaukee Hawks. (Much like OOTP, FBCB has a player development engine so I create them as high school senior recruits but they can develop quite differently than I intended. Of course a lot develop like real life as well with an example being Frank Ramsey - an NBA hall of Famer who won 7 titles with the Celtics - was my National Freshman of the Year at Indiana in 1950. He played college ball at Kentucky in real life.

Another former National Freshman of the Year was George Mikan. The 7'2" center is arguably the greatest player in my NCAA history, winning 3 player of the year awards and 2 National Championships at Michigan before turning pro. Mikan was drafted by the Minneapolis Lakers with the third pick in the 1948 NBA draft and has continued his dominance as a pro, winning 3 straight NBA MVP awards and leading the Lakers to the league championship over the Boston Celtics last season. The Celtics have faced some hard luck so far, reaching the finals 3 times in 5 NBA seasons but coming up short on each occasion.

That was a little longer than I planned so from here on out I will let the newspapers do the talking but, as always, I am glad to answer any questions on my league(s) setup or specific players.