I think I understand how the back-ups work now. The back-up folder only contains files that were created/modified since the last back-up. It is the saved .lg folder in the OOTP sub-folder structure where the core history files are stored. The back-up .lg folder only contains recent events.
What this means is that if you delete the .lg folder in the saved games folder (like I did) and try to replace with the back-up folder you will lose history events on the BNN page, league news and other history files. Stats are not lost but it sucks to lose who was drafted when, trades, etc.
Since I back-up every single game day I would be able to simply copy paste the history files into the .lg folder. But...I keep rolling back-ups. I only have the most recent three days.
Luckliy, I was able to recover almost all of the files with
Recuva.
Now I know not to delete the .lg folder and think I can simply plop the back-up .lg in its place. What needs to be done is to restore from in-game like Bru and ThGame suggested or to simply plop the back-up .lg on top of the saved .lg folder. Either works.
Anyways...news is good...I lost very very little. It looks like all of the players have their history with the exception of some weaker players deep on a reserve roster. But the important players (major leaguers) and the important news articles were saved.
Long story short...listen to Bru and restore in-game. Lastly, have a program like recuva already installed.