Tony Latone: HOVG?

[TanksAndSpartans]

Ken, Thanks for adding HOVG to the subforum title.

I’ve been voting for Latone to get into the HOVG. He played 6 seasons 25-30. Unofficially among rushing leaders in 25, 26, and 28. Pro Football Reference has him as an All-Pro in 26 and 28. One of the things he has going for him is oral history. This Joe Zagorski article gives some examples: http://profootballresearchers.com/archi ... 10-319.pdf. Finally, this book supports him being one of the keys to his team’s run at the ’25 championship often citing game by game statistics: https://www.amazon.com/Breaker-Boys-Gre ... 1933060352

[ChrisBabcock]

I've been voting for him the last few years he's been on the ballot as well. He is the league's rushing leader for the decade of the 20s by most accounts. (unofficially of course) I think that alone should get him in our HOVG.

[Reaser]

Yup, been nominating him for the HOVG for the past 6 or so years, as part of the HOVG committee have been voting for him to be on the ballot the past 6 or so years, and have been voting for him for the HOVG for the past 6 or so years.

I think he's one of the primary types of player that the HOVG is/should be for.

[ChrisBabcock]

This is a reason why I really wish when the yearly HOVG class is announced that the number of votes for each player nominated would be published. That way we'll know "how close" a player like Latone is. I'm really curious as to how many of us are not voting for him. I think its shocking that we haven't voted him in yet. (No offense at all to those reading who chose not to vote for him and feel there are better candidates!)

[Reaser]

This is a reason why I really wish when the yearly HOVG class is announced that the number of votes for each player nominated would be published. That way we'll know "how close" a player like Latone is. I'm really curious as to how many of us are not voting for him. I think its shocking that we haven't voted him in yet. (No offense at all to those reading who chose not to vote for him and feel there are better candidates!)

Obviously being on the HOVG committee I see the voting results so I know "how close" he is.

I can't remember the specific reason but many years back we discussed why the totals weren't shared. I remember it made sense at the time but don't remember the actual reason.

Andy or Ken would know.

[ChrisBabcock]

I figured there was some sort of logical reason. (although it would be very interesting to see the results!) Possibly to not influence voters one way or another if a player gets nominated in consecutive years.

[JuggernautJ]

This sub-forum should give us the perfect um, forum to debate HoVG selections.

If someone you nominated and/or whom you feel strongly about is up for "enshrinement" why not make
a post about him?
Perhaps it would be the (minor) equivalent of the presentations made in the "real room."

After all, debating the relative merits of this or that is kind of what a discussion board does best.
And now we have the (sub) forum to do just that.

[TanksAndSpartans]

Not sure this will sway any voting, but I found this quote from John D.W. Reiley, the mayor of Pottsville, online saying "I go back a few years -- I'm 72 -- but I don't go back all the way to the days of the Maroons… when I was a kid in grade school and high school, there was talk… Kids would say to each other, "You run like Tony Latone.' That was 25 years after they played.”.

[TanksAndSpartans]

Latone was late to the NFL because he didn’t go to college or attend much school at all (he was a child laborer in the mines, served in the Navy, and then back to the mines where his first exposure to football was of the sandlot variety). He’s first mentioned in the newspapers as a member of the Lithuanian Knights, then the Wilkes-Barre Panthers ('23). In ’24, the Maroons poached him from Wilkes-Barre, but Pottsville was not an NFL team until ’25 which is when we see Latone show up in PFR as a 28 year-old “rookie”. He made his name as a line plunging fullback, but Pottsville saw he had the speed to get to the outside and often played him at wingback and gave him the ball on reverses. In ’25, he was unofficially second in the league in rushing, 4th in scoring (all his points on 8 TDs), and helped lead the Maroons to what likely would’ve been the title, had it not been for extenuating circumstances. He didn’t receive post-season honors in ’25, but did get a 1st Team nod from one organization in ’26 when he unofficially finished 2nd in rushing for a 2nd straight year. He dropped to 3rd in the league in rushing for both ’27 and ’28 and received post season honors (2nd team this time) for a second time in ’28. Without the benefit of the play-by-play accounts recorded in Pottsville, he dropped off from among the unofficial rushing leaders in ’29, but finished 4th in scoring with 9 touchdowns which hints at the possibility that his actual rushing performance, had it been recorded better, may have been comparable to the consistent numbers he put up in the prior 4 seasons. Even at the age of 33 in his final season (1930), he averaged 74 yards rushing in the 3 games for which play by play accounts were available.

[TanksAndSpartans]

Just got to an interesting part in Ralph Hickok's bio of Johnny Blood where they are both at the HOF in '73 and Blood is asked by John Bankert and Jim Campbell if any players from his era ought to be in the HOF. His reply included this nugget that I've never seen before:

"Tony was a Jim Taylor type, ran low with real high knee action, and you couldn't hit him hard enough to make him happy. You could just clobber him, you'd think you wiped him out, knocked him out of the game, and he'd get up and grin at you. Like he was saying, 'Is that the best you can do?' If you tried to tackle him low, one of his knees might break your nose, and if you tried to get him high, he'd carry you on his back for five or six yards, and then he wouldn't go down unless a couple other people helped you out. He was also a great linebacker, if he played today, he'd be in a class with Nitschke and Butkus, the same type, a ferocious hitter. And he could also get into pass coverage when he had to."