Ring Culture Destroys Historical Arguments

Well lets face it when you speak to a group of former NFL players and ask who is the greatest quarterback of all time, you’ll hear several answers with Tom Brady one of those mentioned. Yet ask the armchair podcaster or those in today’s media who are sullied with recency bias and it’s only Tom Brady. Why?

Their answer is always the same tired trope: He won 7 Super Bowl rings.

If thats the case then the next answer had better be Bart Starr who has 5 NFL Championship Rings which include the first 2 Super Bowls.  He won it in 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966, and 1967 with the first 3 a championship game equal to the Super Bowl was played. Only when 1966 and the merger with the AFL did the Super Bowl begin so he has the equivalent of 5 NFL championshiups which is what the Super Bowl is. The NFL Champion… don’t let those who don’ t know history try to sway you because of their limited knowledge of history.

This issue came into vogue during the last 25 years of sports coverage as pundits kept wanting to make every new champion & player the greatest ever. This is dismissive and doesn’t take into account previous champions who were just as great. This became the banter of the “embrace debate” era that has ruined sports coverage and historical discussion.

If we go back to the year 2000 we had several in that greatest ever quarterback category: Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas, Dan Marino were the first mentioned. In Unitas’ case he was universally number 1 in everyone’s eyes as we made our way into the late 1980s. Although Starr won 5 NFL championships and 1 NFL MVP in 1966, it was Unitas who was labeled QB of the decade with 2 MVPs (1964 & 1967). Once you add his ’59 MVP, the Pro Football Hall of Fame called Unitas the greatest QB of all time commemorating the NFL’s 50 seasons in 1969.

In the past, merit for the best at the QB position was about the player performing and the merit with how well they’re playing. No one said Terry Bradshaw was the greatest QB as his Steelers won 4 Super Bowls in the ’70s. You didn’t hear pundits with Bradshaw better than Roger Staubach as a greatest all time QB. Few would have him better than Ken Stabler.

Yet in this day and age the first thing brought up is how many rings the player won. Hell if that’s the case I guess Trent Dilfer is better than Dan Marino no matter how many records he threw for. See how ridiculous that sounds?

We see it when we football fans argue who was better between Barry Sanders & Emmitt Smith? An argument LeSean McCoy brought up when he stated he felt he was better than Smith prompting arguments all over social media (X, Facebook, Instagram…etc)

Winning a Super Bowl is a team achievment not a greatest ever player measure. If it is … time to re-evaluate and start talking Bart Starr. Period.

You have to talk about feats by the man playing and what he accomplished for his team as the measure. We need to get back to that way of evaluating players on their own feats and merits.

Rant over… thanks for reading and please share the article.