| If you pick up the print edition of Pro Football Weekly
dated Sept. 17, 2001, you will be reading the 1,000th issue of PFW. I have spent an awful
lot of time lately trying to put this fact in perspective, but it’s been a bit
difficult to grasp. I’m talking about a publication that has covered every single
thing that’s happened in professional football since the merger of the AFL and NFL. I’d
be the first to admit that I’m way too close to the subject to be objective, but
there is just no argument that the contents of these pages over the last three decades has
changed the way pro football is covered and presented to you, its fans.
Back in 1968, two seasons before the NFL and AFL actually became one, and the AFL was
still considered far inferior to the NFL, PFW named the first-ever NFL-AFL All-Pro team.
Some smirked when that club was split almost down the middle between NFL and AFL players.
But history has proven Lance Alworth, Ron Mix, Buck Buchanan, Willie Lanier, Johnny
Robinson and others truly belonged on that team. And that PFW recognized the AFL indeed
was for real before the Jets and Chiefs confirmed that fact a few years later.
At the beginning of the ’70s, my father, Arthur Arkush, the creator and founder of
PFW, discovered two brothers, Carl and Pete Marasco, who followed the collegiate football
crop much like NFL scouts. They were so good at it, they were both eventually hired by NFL
clubs — but not before they had inspired the career of a kid out of Brooklyn named
Joel Buchsbaum. Joel took over as PFW’s scouting expert in the late ’70s and has
become the standard by which independent gridiron talent analysts are measured today.
In 1978, we started a contest, sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, that would run for the next
five years. Readers put together their own teams of NFL players, registered those clubs in
our computers and competed against each other by earning points based on how their players
performed every Sunday in real NFL games.
Did we invent fantasy football? I’m not positive of that, but I’ll guarantee
you nobody else delivered it on a national basis before we did.
We were the first publication to put our statistics program on computer files, creating
a stats package that was even more complete than what the league was releasing at the
time. The "Way We Hear It," spearheaded by my brother, Dan, was one of the first
in-depth articles providing football gossip, scoops and rumors with an insider’s feel
on a regular basis.
The football-writing talent that has graced these pages is without parallel. Our
original contributors included Brent Musburger, Jerry Magee, Bill Wallace, Ed Stone,
Cameron Snyder, Peter Finney and Dick Connor among others. Practically every prominent pro
football writer in the country has written for this publication at one time or another,
and our in-house staff has won numerous writing awards on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, PFW has outlived some of its greatest contributors. My dad passed away
in March of 1979, just 12 years after the birth of his brainchild. Just last year we lost
one of our original editors, Bob Drazkowski, one of the real characters to ever grace the
sportswriting business and a true genius with the written word.
I replaced my dad as PFW’s publisher/editor, and it is absolutely incredible to me
when I look back and realize how blessed I’ve been to have covered, met and known so
many of the true giants of the game.
Namath and the Jets in ’69 … the undefeated Dolphins in ’72 … the
Steelers’ four title teams of the ’70s … the Redskins and 49ers in the
’80s … the ’85 Bears … the Cowboys, Packers and Broncos of the
‘90’s. We’ve covered them all.
We also covered the birth of the NFL labor movement and all its trials and
tribulations, as well as the advent of free agency. We’ve chronicled the
league’s expansion. We’ve seen instant replay come and go and come back again. I
actually have met and worked side by side with George Halas, Pete Rozelle, Art Rooney,
Mike Ditka and Bill Walsh. I covered and became friends with Al Davis, Dick Butkus, Jim
Finks, Randy White, Walter Payton, Gene Upshaw, Matt Millen.
There are far too many people responsible for the past 1,000 issues to name everybody.
There are a few folks, though, outside of the PFW family, who have consistently had an
impact on this publication since its inception, through good times and bad.
To people like Joe Browne, Seymour Siwoff, Jim Steeg, Pete Abitante and Dick Maxwell, I
just have to say thanks. And without Davis, Jim Finks and Bruce Sagan, the former
publisher of the Chicago-based Southtown Economist, I don’t think PFW ever
would of made it past issue No. 368, when my dad passed away.
I doubt I could ever thank them enough for what they’ve given to this publication.
Above all else, I must thank you, our faithful readers. I hope you enjoy the next 1,000
issues as much as I know we’ve enjoyed bringing you the first 1,000.
If you'd like to be part of the Pro Football Weekly In Print family, you can do it in
two ways. You can buy each issue at a local newsstand near you, or you can subscribe and
receive it at your door. Call 1-800-FOOTBALL (1-800-366-8225) to subscribe, or subscribe
online by clicking here |
