Game books update

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Todd Pence
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Re: Game books update

Post by Todd Pence »

Rupert Patrick wrote: 10/3/1999 vs. Seattle - No play-by-play for second, third and fourth quarters
However, the complete play-by-play of this game is on the boxscore at PFR.

People who are interested in this thread might be interested in the following link. Someone created a modern-style gamebook of Georgia Tech's infamous 1916 222-0 win over Cumberland, based on available newspaper data. Here's the link:


http://www.quirkyresearch.com/2016/01/2 ... -gamebook/
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Rupert Patrick
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Re: Game books update

Post by Rupert Patrick »

Todd Pence wrote:
Rupert Patrick wrote: 10/3/1999 vs. Seattle - No play-by-play for second, third and fourth quarters
However, the complete play-by-play of this game is on the boxscore at PFR.

People who are interested in this thread might be interested in the following link. Someone created a modern-style gamebook of Georgia Tech's infamous 1916 222-0 win over Cumberland, based on available newspaper data. Here's the link:


http://www.quirkyresearch.com/2016/01/2 ... -gamebook/
I received the complete game book for the 1999 Raiders Seahawks game from the Raiders a couple days ago, since I made that post. And I finally made contact with somebody in the Bears organization who seem responsive to what we are doing, although their game books are not in pdf form and are bound in books. Their game books go back at least thru the 1960's. Now if we could just get the Giants on board...
"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen
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Rupert Patrick
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Re: Game books update

Post by Rupert Patrick »

If you haven't been to the game books area of Members Only yet, most of the game books I have been assembling have been put up there. Kudos to Tod for his assistance in putting it all up there for me.

The number of game books I need from 1960 to 2018 is now down to 713 (was 837 this time last month), and there are an additional 286 that I am seeking upgrades for.

As I mentioned a couple weeks back, after emailing about four different people, I finally found the right person who handles game book requests for the Chicago Bears. He says their game books go back into the 1960's, and he has been helpful.

After not hearing from the Bengals for three months, they sent me a bunch of game books I had wanted as they were busy working on the 2019 Media Guide. Hopefully I should be able to get game books from them pretty regularly from this point forward.

I contacted the Pro Football Hall of Fame library about their game book situation. Apparently, all of their game books have been digitized, but they are in the process of organizing and naming the game books. I asked if they had an index or listing of their game books, they don't have one at this time. Without a list of what they have, I really don't want to play "Go Fish" with them concerning what I need and what they might have, so I will wait on them to produce an index. They said they would help us in any way they could.

I am in the process of receiving a lot of Packer game books and play-by-play from the 1930's thru the 1970's. I'm currently getting it one season at a time and it will take me a couple months to get it all. I was going to wait until we had received it all, but since it is going on the site as soon as I can get it on there, I guess I will go ahead and announce it now. This collection is coming courtesy of a Packers author named Eric Goska, who has, I believe, the largest private collection of Packers game books and play-by-play documents. His collection includes Packers game books from 1959-73, along with hand-written play-by-plays by Art Daley covering the 40's and 50's, and a myriad of other play-by-plays that he is donating to our collection. The main reason it is taking so long is because he has to scan it all. His donating is greatly appreciated.

The Colts game books should be coming online at some point in the near future, same with the Vikings. The Vikings have about a dozen up right now, but I'm guessing during the off-season they'll all go up. I'll ask the PR guy the next time I talk to him.

With NFL training camps opening, the PR offices for all the teams have been out at the camps, so it will be a couple more weeks before I will get any more game books from the teams. I don't know how this is going to work during the regular season; I'll have to play it by ear.
"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen
rhickok1109
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Re: Game books update

Post by rhickok1109 »

Rupert Patrick wrote: I am in the process of receiving a lot of Packer game books and play-by-play from the 1930's thru the 1970's. I'm currently getting it one season at a time and it will take me a couple months to get it all. I was going to wait until we had received it all, but since it is going on the site as soon as I can get it on there, I guess I will go ahead and announce it now. This collection is coming courtesy of a Packers author named Eric Goska, who has, I believe, the largest private collection of Packers game books and play-by-play documents. His collection includes Packers game books from 1959-73, along with hand-written play-by-plays by Art Daley covering the 40's and 50's, and a myriad of other play-by-plays that he is donating to our collection. The main reason it is taking so long is because he has to scan it all. His donating is greatly appreciated.
My Dad did the Packer game books (although they weren't called that at the time) from 1947 into the early 1960s.
TodMaher
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Re: Game books update

Post by TodMaher »

Rupert Patrick wrote:If you haven't been to the game books area of Members Only yet, most of the game books I have been assembling have been put up there. Kudos to Tod for his assistance in putting it all up there for me.
I was finally able to upload the rest of the new and upgraded gamebooks from the 1960s.
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Rupert Patrick
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Re: Game books update

Post by Rupert Patrick »

Due to the team PR people being out of the office at training camp for most of the month, I didn't get as many game books as I would have liked, but did manage to get the number down a little bit more. The number of game books from 1960-2018 we now need is at 685 (was 713 last month) and we need 271 upgrades ( was 286 last month). To put those numbers into perspective, that is nearly 93 percent (12,499 of 13,455) of all regular and postseason game books since 1960 that we have that are complete.

The Colts online game books are taking a little longer than expected. I emailed their PR guy last week and he said it's going to take a couple more months to get everything scanned and digitized. Because they have the AAFC Colts media guides, I am hoping they might have play-by-play documents for the AAFC Colts also, but the digitization of their documents is being done off-site so he doesn't have access to the game books at this time. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I thought I would pass on a couple things - from 1960-69, we need 331 game books and are seeking 96 upgrades, (of course, sometimes when we get new game books, after reviewing them something is not right with them and they immediately change from being needs to being upgrades). From 1970-79, we need 276 game book and are seeking 47 upgrades. From 1980-89, we need 37 and are seeking 62 upgrades, and from 1990-2018, we need 2 and are seeking 2 upgrades.

Here is a list of what we seeking for each team (current team name) from 1960-2018 with total/need/upgrade:

Washington 171 / 113 / 58
LA Rams 156 / 139 / 17
Indianapolis 153 / 119 / 34
Chicago 150 / 130 / 20
Arizona 140 / 111 / 29
Minnesota 137 / 118 / 19
NY Giants 119 / 101 / 18
New Orleans 112 / 99 / 13
Green Bay 103 / 91 / 12
Atlanta 102 / 94 / 8
Cincinnati 86 / 62 / 24
Tennessee 77 / 53 / 24
Pittsburgh 67 / 49 / 18
NY Jets 52 / 12 / 40
Detroit 48 / 3 / 45
LA Chargers 42 / 25 / 17
San Francisco 38 / 29 / 9
Philadelphia 38 / 0 / 38
Cleveland 31 / 15 / 16
Miami 20 / 0 / 20
New England 15 / 0 / 15
Dallas 14 / 3 / 11
Kansas City 12 / 4 / 8
Buffalo 12 / 0 / 12
Denver 9 / 0 / 9
Oakland 4 / 0 / 4
Seattle 2 / 0 / 2
Tampa Bay 2 / 0 / 2
Carolina 0 / 0 / 0
Jacksonville 0 / 0 / 0
Baltimore 0 / 0 / 0
Houston 0 / 0 / 0

The teams with the really high numbers of upgrades (Redskins, Jets, Lions, Eagles) are those who didn't take good care of their game books over the years.
"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen
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Rupert Patrick
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Re: Game books update

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Surprisingly, I've found the teams who I've been getting game books from every week during the off-season are still sending me game books during the regular season. For this reason, I was able to get the total number of game books down from 956 to 911 this month, with game books I need going down from 685 last month to 651 this month, and upgrades going down from 271 to 260. Much thanks to the Bears, Packers, Chiefs, Vikings, Raiders, Titans and Redskins for their assistance.

In September I got the last of the game books I needed from the Chiefs. As we already had nearly all of the Chiefs game books, I did a second review of all Chiefs game books to flag any that I thought I might be able to get a better quality copy than the one we already have, and have been requesting many of those, and we did get a number of improved copies. There are still four Chiefs game books we need that they didn't have in their archives and eight that require upgrades; I'm hoping their opponents can provide them.

I did the same thing with the Raiders, doing a secondary review of all of their game books to find any that I thought I might be able to get a better quality game book from them, and we have gotten some better ones. Next week will be the final game book request from the Raiders. We currently are seeking four game books and zero upgrades.

I did some quick calculations last night, and figured if all the teams that are currently helping us can get us all the game books we need from them up to 1960, we should be completed sometime in March or April and we will still be needing about 250-300 or so game books, and 90 percent of these will be from the Falcons, Bengals, Chargers, Rams, Saints, Giants, Jets, and Steelers.
"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen
rhickok1109
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Re: Game books update

Post by rhickok1109 »

Thanks for all your hard work on this very important project, Rupert.
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Throwin_Samoan
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Re: Game books update

Post by Throwin_Samoan »

You are doing the community a fantastic service!
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Rupert Patrick
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Re: Game books update

Post by Rupert Patrick »

The game books update for October is that we got some big news - I was contacted by a fellow who sent me the Rams game books from 1937-99. He doesn't have all of them from 1937-59, but he has all of them from 1960-99 except for the 1971 and 1972 seasons. For 1937-49 or so, the ones he has are mostly Rams versus Packers games, but now we've got a lot of them for the 1950's. This unnamed gentleman runs a football stats website and recently joined here and saw what we were putting together with the game books and wanted to help, and I'm sure he will be able to help us more but he started with the Rams. Along with the other teams who have been supplying me with game books (Bears, Packers, Vikings, Oilers/Titans and Redskins), we've now got the number of missing game books from 1960-2019 down from 911 to 737 this month. The number of game books we need has gone from 651 at the end of September to 488 at the end of October, and upgrades dropped from 260 to 249.

I now have the game books for the 1988, 1989 and 1990 seasons complete.

Here is a current list of what we need from each team from 1960-2018 with total/need/upgrade:

Washington 145 / 93 / 52
Arizona 128 / 99 / 29
Indianapolis 123 / 88 / 35
Chicago 121 / 100 / 21
NY Giants 107 / 90 / 17
Minnesota 91 / 75 / 16
New Orleans 90 / 76 / 14
Atlanta 82 / 72 / 10
Green Bay 74 / 63 / 11
Cincinnati 70 / 41 / 29
Pittsburgh 63 / 49 / 14
Tennessee 50 / 31 / 19
NY Jets 49 / 11 / 38
LA Chargers 38 / 23 / 15
Philadelphia 36 / 0 / 36
Detroit 35 / 1 / 34
LA Rams 31 / 22 / 9
San Francisco 30 / 24 / 6
Cleveland 29 / 15 / 14
Miami 18 / 0 / 18
New England 16 / 0 / 16
Dallas 12 / 3 / 9
Buffalo 11 / 0 / 11
Denver 9 / 0 / 9
Kansas City 8 / 0 / 8
Oakland 4 / 0 / 4
Seattle 2 / 0 / 2
Tampa Bay 2 / 0 / 2
Carolina 0 / 0 / 0
Jacksonville 0 / 0 / 0
Baltimore 0 / 0 / 0
Houston 0 / 0 / 0
"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen
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