Stepping into the fire

I've gotten a few comments over some of my rankings. NASCAR fans didn't like the fact their drivers didn't rank very high on my worldwide rankings. Jordan fans didn't like his No. 3 ranking in basketball. I've gotten comments on the boxing rankings over guys who are in who shouldn't be and who aren't in and should be. I've even gotten a comment from someone who insisted Julio Cesar Chavez was the greatest boxer ever.

But I bet I get worse once all of my football rankings are out there. People really like other sports, but they love football. It's not the national pastime like baseball, but it is the national passion.

There are a lot of hurdles in ranking football players. Many positions have few statistics to judge. Individual success for quarterbacks and receivers is difficult if the offensive line doesn't do its job. Defensively, a guy can be great at sacking the quarterback but terrible against the run or a corner back can have several interceptions but still be a liability because he's gambling too much and giving up big plays.

The system I've created tries to measure what we can.

Individual honors -- all pro, pro bowls, MVP awards

Team success -- points for winning percentages, playoff wins and world titles.

Unit success -- points for where offenses rank in points and yardage for offensive players and for where defenses ranked in fewest points and fewest yards for defensive players.

Finally, durability. If a player played just 12 games out 16, they are credited with just 75 percent of what they would have received if they'd suited up all 16 games.

Then I started giving points for individual stats. The more stats available, the less the ranking is tied to team success. Quarterbacks have the most numbers to scrutinize, followed by the running backs, receivers and tightends. As you'll see, the top offensive lineman in my system were tied to the great teams.

In the next seven days, I'll release my rankings for the offense -- center, guards, tackles, tight ends, wide receivers, full back, half back and quarterback.

Then, hopefully, by the end of the season I'll finish up the defensive rankings. The fact that the NFL didn't recognize sacks as an official statistic until 1982 has slowed me down. There's a researcher named John Turney who building the sack stats before 1982 by reading the official game accounts for every team back to the beginning of the league. I talked to Turney and his work is far from done.

While I wait on Turney, I'm estimating sack totals from the pre-1982 era using statistics from the 20 years since it was established. It's far from perfect and certainly will undervalue some players and overvalue others.

My men's basketball rankings had the same problem. They didn't keep steals and blocks in the Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell eras. It's likely Chamberlain and Russell especially would have scored higher if they had.

Still, it's the best I can do.