Poll: modern US sports teams vs old-school sports teams

In My Humble Opinion
1

For the sake of this thread, “modern” will refer to any US sports team (baseball, football, and basketball) since 1990, while “old-school” will refer the same teams prior to 1975.

If you took a championship sports team of the “modern” era and pitted them against their “old-school” counterparts, who do you think would win (using the “modern” rules and again using the “old-school” rules)?

Examples:

Football:

2004 New England Patriots vs 1967 Green Bay Packers

Baseball:

2004 Boston Red Sox vs 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates

Basketball:

1995-96 Chicago Bulls vs 1967-68 Los Angeles Lakers

2

My WAG is that any Super Bowl champ since 1990 is going to out-gun any pre-1975 team in size, speed, physicality, and coaching.

The pre-75 Super Bowl Champs are:

1967 Packers
1968 Packers
1969 Jets
1970 Chiefs
1971 Colts
1972 Cowboys
1973 Dolphins
1974 Dolphins
1975 Steelers
1976 Steelers (For good measure)

The 93, 94, 96 Dallas Cowboys would beat them all, IMHO.

3

And if we were talking really old school for baseball…

Say we put the 1989 Athletics against the 1930 Yankees.

Bitch-smack all the way. The steps that pitching alone has advanced in the last 60 years would befuddle the old-timers.

4

It depends. If the time machine transports the old school team to today and they have to play today, the modern team would win. If the old school team got transported to today and had enough time to take advantage of modern nutrition, money, equipment and training, the old school guys would do fine. If the time machine worked backwards, and the modern guys went backwards and had to make due with what the old school guys did (including off-season non-sports jobs to make ends meet) the old school guys would do fine as well.

As for the Lakers vs. the Bulls, I tend to think that Mssrs. Chamberlain, Baylor and West would kill Jordan’s Bulls.

5

The only saving grace for the Lakers is Mr. Chamberlain but there is no doubt in my mind that Pippen and Jordan would shut down West and Baylor and, Jordan especially, would score at will. Chamberlain is so good he might be able to make up for that but the guards and SFs today would murder guards and SFs in the past.

6

The difference in size and speed between today’s players and those of my childhood (I’m 44) is astronomical.

Look, back in the late Sixties and early Seventies, when I started watching the NFL, Buck Buchanan of the Chief was 6’6" and 275 pounds. He was regarded as a monster. Nobody else in the NFL was that big.

Today? Buchanan might be regarded as an undersized lineman.

In 1971, Alan Page of the Vikings was the league MVP. He was a perennial All-Pro, and was considered everything you’d ever want in a defensive tackle. He played at 230 pounds! Today, he’d be considerd too small to start on most college teams (and a few high school teams, for that matter).

Now, in fairness to Page and Buchanan and the other NFL stars of the Sixties and Seventies, if they played today, they’d be eating better and working out constantly, and could have gotten much bigger. But the fact remains, if you just pitted the current Patriots against the 1967 Packers, the Packsers would be steamrollered. Bart Starr wouldn’t be prepared for the speed of the pass rushers (to him, pass rush meant Bob Lilly- he couldn’t have conceived of a linebacker with the speed of a Lawrence Taylor). Jerry Kramer and Forrest Gregg couldn’t have opened holes against a modern defensive line. And the complexity of modern defensive schemes would have baffled the Packers.

As for baseball, well, when I was a kid, most teams had one or two guys with biceps and with the power to hit a ball out of the park regularly. Shortstops and second basemen were skinny guys who weren’t expected t ocontribute much with the bat. Heck, if a shortstop or second baseman had a decent glove, that was enough to keep him in the lineup (if he could hit .250, that was a bonus). Today, EVERYBODY has biceps and six-packs! When I was a kid, a pitcher figured he was safe if he could get down to the bottom of a lineup. Today, shortstops and second baseman are often dangerous hitters, too! A pitcher rarely gets a break or an easy out in modern baseball.

Again, over time, the players of the Sixites and Seventies would have made transitions (some of them DID- Nolan Ryan was successful in the old days AND in fairly modern times)… but if all you did was put the current Yankees in a time machine and had them play the 1961 Yanks… the 1961 Yanks would’ve been crushed.

7

This would be significant in the NFL.

Significant enough to allow the average Old Schooler to overcome the size, speed and Training advantages of the Moderns? Probably not. I am fairly sure we could find a weak modern “championship” team that would beat by the old schoolers under old school rules … but it would be a rare exception.

*E.G.:
The D-Backs of today need to be fast with much less emphasis on “strong/mean”. Old school D-backs receivers, going over the middle today is dangerous – then it was much worse. The very idea of a WR “out-physical” a defensive back was ridiculous… That is one glaring difference

I wonder how modern O-Lineman in old school would fare? Certainly everything they had learned and been great at would be holding - they’d be bigger and faster though … but would never have experienced a Head slap that spun their ear holes… how would they adjust to that?*

Like I say the size and speed, probably would overcome most, but not every time
That is not to say many of the All-stars of yesterday wouldn’t play very well in a modern game. Dr. Z did a nice job of trying to answer the OP on Pass rushers. In the Top 10 he placedhe breaks about 4 moderns, 1 tweener and 5 old schoolers among the best. I think any of the 6 he names would be play every bit as well today.

8

Some interesting hypothetical match-ups might include teams that are closer together in time… for example:

85 Bears v 79 Steelers

85 Bears v 93 Cowboys

96 Cowboys v 04 Patriots

76 Steelers v 68 Packers

79 Steelers v 93 Cowboys might be too long of a span.