I think all of the football records you mentioned will be broken in my liftime.
Jerry Rice’s recods will most certainly be broken. It will basically come down to longevity. Players are getting stronger, and I suspect careers are getting longer. Not to mention he was the first great, durable receiever of the passing era.
Ditto Walter Payton’s record, whether Emmitt Breaks it or not. It will be broken some day.
Of the ones listed, I’d say that Hornung’s is the least likely to fall. Hornung did it playing multiple positions, no one will likely be doing that anytime again soon. Like RickJay said however, a kicker could concievably do it on an excellent offensive team.
The answer to these questions are almost always going to be answered with records that are reflected by the style of the game, and how it has changed. Baseball is the best example. Pitchers like Randy Johnson and Roger Clemons are probably more dominating than any of the pitchers who played before 1920, but they will never even come close to alot of their records. Pitchers would start twice as many games as they do now, and thee was virtually no such thing as the bullpen. These records will definately never be broken. Cumulative records like career wins, starts, innings will not even be approached, nor will most of the single-season versions of those stats.
Ditto most of those NBA stats. Wilt’s stats are impressive, but had any of us watched the game, we’d probably realize its not quite as amazing as it sounds. According to the stories of people who are ‘in the know’, it was basically him being much taller than anyone else on the floor, running down the court, and alley-ooping every shot. Eventually the defense stopped playing him, presumably enjoying the idea of the magic “100” record as well. They basically added the offensive goal-tending and 3-second rule to prevent this. Not to say it isn’t a very impressive mark, but the reason its probably untouchable is because they changed the rules to prevent it, not because he is that much better than anyone who would follow him.
Pistol Pete’s might be matched, but not at a major school. He basically never passed the ball, you might be able to get away with this at a small school these days. Anyone good enough to dominate small college players like this probably wouldn’t be playing there however. I’m not going to put this in the “unbreakable” category, but its probably slim.
I think UCLA’s record could be broken, I can envision a program getting that good at recruiting. Those things tend to be self-feeding. A big help would be if the NBA or NCAA institutes some kind of incentive to keep players there at least 3 years like they’ve discussed on the talk shows. Its definately more likely than the Celtic’s record IMHO. Free Agency and Salary Caps will probably garuntee that that record won’t fall. Ring it up as another “rules have changed” record.
The Bulls record will probably be around for a long long time, but I don’t quite think its unbreakable. Pretty close though. It, however, is still too new to really make much judgement on.
I’m not a regular Hockey observer, but the margin by which Gretzky leads in those categories tends to make them seem unbreakable. I’m not knowledgable enough about the game to say if the game has changed to make those records totally unbreakable, but the odds are good that it’ll stand for a very long time. Especially the career marks.
Records I might add for discussion:
NFL:
Jim Marshall’s 292 consecutive games
MLB:
Cy Young’s 511 Career wins
Old Hoss Radbourn’s 59 wins in a season
And any number of other old pitching records.
Cal Ripken’s record.
Not sure about Cal’s record though. It’s thought to be a obsolete record. Still impressive, but several baseball men believe that a player simply performs better when they have some rest during the season. One wonders if Cal would have had .015 more point on his BA and a few extra HRs and RBIs if he’d have taken a few days off each season. If this is the case, you can bet that no manager is going to let a player even get close to this record if he thinks a days rest in game 52 of his second season would benefit the team with a player legging out a hit in a wildcard chase. Longevity records are always probably breakable, especially with the improved medical technology and care, but it depends if they really have any meaningful benefit to the team.