OK, sports fans. Here we go again. Old vs young. Then vs now. My view is that it isn't so much about who were the greatest running backs in NFL history. It is the ever-ongoing argument about whether the almost super-human, carefully-groomed, multi-million-dollar athletes of today are actually superior to all the NFL guys of long-ago, those almost forgotten days when the league was young and players got maybe a hundred bucks a game, and needed to earn decent money elsewhere with a day job digging ditches or hauling coal.

What we must consider, for want of another tired cliche, is that we compare them on a level playing field. The running stars of the 30s, 40s and 50s were much smaller, lighter (both in skin color and weight), and ran against opposing linemen who didn't look like pumped-up, 300-pound Shreks. Their equipment was primitive, and so was any kind of medical or nutritional regime, if any at all.

If those older pro football stars could come back today and be young and at the peak of their skills again, the question is: could they compete on any playing field with the carefully curried and groomed show horse star NFL ball-carriers of today? The answer in three words could be: Are you kidding? Or, maybe: They sure could. Let's go over to the pub and we'll discuss it over a glass of suds.

Therefore, just to be fair and equitable, my list, for what it's worth, will include some of the older running backs to stand among the greatest, whether anyone agrees with me or not. Few today's fans would say those gridiron stars of old could make any NFL team today, but I believe we should consider that they were the best for their brief time when they glowed in the pro football limelight. So, give 'em a break, won't you

I'll start with the Galloping Ghost of the 20s? Who? One of the greatest runners in NFL history, a guy named Red Grange. Who? His skills and fame created and boosted public interest in the little, dinky, sandlot National Football League of the 1920s, where players were lucky to get that hundred bucks a game, and then he almost single-handedly boosted up on the way to where it is today, a very big business, with big salaries and bigger egos.

After graduating from the University of Illinois, star running back Grange joined the Chicago Bears, and galloped with them into the 1930s, and their spectacular play at home and on barnstorming tours around the nation, eventually brought along the rest of the NFL teams into regular competition,

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