Guest column: Never, Ever Forget What Seymour Siwoff Did for NFL

(EDITOR'S NOTE: The Talk of Fame Two frequently asks individuals to contribute guest columns for this site. In advance of Tuesday's coach/contributor vote for the Class of 2024, Alex Stern of the Elias Sports Bureau focuses on a candidate who won't be among those considered ... but should).

The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s coach/contributor committee this week chooses one individual for final consideration as part of the Class of 2024. Seymour Siwoff is more responsible than anybody for the proliferation – and America’s captivation -- with those statistics over the last half century but is not among those who will be considered.

I have worked at the Elias Sports Bureau since 1986 and would like to highlight Siwoff’s overlooked contributions to NFL history, as well as his strong qualifications for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Seymour Siwoff’s lifetime of service in the NFL began in 1961 when then-commissioner Pete Rozelle made Elias the official statistician of the league based on Siwoff’s reputation for diligence. Rozelle tasked Seymour first and foremost with organizing the statistical history of the league. With that mandate, Siwoff’s priority was to preserve and authenticate the historical records and statistics from the NFL’s first four decades.

His next step was to take the rudimentary scoring system for statistics that the NFL was using and expand it with comprehensive rules. That helped raised the accuracy of NFL statistics to a level never before realized.

Seymour solidified that accuracy by meeting with the league each week during the season to analyze unusual plays. That process still exists today, with the Elias Sports Bureau monitoring all statistical reviews each week in concert with the league office.

Siwoff’s preservation of history and attention to accuracy helped modernize the league’s record book into what eventually became the NFL Record and Fact Book which is still published annually.

In the 1960s, ‘70s and '80s when there were no other sources of statistical information on the NFL, Seymour Siwoff was the answer man … seven days each week. For the league, teams, media and fans, Siwoff was “Google before Google.”

During that era, Siwoff was one of the collaborating forces behind the creation of new statictics such as sacks, passer rating and net punting. He oversaw Elias’ development of individual and team statistics by component categories – now called “splits” – which parsed data by home and road, fourth quarter, third down, red zone and last two minutes, all of which provided greater statistical context for analysis.

In addition to recording and distributing standard statistics, Elias set the standard for the development and use of next-level data and information in the 1980s and ‘90s under Siwoff's leadership. That content, which created story lines for players, coaches and teams and linked the past to present, was universally embraced. It remains the standard for statistics and analysis widely in use today.

In the 1990s, Siwoff created a weekly in-season Coaches Report, consisting of team rankings and analysis based on questions most often raised by coaches. Those comprehensive weekly rankings and lists, mostly from play-by-play data, had not previously been available to the league’s coaches.

In the late 1990s, Siwoff fulfilled a promise he once made to Rozelle by providing the entire NFL history, player data base, records and demographic information for the first-ever NFL encyclopedia.

Seymour Siwoff owned the Elias Sports Bureau for close to 70 years. His lifetime of work, specifically his use of statistics and information to illuminate individual and team achievements, contributed to the rising popularity of the NFL as it became the dominant sport it is today. More specifically, Siwoff’s unmatched work ethic and dedication were significant factors in the growing awareness and fascination with NFL statistics over the last half century.

Based on his lifetime of dedication to the NFL and his role in history, Seymour Siwoff merits induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.