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Professional Football Researchers Association (PFRA)

The Professional Football Researchers Association (PFRA) is a group of researchers in association, ostensibly for discussing "professional football history". Its website describes it thus: "The PFRA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and, in some cases, reconstructing professional football history." The PFRA appears to be mainly concerned with stories and trivia associated with the National Football League (NFL). Most of its articles feature NFL teams and players, while other leagues such as the 1940's All-America Football Conference (AAFC) and the 1960's American Football League (AFL) are less expansively treated.  The AFL especially is prominently ignored, as indicated by the PFRA's keywords on Google: "History of professional football, including the players, teams, leagues, games and stories from the National Football League (NFL), World Football League (WFL), United States Football League (USFL) and other professional leagues."

Articles by PFRA wax eloquent about various NFL players and officials from every era, while searches for such AFL stars as George Blanda, Abner Haynes, Johnny Robinson, Lionel Taylor, Don Maynard, Joe Namath and so on, invariably turn up with no articles. Lamar Hunt, Sid Gillman, Al Davis, Hank Stram and other AFL executives and coaches who changed the face of the game, in a league that became the genesis of modern professional football, are similarly ignored.

When NFL topics are addressed, rose-colored glasses are the order of the day: for example; George Preston Marshall banned black players from his Redskins team for thirty years (until forced to integrate by the Kennedy administration), and he influenced other NFL owners to exclude blacks, from 1934 through 1945. In an article on Marshall, the PFRA praises his "contributions" to football, but makes no mention of his widely-known racial policies.

External Link

• PFRA Website

     For its charade at being an objective historical research group, and for its habit of belittling and ridiculing those who disagree with it, the Pro Football Researchers Association joins other NFL apologists in the "American Football League Hall of Infamy".

Tex Maule

CBS-TV

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