100 reasons to pick a Top 100 roster:

100. It's the hot number in lists. Ten is just not nearly enough, unless you are David Letterman.

99. OK, this is already feeling like an MTV countdown, except in that case it's a lot easier to cut it off at 100. Sales are pretty simple to track. On the other hand, this is a pretty subjective decision.

Hold on, for a change, we're going to scratch this idea early into the process. It's too tough.

Fortunately, that was not the approach that Greg Burke and others took, when considering how to generate some summertime interest in the impending 100-year anniversary of the beginning of intercollegiate football competition at Northwestern State University/Northwesten State College/Louisiana State Normal School.

Been playing since 1907 against other college teams? Pick your 100 best players. Great idea. So, how?

One chance. Better do it right, or at least, as good as you can.

Any way it plays out, somebody is going to be frustrated. Who can say 101 isn't more deserving than 100? You draw a line, there are those on the outside looking in, and that's unpleasant for anybody drawing the line.

In this case, the decision was made quickly to draw the line firmly. Standards were established that made consideration a very exclusive commodity, by necessity.

Can we say with any certainty that a second-team all-conference player in any given year might not have been a better player than the first-team pick? No, but at some point, you have to put some faith in the decisions of the coaches or media who picked the team that year. It's not right all of the time, but it's at least a standard, unchanging through the years.

Otherwise, decades later, fans and the selection committee would have been left with a much more broad range of decisions to make. Instead, we were left to consider 230 candidates on a ballot, men who had been first-team all-conference, first-team All-Louisiana, All-America picks, professional players or guys who dented the school record book.

Narrow that down to 100. Not so easy, was it? We all had our chance to do it.

Hundreds of fans, former players and interested guests took the challenge. There were no guidelines per se. You could vote for every quarterback. Every player from the 1960s. One player only. 100, hopefully, but not necessarily. More than 100? That's where the line was drawn.

All the while, a blue-ribbon selection committee debated procedures. Should we have quotas for each position, or by decade, to be sure it was a “balanced” roster? Should we call it a “team” or a “roster?” As you have noticed, the “team” idea washed out because to have a football team, positions would need to be observed, and who is to say how many from any given position should be chosen?

Interestingly enough, the voting resolved a lot of questions. When the committee gathered to consider the ballots cast, there were some pretty clear-cut trends. Almost half the 100-man list was pretty easy to identify based on voting tallies.

Then the tough debates began, both in person, on the telephones and electronically with committee members around the country, people who had coached and watched and broadcast and played as the first 100 years of Northwestern football unfolded.

One vexing issue was how to assess players in the early days of football at the Normal. If the final process has one flaw above others, it may be that players prior to World War II are few and far between, just three total. Not to say there weren't legendary players in the Depression Era, but as one very experienced committee member put it, “how can we choose somebody we know so little about over a player who has credentials that are undeniable?”

So, on behalf of my fellow committee members, apologies to peers of Red Grange, players who were just getting used to the Demons' nickname, young men like Jodie Dry and Pop Seward and Nub Freeman. Your talent was undeniable, but your credentials are like the image of the “Galloping Ghost,” too hard to grasp for the committee to pass upon honoring your more contempary counterparts whose achievements were charted by sportswriters and statisticians and honored by those picking postseason teams, and even filling out professional rosters. Is that fair?

We'll never know. But what I do know, having proudly been part of this process over nearly three months, is a lot more than I ever did before about the history of our football program and indeed, of Northwestern State University.

That's a sentiment shared by my assistant, Matthew Bonnette, a McNeese graduate and a fellow who knew relatively little about NSU before joining our staff four years ago, Three different times Tuesday, Matt laughed about how much more appreciation and understanding he has now of the incredible tradition of Demon ? errr, that started in 1923 with the nickname contest ? Northwestern football.

That, truly, is the bottom line. We enter the 100th anniversary year of our first game against another college team ? understand that for several years prior to 1907, the Normal school's footballers squared off against picked teams from area towns, area high school teams and area athletic clubs before doing battle against our friends from Louisiana Polytechnic in 1907.

Picking our Top 100 players of all-time helps us reflect on the incredible tradition in place here ... and gets us excited about what is coming this fall, and in future years. Look at the track record. Something worth watching is about to unfold. That, and what has happened already, is well worth celebrating!
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The Natchitoches residents in the Top 100 (left to right): David Wright, Ross Gwinn, Johnny Emmons, Dr. William Broussard, Corwyn Aldredge, Roy Locks, Walter Ledet, Scott Stoker