I think about Benny Malone pretty frequently.

I wonder how you're supposed to handle footnotes in a blog.

Anyway, here's the entry on Benny Malone in the 1977 edition of The Complete Handbook of Pro Football: "Running style looks like man falling down stairs ..... Explosive runner, extremely deceptive ... While tackler reacting to zig, Malone is already zagging ... All the quickness of Mercury Morris and none of the headaches ... Spends too much time faking behind line of scrimmage ..... Says, 'It's hard to tell where I'm going to go. Sometimes even I don't know' ..... Born Feb. 3, 1952, at Tyler, Tex ... Great at Arizona State, where gained 6.7 per carry in same backfield with Woody Green ... As kid picked cotton, sacked onions for 60 cents an hour ... Believed to earn more now ... Rarely fumbles .... Fair blocker, seldom used as pass receiver ... Ran for 797 yards, 4.3 average last year ... Second-round pick in '74." And here's the footnote for whenever I figure out what I'm supposed to be do with it: "1977 Edition The Complete Handbook of Pro Football Zander Hollander, editor (New York: New American Library, 1977) 76."

I think about Benny Malone pretty frequently--once a week, anyway. My friend Matthew runs a computer football league based on the 1976 NFL season, so Benny Malone's name comes up often in those doings. Also, my friend Rob and I talk about the NFL a good bit. Here's one of those conversations from Sept. 16, 1998.

Me: "Karim Abdul-Jabbar now has 2,191 yards rushing in his career, moving him past Benny Malone and into eighth on the Dolphins' all-time list. It astonishes me that 2,191 yards would be ANYWHERE on any team's all-time rushing list, except maybe Jacksonville's or Carolina's. But I think there are still some teams whose all-time leading rusher has something like 4,500 yards. New Orleans, I bet, for example. I would imagine it's George Rogers, with about 3,000 or 4,000 yards, total. Crazy."

Rob: "Where would Chuck Muncie fall on the Saints' all-time rushing list?"

Me: "Team-by-team all-time rushing leaders through the 1993 season ...

Bills: O.J. Simpson 10,183
Bengals: James Brooks 6,447
Browns: Jim Brown 12,312
Broncos: Floyd Little 6,323
Oilers: Earl Campbell 8,574
Colts: Lydell Mitchell 5,487
Chiefs: Christian Okoye 4,897
Raiders: Marcus Allen 8,545
Dolphins: Larry Csonka 6,737
Patriots: Sam Cunningham 5,453
Jets: Freeman McNeil 8,074
Steelers: Franco Harris 11,950
Chargers: Paul Lowe 4,963
Seahawks: Curt Warner 6,705
Cardinals: Ottis Anderson 7,999
Falcons: Gerald Riggs 6,631
Bears: Walter Payton 16,726
Cowboys: Tony Dorsett 12,036
Lions: Barry Sanders 6,789
Packers: Jim Taylor 8,207
Rams: Eric Dickerson 7,205
Vikings: Chuck Foreman 5,879
Saints: George Rogers 4,267
Giants: Joe Morris 5,296
Eagles: Wilbert Montgomery 6,538
49ers: Joe Perry 7,344
Buccaneers: James Wilder 5,957
Redskins: John Riggins 7,472

Still me: "Actually, the Seahawks and Buccaneers acquit themselves quite well here. Muncie, incidentally, accumulated 6,702 yards, but fewer than 4,500 of them were with the Saints. The rest were with the Chargers."

Rob, who is a statistical-researcher/sociologist person: "There needs to be an NFL site where you could decide, 'I want to see a listing of the NFL players who have rushed for the most yards in any four consecutive seasons,' and then you could get that listing. You should be able to get that listing by most yards, least yards, alphabetically, by team, etc. It would be just a big, complicated spreadsheet, I think. Matter of fact, it could be the beginning of the Institute for NFL Studies. The INFLS. Once you had that database set up, you could run all sorts of statistical analyses.

Still Rob, now rolling: "How much time do you think it would take to set up something like that?There are something like 1840 hours of work in my year, allowing for vacation time/holidays, etc. ... Do you think it would take one person a year of full-time work to get that database set up in a spreadsheet? That seems like a long time. I wonder what that would be worth to the NFL? Of course, they may have Stump Mitchell and Mike Kenn working on that right now. Who knows.

Me: "STUMP: 'Hey, Mike, I'm going to go get a Pepsi. You want one?' MIKE, after pause and not looking up from his computer monitor: 'Yeah.'"

So, in conclusion, hooray for Benny Malone. Here's what I'd like to ask Benny Malone: What was it like joining the Dolphins right after the second Super Bowl win and just as several stars were about to leave for the WFL? How's your brother, Art? Were you happy for Earl Campbell, another Tyler native, or jealous? What's up with you now? Are you a Dolphins or Redskins fan now?

And, in other news, Bill Kollar--Cincinnati's 1974 first-round pick and a most-of-the-time starter with the '79, '80 and '81 Bucs--has a new gig: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/fb/texansfront/6222021.html.