What The World Was Like Last Time An MSU Football Player Wasn’t Drafted

The date is December 9, 1939 and 10 NFL teams are meeting in the Schroeder Hotel in Milwaukee on the eve of the 1939 NFL Championship game between the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers. The 10 teams will draft 200 players and not a single one of them will be from Michigan State.

Meanwhile, the world has been at war for about three months now after Hitler invaded Poland. Lou Gehrig announced his retirement from baseball in the summer previous. And less than a week after the NFL championship game is played, the movie Gone With The Wind will debut in cinemas all across America.

This is just a snippet of what the world was like the last time Michigan State did not have a player selected in the NFL draft.

The earth was over five billion people lighter back in the late '30s and Polio was still an issue facing the world and those two-plus billion people.

Colorless TV was the broadcast standard and CBS was still over a year away from even experimenting with color TV. CBS' broadcasting rival NBC took a stride forward in sports broadcasting during the 1939 season putting the first ever football game on television. A game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Eagles was broadcast to the New York and Albany markets and native New Yorkers watched the Dodgers win 23-14. This was something of a risk for NBC as a game between these two teams earlier in the season was played to a 0-0 tie.

The 1939 championship game would also be broadcast on television the day after the draft. Green Bay defeated New York 27-0.

Here are some other comparable notes from December of 1939 and the present day to reflect on truly how long its been since there was a Spartan-less NFL draft.

Even though the United States was still two years away from entering into the second world war, prices of gas (90%), milk (113%), bread (14%) and automobiles (13%) all saw price rises in America compared to earlier in 1939 due to the war.

Even though Another Thin Man is the box office king around draft day, Gone With The Wind would be released six days after the draft and go on to be one of the highest grossing movies of all-time. The Wizard of Oz was also picking up steam after being released in August of 1939 and would out-gross Another Thin Man by the end of the year.

The 10-team NFL consisted of a western division and an eastern division. The west was made up of the Packers, Lions, Bears, Cleveland Rams and Chicago Cardinals. The east was made up of the Dodgers, Eagles, Pittsburgh Pirates (they would change their name to Steelers at the draft), Washington Redskins and New York Giants.

Alaska and Hawai'i were still 20 years or so out from being admitted to the union and America's current president was still seven years from being born.

Michigan State was also a decade and a half from entering the Big Ten conference.

Long story short, its been a long time since Michigan State did not have a name called at an NFL draft.