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This photo of Y.A. Tittle, battered and bleeding after a game against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the early 1960s, was voted The Sporting News sports photo of the century, and in my opinion is the greatest sports photograph of all time. It was during the era that Tittle played that I became completely addicted to NFL football. I’m not sure today’s players realize or appreciate it, but it was the players in that golden era of the 1960s who built the game into what it is today. Tittle played in the San Francisco 49ers “All-alphabet” backfield along with J.D. Smith, C.R. Roberts and R.C. Owens in the wild and wooly 1950s, then was traded to the New York Giants, a perennial title contender. I was a Cleveland Browns fan back then, and at that time the Giants were the Browns’ biggest rival, with the two teams regularly fighting for the Eastern Division crown. This means I enjoyed seeing Tittle get beaten and battered every week, but as time passed I grew to have a great appreciation for Tittle the warrior, whose career was a Don Quixote-like quest for an NFL title, which he never achieved. There were no rules protecting the quarterbacks back then – if anything they were bigger targets for large, mean defensive players than any other players on the field. After being traded to New York, Tittle’s career flourished, as he was twice named NFL MVP and led the Giants to 3 consecutive championship games. They lost all three, the first 2 to Vince Lombardi’s emerging dynasty in Green Bay, and the last to George “Papa Bear” Halas’s Chicago Bears in 1963. Tittle took a particularly brutal beating in that game, and retired at age 38 not long after. He is now remembered as a guy who fought hard and played hurt his whole career, and his story is told in his autobiography “Nothing Comes Easy”. Also, his daughter Diane Tittle de Laet wrote a poignant book “Giants and Heroes: A Daughter’s Memories of Y.A. Tittle”  in which she shares her memories of her father’s quest for a title. In my mind Tittle is Exhibit A in the argument that winning Super Bowls should not be the only measuring stick for players to be voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and thankfully he was inducted in 1971.