"Young Bussey, Young Stud" - Book on LSU Quarterback that was KIA WW2

No. But when I was looking around online for LSU players who played in NFL Pro Bowls, I discovered that he was one of the earliest ones, and the earliest to do it at QB.

The circumstances might have been somewhat strange due to WWII, but he was a Pro Bowl quarterback based on his season with the Chicago Bears in 1941.

AT, your my idol with all the stuff you have/find...I do my best but cant keep up..btw are you selling all your stuff, I see your ebay listings, just curious, sure you would get a fortune if you sold it all

Hey AT, I enjoy reading your posts and seeing what you have added to your collection. You have probably already said many times, but whis is your most prized possession right now?

thanks

Pretty cool stuff. My Great-great Uncle, E.A. Chavanne was a player/coach and then coach in 1898, sporting an undefeated record! Course, it was only 1-0.

CHAVANNE, Edmund A. M. (C)
- Lake Charles, La., 1896-97-98-99

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I like his 1905 (maybe 1903) small booklet on the old LSU campus

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The last time I was at Hill Memorial, I had them pull their copy of this book to show them why I think it was 1902. Come to find out, they had one extra page than mine. It basically says the book was for in coming freshman (or maybe people thinking of enrolling). The pictures maybe 1902/1903, but the book was made in July, 1905

I hope someone in the family has his items form his time at LSU.

The Prescott brother's items were in that family for years, I have not talked to Martin in a long time; I hope he still has their items.

Ahhh, okay. Now it's all making sense. I never understood why he would have played in that Pro Bowl game.

It was the Pro Bowl by the way--in this particular case, the Fourth Annual Pro-Bowl Game. Back in those days, the defending NFL champs were on one side, and the pro football All-Stars were on the other side.

[ASIDE: That only lasted 5 seasons though, and after a 7 year hiatus, the Pro Bowl returned for the 1950 season, except now the NFL's rivals had folded (see the Colts, Browns, & 49ers from the old AAFL), so the All-Star selections now pitted the National Conference against the American Conference, like in baseball. (They later switched to just "East" versus "West.") With the creation of the AFL in 1960, there was a new rival league, but the NFL kept to their old internal format, and there wasn't an NFC vs. AFC Pro Bowl until after the 1970 season, when the leagues had finally merged.]

I doubt they ever played against college kids. After two years at Pasadena JuCo, Jackie Robinson played at UCLA for 1939 & 1940, before playing pro ball out west with the Pacific Coast Football League: "the PCPFL was regarded as a minor league of the highest level, particularly in 1940-1945, at a time in which the major National Football League did not extend further west than Chicago and Green Bay."

Apparently choosing the pro all-stars was not restricted to just the NFL teams.

I guess you learn something new every day.

We are both correct and both wrong. There is the all star game you linked to, that was played in January, and the all star game I talked about, played in August.

As for the book, it was a very hard read. It was very jumpy and didn't go from one event to another very smoothly.

From the book, you cannot tell if Bussey was a great athlete or just a loud mouth.

He actually formed a players union on his high school team and went on strike just before the biggest game of the season because the coach was ordered to resign mid-season.

He tried to form another players union at LSU because of players practice time cutting into their study times.

He played basketball for LSU for only one game before being kicked off the team by Coach Rab.

The book made everyone of his coaches look like they were idiots, like they didn't know how to coach. It seemed if the coaches would have let him play the way he wanted, he would have took the teams to championships every time.

The book barely touched on (if at all) that he played second string on the Chicago Bears team when they won back to back world championships. It basically made Coach Halas seem like an idiot.

The book (to me) seemed extremely exaggerated, and is slightly slanted against LSU. It's a little hard to believe that he stood toe to toe against world class boxers, and won every sparring bout he was in, or his high school basketball coach basically let him coach and run the team as he saw fit.