Happens all the time.
The other day I was talking to an 80 something year old guy who used to love baseball in the 50's. Every word out of his mouth was nothing more then how much better the players were back then.
According to him every hitter hit .400 and every pitcher had an ERA of 1.23.
Yeah baseball is similar to basketball in that fans can deny reality. You need to atleast do a little digging to figure out the athletic superiority of contemporary players.
Football is much more cut and dry though. It is a game completely built on strength, speed and power and it would be really difficult for someone to watch Adrien Peterson and Emmitt Smith and not immediately know who was better.
I remember the '07 season when the Pats were undefeated, they had a segment on sportscenter they would ask Bill Parcells how the Pats would fare vs past great teams like the 70s Steelers or the '85 Bears and he pretty much just kept saying the Pats would win.
The Pats had Randy fucking Moss, it's like you kidding me?' There wasn't even a defensive alignment to cover him his first year in the league because there hadn't been anyone like that before.
