With what everyone hopes will be a return to football very soon, one of the elements that will happen fast and furiously will be the signing of new players.

No one knows how or when this will happen, just that it will be a one-of-a-kind occurrence when it does takes place.

And that put me in mind of an I-remember-when moment, that being back in May of 1982 when the Denver Broncos player personnel department cleaned out their files of resumes and letters sent by prospective players by inviting all of them—the entire player personnel file of unwanted, unrequested letters—to an open tryout camp.

In retrospect, I wonder if any pro football team has ever had a tryout camp of this size in the history of the game.

Four hundred seventy eight “players”—at least, in their minds they were players— showed up.