Looking at the Numbers Game: the 90s

We’ve promoted the Numbers Game so much I hope, now that it’s finally here, you enjoy it.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time on this project – pretty much all of the past month and close to 200 hours of research – in the hopes I didn’t miss out on any players worthy of consideration. That, of course, will be impossible because of the large coverage area of The Telegraph as well as the massive number of noteworthy athletes. A day hasn’t passed where I haven’t added a name to my ever-growing spreadsheet of candidates.

We start this week with the 90s, which is by far the most difficult of the sets.

I just couldn’t find a ton of guys in the 90s who were worthy of inclusion. Guys like Ron Simmons and Abry Jones would have made fine picks at any numbers, but not enough guys have worn Nos. 90-99 through the years. When you take Nos. 1-30, you are looking at potential picks from basketball, baseball, football, soccer and softball. The guys from 90-99 come only from football, and those numbers were only given out with regularity over the past 20 years. Some schools still don’t issue numbers in the 90s.

It surprised me that two guys like Josh Chester – who just graduated – and Greg Clark made the list, because they are so recent. But while most weeks going forward will have all numbers with multiple honorable mentions, only one of the 90s had an honorable mention.

If Nos. 10, 11, 23 and 24 are the most loaded with potential picks for this project, then No. 93 was the worst. We couldn’t find any guys at the number, so we had to cheat a little to slide Justin Kitchens into the spot.

Stick with us in the coming weeks, because as the numbers get lower, the competition for each one gets more heated.

This story was originally published June 17, 2012 at 12:04 AM with the headline "Looking at the Numbers Game: the 90s."