Pausing at 50 - who you won't see on this list

Now that we've reached the halfway point of our list of the NIC-10's 100 Greatest Football Players, we're pausing to talk about why you won't see some players on this list.

First of all, we didn't consider specialists. The NIC-10 has had a couple of outstanding kickers play Division 1 football in David Frakes of Guilford (Georgia Tech) and Derek Dimke of Boylan (Illinois). Both were good enough in college to get shots as NFL kickers before moving on to other things.

Hononegah also produced a long snapper, Kelly Mason, who became a four-year letter winner at Kentucky.

Under our scoring system, all three would have qualified for the top 100, but we didn't believe it was fair to consider them against every down players.

We also only considered players from local schools when those schools were in the conference. That affected several players. Harlem had a outstanding lineman in the 1940s named Roger Kinson who went on to thrive at Missouri and be picked as a center in the sixth round of the 1952 NFL draft. Kinson likely would have been a top 100 player, but Harlem didn't join the Big Eight/NIC-10 until the 1960s.

Belvidere had a similar player in Bob Funderburg. Funderburg went from playing for the Bucs to playing for Northwestern in the Big Ten. He was picked by the Detroit Lions in the 1946 NFL draft.

We also only considered players who graduated from a NIC-10/Big Eight school. Ken Roskie, who is the only player from Harlem to actually play in the NFL when he played for the Lions and Green Bay Packers in 1948, missed out on our ranking because Harlem wasn't in the conference when he was in high school and his family moved before his senior year.

That's also why you won't see Dan Arnold, former Boylan player and current NFL tight end on the list. Arnold attended Boylan for three years, but his family moved to North Dakota and Arnold graduated from Shanley High School in Fargo.

Ironically, Arnold now is playing for the Jacksonville Jaguars, which also is the team of James Robinson of Rockford. Robinson was a Rockford Public Schools student until his freshman year when he was enrolled at Rockford Lutheran. So you won't see Robinson on here either.

Also, whenever you have a list, that means there are players who just missed. If this list was the NIC-10's Top 110 Players then you would have seen:

No. 101 - Scott Sholl, Harlem
No. 102 - Ken Hornbeck, Auburn
No. 103 - Dean Koester, Guilford
No. 104 - Mike LaLoggia, Boylan
No. 105 - Scott VanSchelven, Hononegah
No. 106 - Dave Weisendanger, Freeport
No. 107 - Steve Harris, Boylan
No. 108 - John Pinnow, Freeport
No. 109 - Kevin Keller, Guilford
No. 110 - Ken Franzen, Eastz

So tomorrow back to the list.