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Topics: NFL
Chris Nee
In the pantheon of bizarre sporting stories, the tale of Norm Michael is right up there with the best of them.
The 2025 NFL Draft will take place in Green Bay, Wisconsin from Thursday and will be a globally televised extravaganza.
Quarterback Cam Ward is the favourite to become the first overall pick for the Tennessee Titans, a label he would carry with him throughout his NFL career.
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The draft hasn't always been the media behemoth it is today. It's changed format many times and in the early days of the NFL it was an unwieldy beast.
In the 1940s "it was a grueling 32-round affair where teams were so desperate to fill out rosters that a few picks ended up going awry," writes Jamie Gordon for talkSPORT.
"That is what happened to the Philadelphia Eagles in [1944]".
The player in question was Norm Michael, a Syracuse fullback with the physical frame for the job and curiously brittle bones. He wasn't notified that he'd been drafted by the Eagles in the 20th round.
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Having slipped out of higher rounds on account of his injury record in college and not been informed that he was selected, he discovered the error an incredible 55 years later when he saw his name on a complete list of Syracuse draft picks in a newspaper in 1999.
He took it in good humour.
"That was the first I heard of it," he told the Democrat & Chronicle newspaper in Rochester, New York.
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"My son sent them a letter after we found out. I think he wanted to see if the Eagles owed me a signing bonus. Think of the interest I could have had. Fifty-seven years' worth.
"I still haven’t heard from the Eagles. I guess I may have missed my window of opportunity.
Gordon writes that the promising fullback had left college after his junior year and enlisted in the US Army by the time of the draft pick that never was.
"After the war, Michael returned to Syracuse and worked in sales before becoming a business owner in Rochester," he adds.
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Michael passed away at the age of 90 in 2011.