I am genuinely curious what trait convinced his teammates to follow and believe in Bart. While I can see the points that vince makes about Bart's humility and lack of (visible) ego, my own experience is that those that achieve at levels like this have a singular focus and drive that allows them to rise above the substantial efforts of others. Its hard to couple that with putting others literally first. Not just in public comments, but in actual day to day living. There are rare people for whom you feel terrible if you let them down and they never, ever let you know about it. But I do not associate that often with sports, especially football.

Unlike most other questions, I suspect someone here has the answer to that one.

Flak vest/jacket was first worn by Dan Pastorini for the Oilers in the late 70s. Byron Donzis gets the credit. The legend is that he demonstrated the effectiveness of the jacket to Pastorini by sneaking into the hospital where DanP was being treated and having a friend hit him in the ribs while wearing the jacket. SI wrote "Pastorini flinched. Donzis did not." There were versions of padding available to protect ribs before this, but they were thick or were extensions of shoulder pads and made the act of throwing tough.