The collective memory of pro football fans begins with the 1960s and the ascendance of Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers. Fans born too late to see those teams play know their names through NFL Films specials and books. I would give odds that the average football fan, older than 20, could name more players on the 1960s Packers — quarterback Bart Starr, halfback Paul Hornung, fullback Jim Taylor, guards Jerry Kramer and Fuzzy Thurston, ends Max McGee, Boyd Dowler, and Marv Fleming, center Jim Ringo, offensive tackle Forrest Gregg, tackle Henry Jordan, linebacker Ray Nitschke, defensive back Herb Adderly, safety Willie Wood, and perhaps four or five others — than on the reigning Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers.

Football players seem to have had more of a distinctive playing style then than now; kids imitated the way Johnny Unitas tucked his chin into his chest and gripped the ball with both hands while dropping back into the pocket. They copied (most of them with disastrous results) Jim Brown’s habit of carrying the ball in one hand like a loaf of bread. Guards like Kramer and Thurston pulled out of the line to lead power sweeps, something you won’t see in a game when Sumo wrestlers on the offensive line outweigh their 1960s predecessors by nearly 100 pounds.

Maybe it was easier to remember them because there were fewer to remember — just 16 teams, half the number of the current NFL. The ’66 Packers used 41 players; 40 years later, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ roster lists 55. Because of this, versatility was at more of a premium in the 1960s. A multiskilled player was more valuable then than today, giving players more of a chance to exhibit style. And no player in the 1960s had more style than Hornung.

It’s good to see Hornung back in the limelight with a new book, “Lombardi and Me,” written with former Sports Illustrated writer Billy Reed, and in a recent interview with Bob Costas, where his candor and good humor were refreshing.

Costas: Did you bet on football [in 1963]?

Hornung: Yeah, I bet on football.

Costas: Were you wrong to do it?

Horning: Yeah, darn right I was.I was young and stupid.

It’s hard for those who only know Hornung through the record book to understand his greatness. To begin with, he was a Heisman Trophy winner for a Notre Dame team that, in the words of one sportswriter, “Overwhelmed two opponents, underwhelmed eight, and whelmed none.” No other player in college football history has won the award playing for a losing team. Skeptics have suggested that the award was a coup for Notre Dame’s public relations staff, and that’s probably true. He wouldn’t have won the Heisman with a losing team at, say, Iowa, even with his nickname, Golden Boy. Whether he deserved it is a different question, and one for which there is great deal of evidence on Hornung’s side. He was a running quarterback, a great one, and a good passer before colleges became as pass-happy as the pros. He was a sensational kicker, and, on defense, a superb safety. He probably was the best all-around player — and hence, the best football player — in the country, and some people think that should be what the Heisman Trophy is about.

In the pros, his talents were wasted for two years before Lombardi took over the Packers in 1958 — he didn’t throw quite well enough to be an NFL quarterback, and he wasn’t big enough to be a fullback. Under Lombardi, Hornung blossomed, along with the Green Bay dynasty, and became the most famous football player in the country. It’s not easy to see why from a glance at his numbers. Hornung played at a time when two running backs carried the load instead of one, and, playing halfback, he shared the carries with Hall of Fame fullback Jim Taylor. “Halfback” and “fullback” almost sound like terms out of the horse and buggy era. Today, a “running back” does all the running and a “blocking back” blocks.

Taylor and Hornung ran and then blocked for each other, and Hornung never got more than 670 yards in one season. He was a fine receiver on a team that didn’t pass much, averaging 11.4 yards a catch for his career. (Tiki Barber, one of the best receiving backs in today’s game, averages 8.9.) Horning was deadly on the halfback option pass, Lombardi’s favorite trick play. He was an outstanding kicker; in an exhibition game against the Giants in 1964, he dropkicked a 51-yard field goal. When Doug Flutie tried a dropkick last season, most fans needed the rule explained to them.

And he was a great big-game player, one of the greatest ever. In the 1961 NFL championship game against the Giants, he led the Packers to a 37–0 rout with a touchdown, three field goals, and four extra points. During the 1965 title game against the Cleveland Browns, in a tundra of Green Bay mud so thick that Jim Brown, the greatest runner in football history, could get no more than 50 yards, Hornung gouged out 105 as the Packers beat the Browns 23–12.

Hornung’s versatility meant something at a time when rosters were so small. Nowadays you have kicking specialists, some of whom don’t kick as well as Horning did. We have backs who come in on third-and-five just to catch short passes or for the sole purpose of blocking guys who are only in the game to blitz on thirdand-long. We don’t know their names as well as we did players like Hornung because we don’t see as much of them, and they don’t give us as much to remember them by. As it does in all the rest of life, specialization has created anonymity.

Which is not to say that the greatest players in the game today are anonymous. Shaun Alexander is stronger and faster than Horning was at his peak. Last season Alexander set a league record with 27 touchdowns, good for 162 points. If he had scored three more TDs he would have broken perhaps the most amazing single season record in the game — Hornung’s 1960 record of 176 points. Of course, if Alexander had set the new record, he would have done it in 16 games; Horning scored 176 points in a 12-game season.

Shaun Alexander is the greatest running back of our time. Paul Hornung was the greatest football player of his.

Mr. Barra is the author of “The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”