Though he played his final game nearly 80 years ago, Don Hutson is still likely to be included on any list of the greatest players in Alabama and NFL history.

An All-America end with the Crimson Tide in the 1930s and for more than a decade after that one of the top receivers in the professional ranks with the Green Bay Packers, Hutson set the standard at the pass-catching positions during football’s formative years. He retired as the holder of 18 NFL single-game, single-season and career records and at the time had more than double the number of receptions (488) as the next-closest player.

With the NFL draft set to take place in Green Bay for the first time beginning on Thursday, Hutson’s legacy in that regard also deserves some examination. It’s likely he played at least an indirect role in the draft’s creation in 1936.

An Arkansas native, Hutson was the star attraction on Alabama’s undefeated 1934 Rose Bowl championship team, which also included on its roster standouts such as halfback Dixie Howell, quarterback Riley Smith and tackle Bill Lee, as well as future coaching legend Paul “Bear” Bryant (who often self-deprecatingly referred to himself as the “other end” in comparison to Hutson). Statistics from that era of football are spotty at best, but we do know that Hutson scored the game-winning touchdown on an end-around play vs. Tennessee that season and caught six passes for 165 yards — reaching the end zone on receptions of 59 and 54 yards — in a 29-13 victory over Stanford in Pasadena.

After Hutson’s Rose Bowl appearance, pro teams began clamoring for his signature on professional contracts. Like many other college players in that era, he wasn’t initial sure he wanted to play in the NFL, which was then still a rough-and-tumble upstart league that didn’t pay all that well.

Hutson remained enrolled in school at Alabama in early 1935, planning to play left field and hit leadoff for the Crimson Tide baseball team that spring. Eventually pro football offers became too difficult to turn down.

“After playing at Alabama, I had letters from maybe 10 pro clubs,” Hutson told the Milwaukee Sentinel in 1985. “I ended up going to Green Bay because the Packers offered the most money — $300 a game. That was far and above what they ever paid a player. Each week they’d give me a check for $150 from one bank and $150 from another so nobody would know how much I was getting paid.” (Hutson apparently liked to embellish things as he grew older, so this dollar figure has been disputed. However, the idea that he received two different paychecks has not.)

What Hutson didn’t mention is that one of the clubs that lost out on his services claimed he was already under contract with them. John “Shipwreck” Kelly, owner of the NFL’s Brooklyn Dodgers (not to be confused with the baseball team), told reporters in late February 1935 that Hutson signed with his team “several days” before the Packers announced his acquisition.

Hutson denied he’d signed with the Dodgers, and the matter was sent to the league office. NFL president Joseph Carr ruled that Hutson would be assigned to the Packers. (Hutson later admitted he’d taken money from Kelly and maybe even verbally agreed to a contract offer, but always disputed that he’d signed anything.)

Hutson scored on an 83-yard touchdown on his first play as a Packer, and was off and running on an 11-year career in which he led the league in receptions eight times, receiving yards seven times and receiving touchdowns nine times. He won three NFL championships, was a first-team All-Pro eight times (making second-team the other three years) and was a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the College Football Hall of Fame and the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.

Green Bay was one of the powers of the early NFL, though the Packers had finished 7-6 and in the third place in the league’s Western Division in 1934. Even so, they almost certainly would not have been in position to acquire a prospect of Hutson’s talent had the draft existed at the time.

And that brings us to the other part of Hutson’s legacy, what role he played in the creation of the draft. With the worst teams in the league selecting first each year, in theory talent will be more evenly distributed and thus competitive balance easier to achieve.

The late Gil Brandt, a Dallas Cowboys scout and executive from the 1960s until the late 1980s, told AL.com in 2017 that the controversy over Hutson’s contract was “probably responsible more than anything, for the draft.”

“(NFL owners) said, ‘starting in 1936, we’re going to have a draft,” Brandt said. “We won’t have any more instances of guys signing with two different teams.’”

Others credit the situation regarding another prospect from 1935, Minnesota fullback Stan Kostka, as being the tipping point. Kostka negotiated what was then considered an outrageous salary of $5,000 (comparable to what superstar Bronko Nagurski was making at the time), plus a $500 signing bonus, out of Kelly and Brooklyn. This infuriated the runner-up owner, Bert Bell of the Philadelphia Eagles. (Incidentally, Kosta played just one season with the Dodgers before becoming a high school and college coach, most notably at what is now North Dakota State.)

As a way to keep salaries from escalating the way they had with Hutson and Kostka, Bell — who would later serve as NFL commissioner from 1946-59 — proposed a “player selection meeting” at the 1935 league meetings. Owners unanimously ratified the idea, and the first NFL draft took place Feb. 8, 1936, in Philadelphia.

Bell’s Eagles selected Heisman Trophy winner Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago with the No. 1 overall pick in the first draft. Smith — Hutson’s old Alabama teammate — went No. 2 to Boston.

Berwanger didn’t sign with Philadelphia, hoping to maintain his amateur status for what was ultimately an unsuccessful bid to make the 1936 Olympic team as a decathlete. Bell later traded his rights to the Chicago Bears, but Berwanger’s contract demands were considered too high and he never played professional football.

The NFL draft did eventually hit its stride, first being televised live in 1980 and going “on the road” for the first time in 2015 after being held annually in New York for decades. It has become perhaps the most-followed and widely-discussed sporting event in the country each year that doesn’t include an actual game being played.

Hutson — whose No. 14 was retired by the Packers in 1951 — stayed in Wisconsin for many years after his playing career, working for a time as a Packers assistant coach and later owning a successful bowling alley and a number of car dealerships. After retiring from business and moving to California, he died in 1997 at age 84.

Eight decades after he first arrived in Green Bay, Hutson’s legacy will be on display this week before a national television audience, both regarding the franchise he helped make famous and the event he played a role in creating.