NFL not making pre-1982 sack stats official?

Thanks to Pro Football Researchers Association members John Turney and Nick Webster, along with the Pro-Football-Reference website, NFL fans everywhere now know that Al "Bubba" Baker and not Michael Strahan holds the true record for most sacks in a single season with 23 in 1978 even though the league did not begin tracking individual quarterback takedowns until 1982. 

Unfortunately for Baker and all pre-1982 players, it appears the NFL won't be changing its policy anytime soon. 

Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk reported Friday that league record keepers will continue counting sacks for only 1982 and beyond. While the league acknowledges sacks from 1963 through 1981, those are counted only for the quarterbacks tackled rather than being attributed to the pass-rushers for those particular plays. 

Earlier this week, Grant Gordon of the NFL's website noted Baker admitted on a recent edition of the "Around the NFL" podcast he became emotional upon learning he held the unofficial record for most sacks in a campaign:

"For some reason, and I'm not kidding you, without any prompting, tears just started running down my eyes. And my wife was inside, I opened up the patio doors. And my wife, first thing she said was, 'What's wrong?' And I said, nothing's wrong and I said come look at this. And, you know, we hugged and then I lost about an hour and a half, two hours. My daughter called. It was really emotional for my family. I guess at 6-foot-8, 290 pounds, that doesn't sound really tough, but, we were all crying.

"You know somebody tells you you're a sack leader and what do you do, you start crying. And I guess it's because none of us really sat around like some players and, 'We want this and we want that.' We hadn't thought about it for at least, for at least, I'm not kidding you, 20 years." 

Baker and other defensive players who competed before 1982 deserve to be recognized, and the NFL should eventually right this wrong.