Baseball and football are somewhat different from basketball in that most of the great basketball players came along in the last 50 to 60 years and we have many of them in color and on video.
Look at baseball. You can see Babe Ruth trotting around the bases in that rapid way old film showed. Lou Gehrig’s famous speech is in black-and-white. Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio?
Only in black-and-white.
Football is much the same.
Red Grange was called the Galloping Ghost and his films are indeed ghost-like. The NFL developed a history of archiving games and so we we see guys like YA Tittle and various other greats but even so, the film is grainy and aged and the equipment and fields are clearly from another era so we don’t always appreciate the athletes and athleticism.