The Sportsmen Quartet first appeared on the Jack Benny Program September 29, 1946. Their function was to sing the Lucky Strike commercial. They never said anything but "Hummmmm" as a greeting to Jack or Don Wilson.

The initial members of the group were:
Bill Days (1st tenor), Max Smith (2nd tenor), Marty Sperzel (Baritone) and Gurney Bell (bass).
Gurney had replaced Thurl Ravenscroft, (The voice of Tony The Tiger in the Kellogg's commercials) when he went into the war. Thurl came back in 1948 and while he performed for a few months, but was later kicked out of the group. 

Max Smith quit in protest and they ended forming the Mellomen. 
Thus the Sportsmen became:
Bill Days (1st tenor), Bob Stevens (2nd tenor), Marty Sperzel (baritone), Gurney Bell (bass)

Bob Stevens got tired of the travelling and he quit in 1951. So it became:
Bill Days (1st tenor), Jay Meyer (2nd tenor), Marty Sperzel (baritone), Gurney Bell (bass)

Jay Meyer decided that four years with the group was enough and in late 1954 quit. So:
Bill Days (1st tenor), Bob Garsen (2nd tenor), Marty Sperzel (baritone), Gurney Bell (bass)

There seems to have been a battle for control of the group between Sperzel and Days in 1957. Sperzel lost. He was replaced by Jay Moffett. That group stayed together until the group disbanded for good in 1971. 

Stevens died in 1961. Bell died in 1976. Garsen died in 1992. Moffett died circa 1993. Smith died in 1999. Days died in 2002. Ravenscroft died in 2005, Meyer in 2009.

Max Smith and Bills Days were kind and generous men. Jay Meyer was a very nice man. Marty Sperzel didn't want to be bothered with the past and Thurl kept saying he didn't remember anything.

John Rarig performed with the group from 1938-1942. Never as a part of the group when they were regulars on the Jack Benny Program. He stayed on as their arranger for the life of the group. He died in 1991. 

In May of 1953, Benny extended The Sportsmen's seven year contract for an addional year, and the group started work on a series of thirteen 'Nickelodeon Theater' tele-films for Wally Klein, and a series of 52 radio shows for Lou Snader. The entry in Josefsberg book is wrong about there being "five" of them. He must have remembered Ravenscroft and Rarig from the Frightwig appearance in 1942.