In the early game of American football, one of the biggest issues was how do you keep air inside the ball? The balls were not developed the same way they are today. And you had to figure out, how do you get that air in there?

We're going to take a study of that today with our friend Timothy b. Brown of footballarchaeology.com Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin, good to see you. And hopefully this episode will pump up your ratings.

I hope it does. I'm pumped up for this, I can tell you that.

Now, you wrote a recent tidbit as, like we just alluded to, titled Inflating Footballs the adjacent possible and progress. And what can you tell us about this story, Tim?

Yeah, so. So there's kind of like just the basic how did footballs get inflated Stories.

And then I kind of went off on this adjacent possible issue, which I think is a pretty cool concept. But anyways, so, you know, when. When football began, you know, we went. We've gone through stages where initially the ball was.

You know, the bladder was just a pig's bladder or sheep's bladder, you know, depending at the time. But anyway, some animal bladder, and they just, you know, there was like a stem on it that they blew into it. You know, they put.

Just like you blow up a balloon, you put it in your mouth and you blow the thing up and then you tie it off, you fold it over there. A different piece techniques for. For how you. How you kept the air in there, but eventually it leaked out. And so then they.

If you like to put rotten animal parts in your mouth, that's. That's the job for you, right?

Well, and in fact, you know, the guy who invented the rubberized or vulcanized bladder, supposedly his wife died from blowing up one of those balls because, you know, so anyways, so, so then they started, you know, in part because of that danger, they started using like, kind of what you'd think of as a bicycle pump. You know, I mean, there's a kind of a pump.

It almost looked like the old kinds kind of look like like on old cartoons when they'd be spraying bugs, you know, you know, trying to get the, you know, whatever insecticides up in there. But it was, you know, kind of a pumping action little thing that they insert into the. Into this nozzle.

Then they finally went to, you know, what we think of as valve. You know, they had the valve that was initially. The valves were Schrader valves.

So they were basically the same kind of thing as on a car or On a bicycle. And, you know, so. Longer stem and.

But it kept the air in, but it was still kind of awkward yet, you know, and throughout all that process, when the ball got inflated, you had to unlace it to. To get at it, to. To inflate it. So then they. Then they came up with a. This flatter valve that, you know, sat flush with the top of the bladder. Okay.

And so you can, you know, it was a valve kind of shaped like, you know, little markers you use on golf greens to, you know, for where your ball is. It was kind of that kind of a structure. It kind of looked like that.

And so I had always thought, because, you know, that came out in, like, 23, 24, and by 26, everybody had balls that you could inflate right through the leather. You know, the big innovation was you no longer had to unlace the ball in order to inflate it, because you always had to before.

So I thought when they'd come out with that valve, that they'd immediately gone to that level, but it actually took two years, you know, so in 24, Spalding invents a ball with this flat, you know, kind of valve, but you still had to unlace it in order to pump it up and, you know, to connect the little thingy and. And pump it. And I only know that because I ended up seeing it in, you know, in an old catalog. So I bought the catalog so they had.

It would have a picture, and so that's what's, you know, led to. Led to, you know, the. The tidbit. So it's just one of those things where I just, you know, there's. We always talk about football as, you know, the.

The game repeats itself. And, you know, if everybody steals ideas from other people. And that's true. But that's true pretty much in everything we do.

You know, almost all the vast majority of innovations come from small improvements, iterative little improvements over whatever the previous process was. You know, you got a better player, you got a slightly different player, so you try to use them differently.

And so you innovate a new style of play, you know, or you just come up with a kind of a cool idea. But so. But most. Most things are just real small steps. And so this.

There's a concept in evolutionary biology called the adjacent process possible, which just, you know, my analogy for it is, you know, in evolution, you take small steps for the most part. And so that's why wolves didn't become dachshunds overnight. You know, there were lots of little steps to get there.

And so then this particular example is just one where, looking back, we can see it and say, well, why didn't they just go right to the valve, go going through the ball, you know, through the leather. But either there was a tech, you know, the technology wasn't quite there, or some. They just didn't think about it, you know.

You know, because, I mean, it's so obvious. But, you know, it took them two years to figure out how to do it, you know, and it just. Again, it's just one of those things.

I find those kinds of things fascinating. But eventually, you know, we got to the point where, you know, the ball works like it. Like it has for about 100 years.

You got that little rubber button and you insert the needle. Though it took a while for those needles to come along, too. There was, you know, for a while when the.

When those balls first came out, like in the 19, later 20s, a lot of times, you know, companies, the ball manufacturers would supply a little cap that would go over. You know, it's like kind of like the cap that you screw on your car tire on the nozzle, but they're flat.

And so you put that on so that dirt and water and stuff didn't get into the little nozzle. Right.

It's just one of those things you don't think about, but that, you know, that's the best solution that they could come up with at the time, you know, but just, you know, when's the last time you picked up a football that had a little cap over the nozzle? Yeah.

Yeah. Never. Never.

But I.

But I can tell you that the gentleman that I worked with for years and years, I was a referee. He was the umpire, and we worked on the same crew for probably 15, 20 years. He would, you know, the umpire always checks the balls.

And in high school football, I'm not sure if it does it at other levels. So the teams would bring the balls to the locker room.

However, whatever balls they want to use, we'd have to test them, make sure they're the right pressure. And my umpire, Dick Zocky is his name, He. He. He got so disappointed when the balls would come in and they wouldn't.

They'd be.

Not enough pressure in them or. Or too much pressure. So he went out and he bought one of those little things, like you said, the little canister where you.

You pump from the end and you had the, you know, a couple extra needles and everything. And he felt so bad because he's. Usually they'd have the. The Kids bringing the balls.

You know, these kids are probably 8th grade or something bringing the balls. And, you know, you know, he'd check in, is like, you know, £9. And you're. Well, you got to get up. You know, I gotta get this up to 12 and a half.

And it was either in that one or in. In the 26, where some of the, you know, the language like the ball is shipped with laces and bladder. Right.

So that would have been the earlier version.

So you, you know, if you got the ball under the Christmas tree, you know, you had to figure out how to stuff that bladder in there, how to inflate it, and. And they. They.

Some assembly required.

Yeah, well, I mean. Yeah, it's one of those. That's a. That's a great line because it's one of those things we don't even think about.

Obviously, the ball's ready to go, but, you know, it wasn't always.

So, hey, just put a couple pounds of pressure in it, and you're out throwing it in the front yard, you know?

Yeah. Yeah.

So.

Well, and there's. There's old stories about, you know, kids who would. Basically, they had some kind of little device where they would blow up the ball.

They'd put the nozzle, you know, when it was still just the. The kind of rubber nozzle, they'd put it over a car tire and then press the little pin in the car tire to let air out.

So, you know, whoever's car happened to be on the street, you know, they. They basically steal air from, you know, their neighbor's tires and stuff.

Then they moved on to siphoning gas out once they start driving themselves, those little criminals. Well, that. That is a very interesting aspect of early football, Tim, that we don't think about in today's modern football. And you.

You do this a lot in your tidbits and on your site. Maybe you could tell us a little bit how people can partake in this.

Yeah, easiest thing is just go to footballarchaeology.com it's a substack site. You can subscribe, which means you'll get an email every time that I send out a new story.

You can also just follow, which allows you to kind of more easily track, you know, from within the. Within the site. You know, I've got it. I've now got a new YouTube channel. It's just got, you know, a handful of different items on there.

But anyways, lots of ways to figure it out. Just footballarchaeology.com and one way or another, you'll get there.

All right. Well, Tim, we really appreciate you coming on this week and talking about this football of antiquity, and we'd love to talk to you again next week.

Very good tuxing.

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