Tim Brown Discusses His Groundbreaking Book on Passing Techniques

We know it's Tuesday morning and Tuesdays are made for Football Archaeology here on Pigskin Dispatch.

Tim Brown joins us in a special edition of a release of his new book, Tim's up in just a moment to tell us all about it.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

One of the greatest elements of the game of modern football is a passing game.

But it didn't always seem to be that way because it didn't always exist in football.

And before we get into the interview with Tim, let's make sure you hit that like button and subscribe button so you can get more of what we have going on here at Pigskin Dispatch with some football history with every Tuesday with Tim Brown and all of our other great podcasts and YouTube channel specials that come out and pigskindispatch.com now let's go on with our interview.

Tim Brown, our guest that's every Tuesday for Football Archaeology, has a new book out.

We're going to talk to Tim about this great book.

And Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Darren, good to see you and chat again.

And I must say I want to thank you for being one of the two or three editors who took a, took a look at an, at an advanced copy and commented and helped me make it better than it was.

So thank you.

Definitely appreciate it.

It's always a pleasure to, to read your work and you know, even when at the very beginnings and to help, and as you helped me out so many times on my writings too, so, and I'm sure everybody else that contributed really enjoyed it too, because it's, it's a great, another great piece.

Well, well, I guess let's not keep everybody in suspense.

Why don't you tell us what the title is and a little bit what the book's about.

Sure.

I will display the COVID here.

It's When Football Came to Pass.

So it's kind of pulling on a biblical reference, though it doesn't really have much to do with the Bible, but you know, that's kind of the, you know, just thought it was kind of a, a good title.

But it, it's actually a brilliant title for it really tells what the book's about.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So, but.

So the gist of it is, you know, I.

A couple of years ago, I decided to do these, you know, this football archeology series.

So I was trying to find, you know, kind of isolated topics, if you will, within football history that I could write.

Books that are 100, 150, 200 pages, cover one thing, cover it deeply, and then, you know, move on to something else.

And so, you know, just kind of thinking about, you know, in my mind, if.

If I looked at or if I thought, okay, what are the two or three most important rule changes in football history?

One of them, it's either the top two or the top three is the forward pass.

And downs and those kinds of things.

And so.

So anyways, the forward pass is such an integral part of the game.

It dominates the game today.

It defines the game.

And so this is just an attempt to look at a little bit of how did it come about?

What did the first decade look like?

And it was a strange period.

You know, we can look, you know, I mean, people look back at all history, even their own personal histories, and we make.

We try to make sense of it, and we tend to put logic on events that weren't logical.

You know, we try to make things make sense and establish patterns.

But the first decade of the forward pass was a mess.

The rules were not well thought out.

They were substantially different than the passing rules today.

And, you know, they were trying this and trying.

It was like, you know, they were cooks.

They were, you know, Walter camp and the boys were trying some stuff, trying to see if it would work, and a lot of it didn't.

And so just.

It was just a strange brew.

And.

But.

But it was a lot of fun doing the book.

Just because I went into it with certain assumptions.

I assumed it was a much more logical, straightforward process than it was.

I knew the rules were very restrictive, but it turned out that there was a lot of very strange things that happened during that first 10 years.

Yeah, and you use that as your subtitle.

And most of us that.

That don't listen to this show or read football archaeology.

Don't know much about it.

And, you know, so it's a great period of time to look at now.

What do you think?

You know, because you, you talked about it many times, you talk about it in the book that, you know, the forward past that we know today is probably not what the forefathers envisioned it to be.

What do you think was their envisionment of what they want the forepass to do?

Yeah, so, you know, if you.

If you kind of.

I mean, it's hard to do, but, you know, I mean, I try to immerse myself in reading, you know, what was said at the time.

Right.

And, yeah, I mean, I wasn't there.

All I can do is read, you know, the printed word, you know, from what people said.

And so I really think when they first put the forward pass in place and I cover this, you know, in the book, that they were thinking of it much like the illegal forward pass.

So, you know, in football, in rugby and then.

And hence in football, you could not throw the ball toward.

You could not throw the ball forward, so toward your opponent's goal.

You could toss it even with where you are and backwards, but not forward.

And if you did so it was a loss of possession.

And so.

But you know, and just inadvertently or maybe on purpose at times, people threw forward passes in the.

Throughout the history of rugby and football, they just did.

I mean, typically it was a mistake, but they did it.

And so it wasn't a strange thing.

It wasn't like nobody knew, you know, what was going on.

People threw forward passes, they just got penalized.

They lost the ball, you know, they lost possession as a result.

But most of those were.

They were just tossing it to a guy, you know, three yards, you know, to the side and a little bit in front of them.

And so when they imagine the forward pass as being this new thing and allowing it, I think most people viewed the forward pass as this very short pitch to somebody a yard or two in front of them.

Now, there were some people who were a little bit more visionary who said, okay, well, you might be able to throw this thing further downfield.

But, you know, it was just a way to.

They thought you could open up the game by being able to toss it in front.

Some people thought you could toss it in front beyond the line of scrimmage.

I mean, there were a lot of different variations that, you know, people talked about, but mostly it was, it's got to be thrown behind the line of scrimmage.

And that's kind of the way, you know, the.

You know, I mean, they'd never done this before.

They'd never thrown the ball forward.

That had been a prohibition.

That was.

It was like, you can't run out of bounds and come back in with the ball and keep.

Continue running.

You know, it's a.

It was just such a basic rule.

But now we said, okay, we can violate that rule, right?

And so it took some imagination to figure out how to make that work.

And so one of the things was that people, you know, I walked through and document nine different ways that people threw the forward pass.

I mean, the throwing motion.

You know, we think because we've been thrown, you know, we've been throwing the Forward pass for 120 years, so we think that everybody would always have thrown the ball using an overhand spiral.

But that's not what happened.

You know, early on, they used a bunch of different techniques, several of which were variations of the overhand spiral, but others were just kind of bizarre, bizarre ways of throwing the ball.

I'll mention one just because, you know, I. I put it in.

It's been in a tidbit in the past, but, you know, some people toss the ball on a forward pass like you would.

A soldier would.

Would toss a grenade, you know, stiff arm over, you know, for kind of over the shoulder, head and shoulders, not.

And then there.

There were a whole bunch of other variations.

And.

And that was Saint Louis University and who doesn't even play football anymore.

And so, you know, the reality is that had, I mean, there was a lot of opposition to the forward past, there was constant pressure to.

To eliminate it during the first decade of.

Of its existence.

And so had people.

Had St. Louis U.

Not figured out how to throw the forward pass and then publicized how they did it to the nation, it.

It might have gone away.

You know, there are rules that goofy little things that happen in football history that we look back upon and go, wasn't that stupid?

Wasn't that silly that they did that?

Well, that's not what happened.

You know, they can, we've continued with it, but it could.

Well, you know, the forward pass could well have gone away if not for St. Louis U. Eddie Kokom's their coach and Bradbury Robinson the primary passer on that team.

So, you know, he, as far as I'm concerned, Eddie Kokoms is the father of the forward pass.

And were it not for St. Louis U, who knows, we could all be communists and be playing some other game today.

Yeah, I mean, you make great points.

You know, Bradbury Robinson is no stranger to, to being connected to the forward past in history.

But you, you sort.

And I've read, you know, many variations of that story in many different publications, but you bring in your book, you bring a, a little bit more to it, the story, you know, bringing Coach Kokoms into it, which, you know, many people have never heard other than listening to you talk and reading your work.

And you know, so you bring a.

Shed great light on it and you preserve the history in a great way.

There was some very restrictive rules and really a punishment for throwing a forward pass.

Maybe you could explain that a little bit.

So football had restrictive rules back then.

I, I went into this research.

You know, when I start a book, I, I go into it not knowing the answer.

I assume I don't know the answer.

I assume I will find new things.

But I found a lot of new things in doing this book.

And so, you know, I knew there were restrictive rules.

I wasn't entirely clear on exactly what they all were, but so, you know, I mean, but there were several that were, you know, fundamental.

If you.

They changed to a 15 yard penalty.

Okay, that's pretty still restrictive.

They had you forward passes that were tipped, so they hit a player and were dropped, or they hit a defensive lineman and dropped.

They were live balls.

They treated a tipped pass as a fumble, you know, and you couldn't throw the ball and have it cross the goal line.

Yeah, there were, there were other rules of that sort.

You had to throw the ball from either 5 yards to the left or 5 yards to the right of the center.

You had to throw it from five yards behind the line of scrimmage.

So I mean, there were just a lot of restrictions in place.

How did that, that work?

And so it's a turnover.

Where does the, the defensive team get their possession at?

Is it at the previous spot?

From the spot of the pass?

Spot of the pass.

Okay, so it's not like a punt where the, no, the ball ended.

It's, it's, I mean, you throw from your own five yard line that the other team is getting it from your five at your five yard line.

Okay.

On the other hand, if somebody touches the ball in flight, then it's a live ball and it's a fun, it's treated just like a fumble is today.

So.

Okay.

Yeah, so, so there were a lot of restrictions, but I think, but really what I learned and what I write about is that a lot of the challenge was just the, it was just, it was as much a challenge of the organizations and the imagination, you know.

So like again, we know how, how, how to pass block.

We know that today we figured that out.

They hadn't, you know, at the time linemen could go downfield anytime and they could block while the ball was in, was in the air because the rulemakers didn't anticipate the need for a pass interference penalty on the offense or the defense.

So, you know, there were plays designed for people to run downfield, you know, get in this circle of linemen and catch the ball because they, they were blocking the defenders, you know.

So these just crazy plays we, we can't imagine today.

And they hung around for a while, you know, especially in the east where they were very reluctant to give up their power running game.

You know, they had been national champions and dominated the game and all this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, so I think, I think that moment is overdone.

Not so much from an east coast standpoint, but certainly, you know, in the Midwest and, and, and elsewhere like Oklahoma and places like that, you know, it was, you know, the, the Eastern teams, there were some eastern teams that passed.

Well, Carlisle for sure.

I mean, Pop Warner at Carlisle is one of the true innovators.

What's now Springfield College, what was then the YMCA school in Springfield, Massachusetts.

They were very innovative in passing, but they were, you know, they were, they neither team was as big time.

Carlyle pretty much was a big time team, but they weren't Harvard, Yell, Princeton, Penn.

Right.

So, so you're not really anything if you were not one of those four.

And I think a lot of it was they use this graduate coaching model.

And so, you know, you'd have one coach, you'd have a, the guy who was captain the previous year would be the coach that year, you know, the following year.

And he wasn't going to risk his reputation by doing all the stupid forward passing stuff.

You know, they stuck to the knitting, they followed the plan.

They followed the Princeton way or the Harvard way.

He was trying to get rid of it all through the first decade.

So, so yeah, it was, there was a lot of opposition and you know, it's like it's not.

Football wasn't like today.

You didn't have, you know, kids weren't on campus all summer running plays that, you know, they, and coaches, coaches showed up two weeks before practice started, if that.

So it was much more of just a part time thing.

You know, Pop Warner was a, was a lawyer.

You know, he, he lived elsewhere most of the year and then he'd show up a couple weeks before camp and you know, and he was dedicated.

So.

So basically, you know, the, the places that relied on the graduate model and kind of run of, you know, coaches were in and out.

They tended to really struggle with the forward pass.

The schools that had the most success and, and dedicated themselves to it were the ones that had professional coaches.

And Warner being one of them.

But, you know, there were others.

I mean, Yost was not a big proponent, but he was a long term, you know, he's a professional coach and he, you know, he did some things too.

So, you know, again, there were some others here and there, the Springfield guys and co. You know, Kokoms at St. Louis U.

Was a professional coach, couple of others, you know, Bernie Owens at a little bit later on at Oklahoma.

So, you know, here and there there were those guys.

But yeah, you know, so.

So what do you think?

You know, everything was going against them, the rules and you know, the east coast teams, like you just said, most of them didn't want to have anything to do with it.

They wanted to go back to the old ways.

What do you.

What kept the forward pass in the game?

Yeah, so one of the really funny things is that if you read the newspaper articles of the time, they, you know, they will talk about the forward pass and how exciting it was and how great it is even for teams that only threw it two or three times a game.

Right.

And so that play was just touted and touted and touted, but it used just a crazy technique.

It used that whole run down and circle the receiver approach.

I won't talk about exactly how they threw the ball.

You can buy the book and figure that out or read about it that way.

But you know, there were the.

The re.

The fact of the matter is that fans liked the forward pass.

The players liked the forward pass.

Coaches maybe not so much, you know, because they had, you know, I mean, you only had so much coaching time and now I had.

Now you have to develop this whole new set of stuff and you don't know what you're doing.

You don't know how to throw the stupid ball.

So I mean, that's a real challenge and we can't, you know, it's hard for us to conceive of being in that situation because we know how to throw the ball.

Right.

If you've never seen the overhand spiral, you're probably not going to try that in your play, just, you know, when you're in practice, you know, and, and, and it's not, it wasn't easy to throw, given the size of the ball at the time.

So, you know, there's just a lot of factors that came into play.

And so, you know, football and all other sports have a sorting process and you find guys who have particular talents and you say, well, you, you know, you're big, you're going to go over to this position, or, you know, you're fast, you're going to go over here, you can throw the ball, you go over here.

So, you know, there were situations and individuals.

So he said, this guy can throw the ball.

I'm going to use him.

So you, you needed a combination of coaches who were willing to throw the ball, could conceive of plays and blocking patterns and etc to throw the ball, and you needed a guy with the talent to do it.

And there weren't many of those combinations early on.

And, you know, the press noticed and, you know, and a couple other things happened later in the season that, you know, that, that reinforced the idea that the forward pass was, was something that people needed to pay more attention to on the East Coast.

Yeah, I think maybe as I read the book and I, as you're talking about right now, I sit there and I think about watching a forward pass now.

And maybe it's just me, but there's just something magical.

You know, when you're watching your favorite team or you're watching any game on there, just the anticipation of that ball being loose in the air and, you know, it's, it's got your full focus, you're watching it, and there's something magical about it.

Not that, you know, running plays aren't fun to watch too.

Handing up.

There's just something different when a quarterback steps back and releases that ball and you don't know what's going to happen or where it's going, you know, maybe he does.

And then everything that transpires after that, there's something cool about that.

I think that's maybe caught the magic back then too.

Do you think?

Yeah, yeah, no, exactly.

And so, you know, back then, you got to remember that, you know, the most offenses, it was basically they were running goal line offense, the whole, the whole field, you know, tight formation, you know, closed formation, everybody inside the ends and the ends are right next to the tackle, I mean, foot to foot.

And, you know, it was just like it.

I mean, it was fun to watch, I guess, if that's the only thing you've known.

But then when somebody all of a sudden starts throwing the ball, that's exciting stuff.

I mean, that's why punts were so, you know, we always talk about the punting game was so big back then.

Well, part of it was because it was fun, you know, I mean, punt returns are fun now.

That's why Canadian football so fun because they return every punt.

You know, here we fair catch all the time.

And so, you know, it's, you know, just if you saw three or four forward passes a game, that was a big deal.

That was fun.

And then St. Louis U.

Shows up and they're throwing 20 or, you know, 25 a game.

You know, I mean, they didn't do it all the time, so they ran well.

So they, they were perfectly happy to pound, pound it down your throat, but, you know, they throw the ball and they did it well.

Yeah, you not only talk about, you know, the aspects of the, you know, the game's rules evolving and learning how to throw the ball, you know, the nine different ways, but you also have to look at other aspects.

You know, people had to figure out how to get in position to catch the ball and how to defend the pass and all these different elements that spun off of this rule that really changed all aspects of the game.

And I think you did a really nice job of that and use so many diagrams and illustrations and little, little stories of, you know, fact that happened with real people and, you know, these guys have preserved it.

I think that was very interesting how you researched that and displayed that in the book.

Yeah, I mean, one, just a little illustration is that the term pass blocking.

We all know what past blocking means today.

It's some kind of a process where the offensive line and maybe a back or two, protects the court now the quarterback when he's throwing the ball.

It was a defensive term, you know, and so it kind of tells you how little attention was paid to pass blocking.

And they, most passing plays were.

Came off.

They were what we would now call play action.

You know, that term didn't exist then, but you know, I use it in the book that way because that was, you know, you, that was the way you had to protect the quarterback.

You had, you needed, you play action and misdirection was kind of the only tools you had, you know, because you couldn't use your arms, you know, couldn't use your hands as a, as a blocker.

So, you know, you, you tried to hit somebody and then they ran right on through.

And quarterbacks were, or, you know, tailbacks, whatever position they were, run to pressure all the time.

So, you know, and the passing restriction or passing statistics reflect that, you know, they, they weren't very good.

Yeah.

You know, during our conversations when, when you're writing the book and I was giving you some feedback and others were too, and you probably asked this question to multiple people.

You ask it to me, you, you, I was maybe two, three chapters into it and you asked me a question, you know, how much of this is new information to you?

And I, I told you at that point, I said, ah, maybe 25 or something like that.

It was a small amount.

And as I got more into the book, and this is somebody that reads probably a book on football history every single week.

I'm, you know, I'm always into a football book.

By the time I got to four chapters, four or five and beyond, I wrote back to you and I said, hey, this is, I changed my mind.

I'm, you know, I knew nothing going into the book.

You know, everything that I knew was maybe in the first, you know, the Bradbury Robinson part of the story and some of that.

But, you know, this is really a book that's never been written before.

Stories have never been told before or else they've been forgotten.

And you've rekindled that and brought new information to folks that know a lot about football.

And I think it's, that's really something special.

Yeah.

And well, thank you.

But I think, you know, you also, you know, just like you read my stuff.

Right.

And so when I was first doing the research on this, I wrote some things about using these crazy techniques and, you know, so you were familiar with some of that stuff.

Right, because, you know, Whereas, you know, somebody who doesn't necessarily follow.

Follow me.

I mean, I didn't know this stuff.

Right.

But, you know, the reality is that that was one of the biggest challenges was just how to throw the ball in a way that went for distance with speed and accuracy.

So those three things, other techniques gave you one, maybe two, but only the overhand spiral gave you all three.

Yeah, so it's very fascinating.

It's, it's great the way that you portrayed it and, you know, tell the story this first nine, ten years of the forward pass and, and all that transpired on there.

And, you know, this is coming up into the, the holiday season.

And folks, I'm, I'm telling you, if you have anybody that has any inkling of, of liking the game of football, this is probably a great stocking stuffer or, you know, a gift to give to your father or something like that.

That, that, because it's a, it's really an easy read, you can read it in a day or two and you're going to learn so much information that you didn't know before.

And, you know.

So, Tim, why don't you tell folks where they can get a copy of this?

Yeah, so, so basically the, the book is available on Amazon, and because it's available on Amazon, you can also get it through, like, Walmart and Barnes and Noble and stuff like that.

There are some people who prefer not to buy it that way.

And so I've had a couple people reach out to me and just say, hey, can I just buy it from you directly?

And so, you know, I'm happy to do that.

So, but, you know, basically the first place to go, just, you know, search when football came to pass and you'll find, you know, multiple online opportunities to, to buy the, buy the book.

And if you're, if you're a digital person, you know, you can, you can buy the digital version.

If you're an audio person, it's available on Kindle Audio.

It's also available on Audible.

And.

Yeah, so that's about it.

Well, Tim, Tim, you did a great job on it.

And you've added you, you know, I've added it to my collection of Timothy P. Brown books that are here by my desk as reference points to go to.

And I'm sure many others around the country are doing that the same.

And we appreciate you writing.

I need more people to do that.

Okay.

Always as an author.

Right.

Yeah.

So definitely appreciate you preserving this piece of football history and coming on and sharing it with us, you know, giving us this interview with you to talk about the book and for letting us be a part of it.

And we really appreciate it.

Well, appreciate you having me on as always and and hopefully it results in good hits for you too to have this interview.

So that's all the football history we have today, folks.

Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

We invite you to check out our website Pigskin Display, not only to see the daily football history, but to experience positive football with our many articles on.

The good people of the game as.

Well as our own football comic strip cleat marks comics, pigskindispatch.com is also on social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and don't forget the Big Skin Dispatch YouTube channel to get all of your positive football news and history.

Special thanks to the talents of Mike and Gene, Mike Monroe, as well as Jason Neff for letting us use their music during our podcast.

This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters with yesteryear as your favorite sport.

You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com.