The Evolution of Player Identification in American Football

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.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal deposit of football history.

And as we get ready to here on August 25th, waiting for the NFL football season coming up in just a week and a half from now.

Can you imagine that early September, that Thursday, September 4th.

It all starts with the National Football League.

I have a few things going on this week that really are going to make it a great season for me and maybe some of these you'll share in my enjoyment of the game and try them for yourself.

Now the first one is a great way to play fantasy football that's totally different and that is to play by rooting for your own team.

Now, we had Hans Kaiser on just a couple years ago to talk about his invention, Tailgate fantasy sports.

And it's a great thing.

The Sports History Network once again has a tailgate fantasy league coming up.

You're going to hear the commercials coming on.

We have a link to this page.

Why don't you come on in and join us as you'll see me as Pigskin Dispatch.

Imagine that.

And I'd love to have you, my fans come in and play this game too with other Sports History Network hosts and players from the other, other websites and other podcasts that are going on here.

And I love it if you come on and join your team name, choose any name that you want but put something, you know, like an underscore and, and have something related to a pig.

You know, if you are a Cowboys fan, you know, put up the, you know, the Cowboys underscore Hogs or you know, if you're Lions fans, Lions underscore PD for Pigskin Dispatch.

Something to show that your relationship to Pigskin Dispatch.

Show that we're followers here and we'll compete against each other, compete against other players around the world and just have a great time.

Only three rules in Tailgate Fantasy.

First of all, you play with only your own team.

First.

Second of all, you pick only three players from your own team and then you rotate two of those players weekly and you have some power ups that are given out each week as well to help your that one player that you pick become even better at what they do.

So lots of fun.

Join Tailgate Fantasy with Sports History Network League, the link in the show notes and one of the other things I'm going to do is, you know, observe some of the great things that are going on in the game, not just the game itself, some of the great plays.

But as a spectator of football, sometimes the importance of the play has.

We miss some of the more fascinating items that are in the game.

And some of my friends throughout the years have brought that up and my guests have brought that up.

Now we know that the helmet logo, you know, generally it describes what team that the player is playing for or what team is going on the field.

The jersey and the number sort of identifies what the player is on that team.

Well, even more so than the number that identifies a player is a name on the back of the jersey.

Now there's a lot going on with that.

We sort of take it for granted.

But the question is when did this first become a thing to have your name put on the back of a jersey?

And when did football put that name above the digits?

Well, the concept actually came from baseball.

First, the Major League Baseball's Chicago White Sox were the first team under the direction of Bill Veeck to sew on a player number in an arch above the jersey number on the back of the jersey as we're commonly see today on baseball uniforms.

Other teams soon followed.

And the Los Angeles Chargers were the first initial pro grid iron team to have name plates on the back of the jersey describing the things.

Now Tim Brulia of the Gridiron uniform database, who we've had on this show before, friend of the show explains in a post he had from a couple years ago that for for many years it was believed that the American Football League required all teams to have their player names on the back of their jerseys from the very beginning.

However, after Tim's extensive research with the GUD squad and research team, Bruglia has proven this to be incorrect.

They later added them as the season went on.

The Oakland Raiders even took a step further initially including both the first and the last name players on their uniforms.

And there was a few players that had some really long first and last names that had a little bit trouble Getting all those on.

Soon after, the NFL followed suit, and many college teams, you even see it on some high school teams in this day and age today.

Now, that is how the names on the jerseys came.

If you're listening this on the release of August 25th of this podcast.

Now, speaking of the Chargers, now, we have been going through and trying to tell you how teams earn their moniker, their nickname and the Chargers.

Have you ever wondered how they got their nickname?

And it's hard for our modern minds to fathom.

You know, like mine, I sit there and I think about Chargers.

I see the electric lightning bolt and I think about electricity and I think about Los Angeles.

That's where the Chargers started out.

Well, Southern California has lots of electrical problems.

They're trying to find ways to have power, more power there because they have the rolling brown out.

You hear about these all the time from all the air conditionings going on with the hot weather.

But in reality, the meaning of the Chargers had little to do with the electricity, at least initially, until the pretty cool lightning bolt was put on the helmet and the jerseys and the pants.

Now that was pretty cool uniform, you gotta admit, the great color scheme and a great emblem.

So the real story of how the Chargers got their name was franchise owner.

At the time, the initial original owner was Baron Hilton.

Yeah, the hotel magnet.

One was the highly anticipated supported bugle chance of Charge at Dodger Stadium and the USC Coliseum for those games for the Trojans playing, you know, Charge, well, that was one of the things that gave Baron Hilton the name.

But the Charger moniker was selected to identify the AFL team after being submitted by fan Gerald Courtney as part of a contest that Hilton and other Chargers executives put on.

17 again to once up again become the Los Angeles Chargers.

There you go.

There's a little bit of history in those words for you there.

Now, we also have another piece of information that we want to share with you for on this great August 25th and that is if you like to play fantasy football, including Tailgate Fantasy sports.

We've been having some segments on with Thomas hall of gridiron intelligence.com Thomas has got some great features, Nat.

It's not a game, but it's got great statistical information that can maybe help you win your league.

So check it out gridiron intelligence.com check out all our sponsors and all our friends here, including the Gridiron Uniform database and you know, the Tailgate Fantasy Sports download that app, play the game and let's have some fun this year during football season.

Till next time everybody have a great gridiron day.

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 pigskindispatch.com 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 he's 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 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 for the yesteryear of your favorite sport.

You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com.