Exploring the Intersection of Art and Football: Ripley’s Influence

It's time for some Tuesday football archaeology as Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology joins us again this week to educate us on another aspect of football history. This week we chat about the work of Robert Ripley and an early connection to the history of football, believe it or not.

Coming up, this is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history on a day to day basis. Your host, Darrin Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

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This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear of your favorite sport. You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com 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 try to do every.

Tuesday, we are going to talk to our friend from football archeology, Tim Brown, great historian and author, author of multiple books and author of many tidbits that come out each and every evening for our football enjoyment. Tim Brown, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey Darren. Thank you, thank you. It's football season well underway, so always the best time of year.

Definitely. You know, we hate to see the weather start to change, but we know it's football season.

It makes it the most exciting part of the year, especially on the weekends. And now it's spreading out throughout the whole week. So it's just even better.

But better for us, maybe worse for the players, but still love the game.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So tonight I thought maybe we'd talk about one of your tidbits you had from mid August we on Ripley's Believe it or not and some of their thoughts on football. And I think most of our listeners are familiar with Ripley's Believe it or not. And we're going to get rid of the not part.

When we talk to you, we always believe you. But let's hear what Ripley's had to say about football.

Yeah, I'm definitely a truth teller. I don't make anything up.

I find, you know, just the artwork interesting in general.

And so if I spot one that I think I could write a tidbit about and, you know, make it interesting, then I just kind of have a way of, you know, cataloging them and coming back to them. So not too long ago, I came across this one by. I think his name is Robert Ripley.

But the interesting thing about it was that his first Believe it or not was published, like, two weeks after he did this cartoon. So this cartoon pre. Believe it or not, if you can Believe it or Not. So anyways, and then, you know, once he.

He did the Believe it or not thing, and then he became famous and rich and all kinds of good stuff.

So at the time when he was still just a, you know, a young illustrator, he did a thing and, you know, he basically showed stuff like, you know, tandem blocking. And, you know, that's where before you had to have, you know, seven men on the line of scrimmage. Sometimes teams would line up.

They take the garden tackle from the other side and line them up right behind, you know, the right tackle or. Or whatever. And, you know, so two guys in tandem would then push through the hole. He showed kind of the whole.

The days of, you know, when running backs had handles sewn on their pants so the guys could grab them by the handles and throw them over the pile to gain yardage and guys hurdling. And he specifically showed or mentioned Harold Weeks of Columbia in that cartoon, who is famous for.

He was famous for jumping, leaping over the line with both feet forward so that he could hit the opposing player in the chest, knock him down and continue running.

Was he the. The one that they sort of had that play where they would almost throw him over the line?

Yeah.

Okay.

They did it both ways. Somewhere he got. Got a good head start and he leapt, you know, with both feet for it. And others where they would swing him.

And then, You know, so, I mean, we. We still. Now it's back, you know, Mullens were outlawed for. For quite a long time, but now they're back in football.

And so we see our offensive lineman. We just saw an example. Which game? One of the games and opening weekend, you know, there was a lineman who pushed his. His guy across the goal line.

Right. And so that's legal again. It wasn't for a long time, but yeah, it's still not legal to pull.

But back then, you know, lineman pulled their running backs forward as well.

I think they sort of opened that back up again. That famous usc Notre Dame game back when Reggie Bush got pushed over by Matt Leiner, I think, and a couple others.

I think that critical play at the end, I think that's where they sort it because it was illegal at that time, but they let it happen. And I think they. It was like the year after that they sort of lessened up on that. That rule and allowed that to happen again.

Yeah, I mean, it was a big, you know, that was a big part of. I mean, it. It's just like a rugby scrum. I mean, it's. It's kind of where that all came from. But they got rid of that for a long time.

But then, you know, they also talked about. Or his cartoon also included a little thing on punting and talking about, you know, roughing the punter and.

Which originally was roughing the fullback because the fullback is typically who punted.

And, you know, there's a long involved explanation of that, which if you search on my blog, you can find, you know, find that whole thing roughing the. Roughing the punter and what the. The origins of that. But anyways, just. It was just a cute cartoon. And so, you know, just kind of.

You know, and he listed like Colgate, Georgia Tech, Dartmouth, Washington, Jefferson, Occidental and Brown.

And you know, really Georgia Tech's the only one now that's we consider prominent W and J and Occidental played Division 3 and Occidental doesn't play anymore at all. You know, so. So, you know, the. Their time in the limelight didn't necessarily last that long.

Yeah, that's definitely true. There's a lot of those schools, the Lafayettes and Sawanese of the world too. Those are sort of.

They had some big seasons and now they're like you say, they either don't have teams or they're playing Division 2, Division 3 or, or something else. So.

So, you know, so school like that and then the Central Florida is in the FAUs. I mean, Florida's got a million of those schools and so does Texas.

You know, schools that basically, you know, were little commuter schools or normal schools, you know, that kind of thing. But they, you know, times changed and now they're massive, you know, massive significant universities.

Is one of those like Florida International or Florida Atlantic one of them?

You know, you got a Boise State that was a junior college for a lot of its history, you know, anyways. I mean, there's as many examples there are of schools that drop down.

There's probably an equal number that have kind of risen up or, you know, they've become substantial schools and you know, so they go with the advertising benefits of intercollegiate athletics.

Football's a money maker, that's for sure. I think it's been like that for over 100 years and still is that way today. So amazing. So some good, good stuff.

And folks, if you want to enjoy this picture that Mr. Ripley drew way back when on Tim's site, there are some links through Pigs Can Dispatch.

We'll also try to put the link in the show notes of this podcast too, as well as how to get connected to Tim to have his daily tidbits delivered to you. And maybe, Tim, you could talk about that just a little bit.

Yeah, so you can, you know, go to footballarchaeology.com, subscribe, and you can subscribe for free. There's also some paid levels, but if you subscribe for free, you'll get at least one email every day that has whatever the tidbit is.

And then I'm also on Twitter, just look for football Archaeology as well and you should be able to find me.

Well, Tim, thank you so much for sharing this tidbit of football again with us and our listeners and hope to talk to you again next week about some more.

Very good. Look forward to it. And yeah, we'll get together as always.

That's all the football history we have today, folks. Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

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This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear of your favorite sport. You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com it.