Helmets are probably the first piece of equipment we think of when someone asks us about football. The head covering may be the most recognizable element of the gridiron.

Timothy Brown, like many of us, is enamored by the evolution of the football helmet as a product and safety device. Tim collects football catalogs selling the equipment and then dives into the variations and innovations that were derived along the way.

In a recent post, 1935 GoldSmith Sports Equipment Consulting Staff, Tim delved into the 1935 Coaching Consultants and reps that GoldSmith had and then came on to share what he found with us on a podcast episode.

Transcription of 1935 GoldSmith Sports Equipment Consulting Staff with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends, this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history, and welcome to another Tuesday as we get to visit with our friend Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Thank you, sir. Look forward to chatting again, as always, and hopefully we'll have something interesting for people to listen to.

Yeah, you, Tim, you have some amazing things happening, you know, each and every day, and every once in a while you get some of these zingers that like, just like, I can't call it an earworm, I don't know what it is, it just, it stays with me all day when I read it. I read it in the evening and it stays with me through the night. I'm laying in bed thinking about it, wake up next morning, and one of those is, you keep going into the Goldsmith's catalog, and you had one that, you know, that you had back in September out as a tidbit that talks about some staff that Goldsmith's catalog got some information from, so maybe you could talk a little bit about that tonight.

Yeah, so, you know, so I guess, you know, first off, just, you know, by way of background, I have something on the order, you know, 30 or 40 vintage sporting goods catalogs, you know, so I collect them over time, or I've collected them over time, it's just a way to be able to look up, okay, well, you know, some of it's just images, you know, for the tidbits, but it's also just, you know, you can look at them and understand, okay, this is what this equipment was made of at the time, and how things changed and things that they created that disappeared because they didn't really work very well, or they were uncomfortable, you know, whatever it may have been. Anyways, I collect these catalogs, and most of them, I'm just, you know, I'm buying them online, and so I don't, typically, I'm only seeing like cover photographs, a couple of inside pages, but I don't know what, you know, it's not like, you know, it can be a 90 page catalog, but I'm only seeing images of a couple of them. Anyways, this was one of those, you know, I bought this, Goldsmith was a big brand at the time, and I didn't have a lot of Goldsmith catalogs, so I, you know, picked this one up.
And, you know, then once it was delivered, it was like, right away, okay, this is really cool, because in addition to just normal pages, showing the equipment, the pricing and everything for shoulder pads and helmets and whatever, each of the different major types of equipment, they had a lead in cartoon page that kind of told the history of that type of equipment, the history of football shoes, the history of helmets. And so, it was, number one, it's just kind of fun imagery, they're interesting cartoons. So, it was just a way to, you know, kind of go through those, and then, you know, what I've done, you know, it's a series of, there will be an eighth week now, but, you know, so it's just a way to publish, to do these, show these cartoons, and then just go through the equipment of the time.

And so, this is mid-30s, you know, so what was equipment like, you know, then. And so, this, the first of those cartoons was about what they called their consulting staff. And so, that was, you know, essentially, consulting staff was like, the coaches, and one trainer, who were their, like, their advisory staff, they were the guys who they would go to, to talk through, you know, what kinds of changes do we need for the equipment, or if they had a research and development group, they would show them, they'd show these coaches, hey, here's what we've come up with, what do you think about this? Can you have you guys wear this stuff in spring practice, or in regular practice, and see how it performs? You know, so they were, you know, obviously, these coaches were paid.

And in many cases, they, that, you know, the manufacturers would then, you know, just like your old baseball gloves, where it was like, the Mickey Mantle glove, or whatever, you know, there were, there were pants, and helmets, and footballs, that had the Newt Rockne name on it, or who met Pop Warner, and John Heisman, and, you know, so. Well, Tim, was, was Goldsmith, were they sort of in the Midwest? Is that what I'm getting a sense of? Or what part of the country were they centered out of? You know, a lot of the coaches that are on this advisory staff are Midwest guys. So, I kind of get a sense of that.

But, you know, there was a lot of Midwest, like D&M was out east, they were like a Massachusetts firm, but Spalding was Midwest, Reach, I believe, was Midwest, or a couple down in St. Louis. So, yeah, I don't have that catalog in front of me. But I could, you know, I could look, look it up.

And I can, you know, let you know, you know, kind of where they were based. Yeah, that's, that's what I was, Is there a reason you ask her? Well, I know that Spalding was out of Chicago, and it just seemed, you know, and it seems like, like you said, this, a lot of these coaches are Midwestern teams, Western Conference, Big Ten teams. And I just wondering, you know, if there was a reason why maybe, you know, distribution or something that they were in the center of the country because you really, you think about that area, you know, football starting in the east and moving west, you'd almost think the equipment would be more of an eastern-based, you know, industrial shipping out.

But just curious. Yeah, I think, well, my understanding is a lot of it was the stockyards in Chicago, you know, so there was access to leather. Okay, you know, so I mean, so much of the early equipment, yeah, so much of the early equipment was leather, that, you know, it made more sense to be where you could pick and choose and get high-grade leathers and yada, yada, yada.

So, yeah, I mean, it's funny, it's one of those things you wouldn't even think is, you know, there's no reason anymore, you know, to be near a source of leather.
Obviously, you know, baseball gloves are a different story. But otherwise, you know, most football equipment, there's no leather involved anymore.

And then the ball, you know, obviously, the balls were leather. So anyways, yeah, that's, that's why I love it, you know, started in the Midwest. That makes perfect sense.

Okay, thanks. Yeah, so, so then, you know, like these coaches were, you know, the folks that they had on at that point, so in 1935, they had a Hunk Anderson, who was at North Carolina State, but it just finished a tour at Notre Dame. So Midwest, then he had played at Notre Dame.

Noble Kizer was at Purdue. Fritz Crisler was at Princeton, but he had been at, he had played at Uof Chicago. He had coached Minnesota before going to Princeton.

And then obviously ended up at Michigan. Doc Spears had been all over. Well, he kind of he was a journeyman, he was actually a doctor, but a football coach, but he was at Wisconsin at the time.

And I can't remember if he had just gone there. I think he got fired after that, and then went out to Oregon, or it could have been the other way around. And then this guy, Frank Major Wandel, from Yale, who was, he was one of those interesting guys at the time, there were a lot of, it's kind of like, you know, there are these strength and conditioning coaches now who are, you know, kind of, they have their own brand, they're, they're nationally known, nationally recognized guys.

And, you know, back then, there were trainers like that, too. And he was one of them. So he'd been longtime trainer at West Point, and he ends up down at, I think it was LSU for a couple of years.

Then he ends up at Yale, which is where he was at at the time. So, so actually, the mix isn't that much Midwestern. But it's interesting, because the image that you have, and folks, if you've got to enjoy these images that Tim's talking about, we have link in the show notes, you can go to Tim's page and see some of these, he's talking about these cartoons.

But Major Wandel, you know, everybody else is sort of wearing like white knickers. And he's got like, I don't know if they're plaid knickers, or, but that's what jumps out of you on the page to me, is these knickers. And it's he's in the lower right hand corner of the page I'm looking at, but he must have been a character to have some like looks like he's golfing, maybe.

Yeah, I mean, he's one of those guys who just like came out of some gym in New Jersey, and ended up eventually hooking in with, he did some training, you know, during World War One, and then ends up at West Point for quite a while. But yeah, I mean, back then, trainers were function both. They handled both the kind of sports medicine side, you know, they weren't physicians.

But when we think about athletic training, we're thinking about, you know, hot baths, and cold baths, and, you know, taping guys, and, you know, some kind of contraption, you know, so it doesn't hurt, as well as strength and condition. So they were both at the time, and mostly conditioning, they didn't do as much strength work. But yeah, a lot of these guys were, you know, they're big on the whole, getting guys to roll on the ground to toughen them up.

Things that we now think are pretty absurd, but, you know, that was kind of core beliefs at the time. Yeah, I can remember back when I was playing when I was, like, I think the first year I played, maybe I was in fifth grade or something. I remember our coach, he was old school.

He was an older guy. And you'd have part of your calisthenics, you'd run in place, and then drop and make sure your stomach hits first, because that's going to toughen your gut up, you know, as everybody gets the wind knocked out of when you hit the ground, and you're gasping trying to get back up. But I picture that kind of training.

Yeah, that was the deal. But one of the things I thought was kind of cool, I can't remember, you know, which eater left this as a comment or a question, but, you know, I'm a Purdue fan. And, you know, there were a lot of schools back in the 30s that wore winged helmets, right? I mean, we now associated with just a select few schools.

But back then, it was very common. Nevertheless, you know, this guy made a comment that you know, back in the 30s, mid-30s, in particular, Purdue wore winged helmets, you know, so wing in front straps, you know, going back, kind of, you know, the Michigan, Delaware, Princeton style now. But she's like, so that's where you know because Noble was one of these advisory coaches.

And so I would bet if you look at images of the Purdue team from that era, there probably weren't some, some form of Goldsmith helmet, right? So as opposed to some competitive brand. So anyways, but for him, it was kind of a neat insight because it's like, so that's why they were those, those stupid. Now, with these coaches, sort of being on the board of directors, or the consultants of the now the day, is that, you know, their teams buy all their equipment from a Goldsmith, then is that was that's part of the deal of, you know, I've never really seen anything that goes into the details of those kinds of contracts.

I mean, I've read a few things about Knute Rockne because he was like, I mean if you think that there's somebody that, that is on every commercial nowadays, like, you know, save been, you know, down in Alabama's on a fair amount of stuff. But Rockne was, I mean, he was pitching, obviously, all kinds of athletic equipment. And then he pitched Ramblers or Studebakers, you know, one of those brands, he made coffee, he did all you know, stuff for Kelloggs, a lot of stuff for Kelloggs, and they had coffee at the time.

I just thought Barbasol was big on Barbasol. So he was from a Holmes and Travis Kelsey, eat your hearts out. Newt Rocky was first.

That's right. Major sponsor ambassador. Yeah.

Okay, so well, yes. Did the coach or did the teams buy that brand of equipment? And so I've never really, you know, I've never seen anything definitive. In that regard, and I have this kind of a storyline I've never checked into.

You know, I have read a number of things with Newt Rocky and his, you know, he, he promoted a lot of different kinds of consumer goods, but then also a lot of football equipment. So I mean, I have to believe that they, at minimum, they benefited from the, you know, they got discounts on the equipment, and in some cases, free stuff in order to test it, you know, it had to be that kind of thing going on. But, you know, the research I've done in the past about, you know, like when logos first came, you know, when logos became prominent in the 60s, really Adidas, you know, among track athletes that whole thing got going, and they were, you know, giving away equipment, paying athletes to wear their branded goods.

So that's really where that started. But there were probably, you know, less, you know, maybe a little bit less formal, you know, kinds of, you know, deals in the past, right? You know, yeah, I'm just picturing like a high school coach or athletic director saying, Hey, you know, Fritz Kreisler's endorsing this product, goldsmith, we better write our equipment there, because, you know, we're, we're Fritz Kreisler fans, or, you know, you know, Hunky Anderson fans, whatever, you know, they see they're endorsing it. And, you know, that's probably a lot of the attraction from for having them on the covers.

Yeah. And, you know, I'm sure they got that they got paid something just like, you know, the baseball gloves. And, you know, those athletes got things, and somehow they get money when their gloves are sold.

Right. So right. But, you know, the details of it, I don't understand, or, you know, really know anything about.

I wonder, I picture, you know because you have some great images of the helmets. I wonder maybe, you know, we can look back at some old photographs. Maybe I'll do that in some spare time here and look and see if you can tell a goldsmith helmet from, you know, a Spalding or some of the other manufacturers.
And maybe you can tell that way and say, Hey, you know, Purdue was wearing a goldsmith in 37 or. Yeah. And yeah.

Well, even in that article, I did do that. I couldn't find a good sharp image of the Princeton team from that era to see, well, what helmet they wore? Well, in fact, what I, the only thing I really found was a, it was a painting or an illustration from a year, you know, Princeton yearbook. And the helmets of Princeton players are wearing what we think of as a classic winged helmet.

It was. There's a helmet style. It kind of looks like, now I'm blanking on the term, but it's kind of like a three-leaf clover sort of design. It's, you know, so anyway, but, you know, and Goldsmith offered that helmet and, or that style of helmet, but I think others did as well.

So sometimes it's hard to tell like what brand, because, you know, people, you know, they, they wore, you know, they had similar designs, you know, different brands. Okay. Gotcha.

All right. So go ahead and continue. Yeah.

Well, I was mostly just gonna say, I'm not sure, you know, I'm just, I put together some notes in advance. And so I don't know that I had had anything else. I mean, other than just one of the things that's pretty remarkable, as in all the catalogs or in all the different products, is it like on helmets, you could go from, like, say, a $15 helmet down to like one that costs $2 and 35 cents.

So the, you know, they, they end up having these high end helmets, and then, then there's kind of moderately priced ones, and then there's pretty inexpensive helmets. And so you just gotta, you know, it's like now, every helmet has to meet a certain base at least, you know, performance level, you know, based on Noxi. But, you know, back then, it was like, well, no, we, this is a helmet, it's good.

You know, but there's no measurement standards or anything. It's just like you're taking somebody's word for it. Yeah, that leads into one of the questions I was gonna ask you because the the ad for the helmets that you have on this tidbit, you know, it has three examples of helmets that they were promoting.

And all of them say leather lined. Now, what would be the alternative to leather-lined in that era? Would it be like, you know, cloth or something? Or, you know? Yeah, I think the internals were either leather or felt for the most part. And so you'll, you'll also see things.

You pretty much have to look at the less expensive ones to get a handle on the alternatives. For example, moleskin was kind of a high-end material for pants. It was not as popular in the 1930s, but it was still a high-end material.

Canvas was a low-end material. And then there might be different kinds of twills and maybe duck and whatever. I don't even know what some of those things really are, that they're one form of cotton, you know, material or another, but then by the 30s, you were getting into, you know, silk, and a lot of times it's like airplane cloth, which is actually a form of silk.

So silk, and then I'm blanking on the kind of the really shiny material that satin, you'd see that satin, yeah, it's so you'd see satin on the front of you know, certain, certain teams pants. So yeah, I mean, some of it was once they got into some of the, the not-so-like silk, one of the real values of it was lighter, much more water repellent, you know, so it didn't soak up sweat and, you know, water in a rainy situation. So the players, you know, felt lighter, but it also silk is much easier to dye.

And you can do a much broader range of colors, whereas the duck and canvas pretty much always had earth tones, you know, one or tone or another. So everybody wore kind of the same look in pants until New York versus wearing purple pants. So, you know, I mean, it's, you think about it, that was a big deal.

Awesome. Somebody, hey, they're wearable pants. Right? Yeah, I was just trying to go when you were saying, you know, that from the $15 helmet down to the $2 and 35 cent helmet, I'm picturing, you know, hey, you know, varsity players, you get the $15 helmet with a leather lined and freshmen, you're going to get the burlap lined helmets, you know, uncomfortable.

Yeah, well, I'm sure that sure that was short, obviously, the freshmen who were wearing the stuff, those latest and greatest 10 years ago. Right. And the thing on some of that is, I was looking at, so I'm still writing, you know, writing one of these, and it there's, there's kind of like a flap in the back between kind of the ear hole area in the back.

It's got some kind of flexible extension, some kind of elastic band there. So there was that part of the sizing. If you look at the catalog, sometimes not a lot is said about helmet sizing.

And so, you know, I always had a big old water bucket head. So I needed a big helmet. I've got a younger brothers, you know, got a pinhead.

And, you know, so, but presumably, we would have been issued the same helmet. So, yeah, I'm sure they had some kind of size variations, but, you know, they don't talk about much of the catalog size variations. You had to stuff some straw or a rag in the back or something to make it stay on your head.

Tim, that's a fascinating stuff. And you've, you've got a lot of these goldsmiths that you've been coming out as you said, you had an eight-part series on it, but you have a lot of other interesting stuff coming out, you know, seven days a week. Maybe you could share with folks how they could get in touch with you to learn about your tidbits and read them each and every day.

Yeah. So, you know, so my preferring would be that it just visits the site and you subscribe. And, you know, that way, basically if you're subscribed, you can, you'll get the, you'll get the tidbit by email every night.

Cause I assume it's seven o'clock Eastern. If you, if you're a Substack reader, you can also just get it and follow me on Substack. And then, you know, you'll, you'll be able to get them every night.

Some people don't want the email, but there you go. They like getting it on Substack. I also, at least for now, tweet it every night.

And then I also posted on the application threads. So me on one of those, it's always Football Archaeology. You know, if you enter that, you'll find me.

And then it's kind of like happy reading. All right. Well, Timothy Brown, thank you.
Once again, footballarchaeology.com is the place to go and we appreciate you, sir. And we will talk to you again next Tuesday.

Very good.

Thank you. Thanks, Tim.

Transcribed by TurboScribe