“The History of the Football” a Book By Timothy Brown

You've heard us talk a lot about the history of the game ball itself in the game of the gridiron.

And Timothy B.

Brown, our guest today, has talked quite a bit with us and shared quite a bit. And now he's wrote a book, the History of Football.

And he's going to talk about that book tonight in our episode where we get to talk, interview him about this amazing story and the game ball itself.

Tim's up in just a moment to.

Tell us all about it.

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin. He's of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And welcome to another exciting Tuesday as we get to talk to Timothy p. Brown of footballarchaeology.com about another great aspect of football and its legendary growth in, in history. Tim, welcome back to the Pig, Ben.

Thank you, sir. Yeah, looking forward to chatting a bit about all things football.

Yeah, definitely. And this is a special edition here, folks, because we're going to go deep into the mind of the author of a new book that Tim has coming out.

Tim, why don't you give us the title of your new book is out.

So it's called A History of the Football. It's actually Microsoft Word does not like that title because it always thinks it should say History of Football.

But this book is about the history of the football.

So it's really the story of how the, how the football came about, how it originated, how it developed over time, changed shape, change size, same colors, change compression or inflation. So it's kind of just that, that whole, the whole story of the history of the ball.

Yeah. What a great topic.

When we're talking about the object that the game that we love is named after, you know, it's going right to the, the roots of the game and talking about the object that we, you know, probably most associate with the game of football. If somebody is going to put a, an icon or an emoji up there for the game, it's, it's going to be that, you know, the ball itself. Right, right.

Yeah, right. The one behind you. That's great. So, Tim, what was sort of your inspiration for writing this book?

Yeah, so I, I mentioned this in a, I think in a, you know, maybe one of our, the Podcasts a couple weeks ago.

But, you know, my site now has like a thousand articles, and then I've written, you know, three books before now the fourth one and what I was just finding was it's, you know, kind of the information on any given topic was spread across 20, 30 different articles.

You know, so I've written a bunch of different things about helmets or knee pads or, you know, you know, how the first down measurement process changed over time. You know, so there's all these kind of isolated articles. And then obviously, you know, as I'm doing research each time I'm learning new stuff.

So some of the things that I wrote about, say, in this book or that I hope to be writing in, you know, future books in the series will contradict what I wrote, you know, three, four years ago because I came across new information, you know, and, and, and I just, you know, thinking about things differently, you know, you just find new stuff. So, so, you know, it's one of those things where it was.

Is just an attempt to, to put out, you know, books that are maybe a little bit more consumable from a size standpoint. So it's just like this book is 134 pages, I think, is the exact count. You know, some of my earlier books were like 250, 350, you know, pages.

So, you know, there's certain people just won't pick up a book of that size.

And you know, so this is just a little bit more of a quick read, you know, really a couple hours if you're a fast reader and you're, you know, you're done.

So that was kind of, you know, it was just the, the desire to document specific, you know, specific topics in more depth than, like, than I've ever done, you know, or than. Than I could do, for instance, in a. More of a survey book.

The other thing though, and this is, you know, what I, what I find every time I approach a new topic.

You know, in this case, like, I had covered a lot of topics about the, the history of the football in individual tidbits, and yet when I approached the story from like, focusing on that story, I just ended up, you know, I put different search terms into the, you know, when I'm searching the newspaper archives, I'm searching new things, or I come across some little story and it's like, oh, geez, I got to look into this. So then you dive into that story.

So what ends up happening is, you know, if you, you, by focusing on one part of football more specifically, you just you know, you analyze things from a different angle. You come across new stories.

And so while, you know, I would guess, I don't know, something like, you know, 80% of the stories, the general stories I talk about in the book are things that I'd covered in sometime in the past.

I mean, almost everything I thought, you know, there were new information uncovered, just new, new ways to look at the, at the, the information and really just kind of, you know, it's not revisionist history, it's.

Yeah, yeah, that's the way it is.

You know, definitely before we get any more deeper into the book, some, something that sort of catches my eye when I, when I got a copy of the book and I was looking at the COVID on the left hand side, you know, right by the binding you have a green strip of the book is mostly gold. We're showing a picture of it right now, so folks can look at it. But you have on your football archaeology series.

So this is the first of many, I, I take it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I, I've outlined, I don't know, maybe 10 different books that I could potentially do a story on and you know, maybe there's more out there, but again, it's the idea of, you know, so I could do like, you know, among the things that I could write about, you know, just one book on football officiating and so that would take in probably, you know, penalty calls, but also all the, the gear, the clothing, the equipment that officials use, kind of their role in the game, who they were and the training process, you know, so, so it can, it's just diving deeper into it than I have, you know, for anything else.

You know, same thing, you know, different types of equipment, coaching, you know, this, the how coaching has evolved in, over the history of the game.

But I, I am actively working on the second book and that is, I'm not sure what I'm going to call it yet because I'm not positive exactly how far I'm going to go with it. But so it's basically the history of the early forward pass is what it's.

So it's, you know, I'm looking at, you know, kind of what brought about the forward pass? And I think most people, you know, generally understand that story. But like, when did people first start talking about it?

You know, why did it even, you know, I'll get into some of the rugby roots of why they didn't allow the forward pass, but, you know, so then how did it change then? How did it. A lot of it will be, you know, when it was first implemented, just the struggle that they, that they had in, in.

In some ways the rules were very restrictive.

There were other things about the rules that were very liberal compared to today, but the struggle of trying to figure out how do you throw the ball, you know, those kinds of things. So anyways, that's. I'm going too far into the. The next book, but it's just kind of looking at how the four.

How, how the forward pass developed and what I don't know yet is when am I going to stop and what year do I stop telling the story? I think I have an idea, but I'm not sure.

I'm sure that'll become enlightened as you do your research on it. It's usually how that works anyway. And the title will come to you and it'll all make sense at the end. So. So, okay, let's.

Let's go back into the history of the football book. This first of the series that is out right now. So, you know, you said 80% of it's based on some tidbits.

And I guess from a personal standpoint, folks like myself that sort of got involved with your work through your early books, you know, how football became football, you had some rudimentary things, I believe, in that book on the football gave us some basics on it. The tidbits sort of peeled that onion back a little bit more in pieces over time. And this goes into much more detail, like you said.

So like you said, you described earlier, 80% of it is so sort of old stuff that you re reformed into this topic on, you know, specifically the football. Collected it all together and 20% is new. What was maybe one of the most surprising elements that you found during your research in writing the book?

Yeah, So I just want, I want to change one thing about what you said. And so just to clarify, for my purposes, I think 80% of what I covered topically was stuff that I had covered before.

Okay.

That doesn't mean that it's the same information on those topics. Right.

So by digging further into those topics, you know, so like, I don't remember ever covering how balls are manufactured and, you know, the leather and all those. I don't remember. Maybe I did, but.

But there's just lots of things where it's just like I reshaped or rethought or just was exposed a lot more information about those topics. So, anyways, okay. So, you know, I think one of the things that I really.

If there was, for me, the most surprising thing that I learned was probably the. You know, like anybody else, I'm reading certain things. And so I. Somebody. A story gets repeated often enough that I assume that it's true, right?

I found no evidence that that is true. What I did find is actually, you know, it's not discussed much at all.

While they never said what size. You know, the rules didn't specify the size of the ball. It did say the official ball is the Spalding J5. Right.

Spalding changed the ball. They changed. You know, if you look at an older ball, it's got a different stitching pattern, the lacing's different.

And if, you know, if you look at the old, the real, the really old pictures, the ball is nearly round. You know, it's o void, but it's nearly round.

And just to, you know, if, if a 30 inch ball doesn't make that much sense to you, an NBA ball is 29 inches. Right. So I mean the, they were run, you know, lugging around a ball. It was much more like carrying a basketball than carrying a football. So.

And that's what they were kicking, you know. And so anyways, you know, it was ovalish, but so anyways, you know, the ball got slimmed down over the course of time.

The NFL had always followed the college yearbook or rule book. So they used the, they used the, you know, whatever size ball the NCAA used, that's what the NFL used.

And then they did their own year, their own rule book in 32. So in 34 they still had the old rule, even though the colleges changed it.

But they adopt, then the NFL changed theirs in 35 to match the 34 ball that the NCAA had. That is still the same size ball that the, that the NFL uses unchanged.

So the basic specifications other than now it says like, you know, has a urethane bladder instead of a rubber bladder. It's the same ball, you know, in terms of basic specs, the NCAA slim theirs down a little bit further in 82.

But so it also just, you know, a thing that was maybe a little bit surprising was just that, you know, basically the NFL has had no influence on the size of the ball. You know, that's a Purely college driven thing.

So I'm assuming it's accurate. And of course we could handle them and try to throw them around the hall of Fame in our meeting room that we had.

That was not a pleasant thing to try to throw that football. I mean it's quite a bit more girth than, than what we're used to.

And I, I can't imagine what it was back before 19 whenever you said they changed when they were even bigger. So yeah, forward pass, I can see why it wasn't successful and big spirals and everything like we see today.

Yeah.

Yeah, they still say that, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, actually one of my brothers is quarterback and he like my thumb goes like this more or less like an L. His, he can get his to go like at a totally different angle than I, I can. But you know, he doesn't have big hands. But his thumb, he's like a monkey or something.

His, you know, his hands go on a different or his thumb goes in different direction. So. So I mean it wouldn't be just the size, but that's really pretty much the predominant issue.

Now is there a particular ball style or. Because you talk about a variety of different football, not only the sizes but some of the decor and how they're made and everything.

Is there one that maybe, maybe not your favorite one that you'd want to see played today, but one that really you were magnetized to and you could tell Us which one that would be and why.

Yeah, you know, I don't know. I, I, I think just be. Because I've, I've never held one or owned one.

I, you know, I, I love the old, you know, the white and yellow footballs with the black stripes. You know, I just always find those images, you know, really intriguing.

And the funny thing, so back then they, you know, so rugby balls, basketballs, and a couple other, you know, inflated balls, they were, if you look at the ads back then, they were, they were sold in different sizes. It started like at 19 inch circumference and then every three inches it went up in circumference.

And so the smallest one was a one, and then there was a two, a three and a four and a five. And so the five was a 27 inch ball and so the J5 and now it still is the J5V. That's where the five comes from.

Well, okay, well, what's a rugby ball? How big is a rugby ball? And so it, it took a lot of detective work, but eventually I pretty much nailed it down through some kinds of documentation.

But then I was able to, you know, I learned of, of a football, a rugby ball. But you know, I'm calling it a football. That prince, you know, it's a long story, which I won't totally get into.

So I was able to get, you know, a guy in the Yale athletic department to go, you know, get access to that trophy case and measure the thing, you know, to, to document the size of the ball because I couldn't find it anywhere any other way. So number one, it's just cool. Here, here's a ball that was used in the first year of football and it's still sitting there on a shelf.

And you know, he was able to confirm that it was a 30 inch ball, which is, you know, what, exactly what I thought it was in the early, you Know, the earliest days. So. And then, then football, you know, American football went to 27 inch ball and you know, successively slimmed it down from there.

But a 30 inch ball, again, bigger than a basketball.

Yeah, absolutely. Now I'm sure you probably had a lot of, I know, researching books myself.

You have some really takes you on some different angles and some, some paths maybe you didn't think you were going to tread down when you first started writing it. What were maybe some of the more interesting and fun research topics you had in the book?

Well, you know, one of the, one of them that I really enjoyed or two that I really enjoy is one is what were balls made out of? What's. What type of leather. And then the other is, you know, just kind of their appearance, the decoration.

So one of them is, you know, as I was looking at ads and newspaper articles from the 18th or from, yeah, 19th century, one of the things became very clear is that, you know, we have this perception that footballs are made of, you know, leather from cows and actually it's steers, but you know, at least the better quality ones are from steers and only parts of the steer hide. But back in the day.

So not, not a pig skin then, like.

Well.

Oh, okay, okay.

So again, that's one of those things. The story is they never used pigskin. No one ever used pig skin.

So I mean, there I found some ads and some articles indicating that they did have pig skin balls.

Really?

Huh.

Now it's, I'm not absolutely a hundred percent sure that whether, you know, like somebody who is writing the ad may not have understood it because they, you know, the term pigskin was in use, so they may have thought it was made of pigskin, but one. So I think they had balls made of pigskin in addition to the pig, to the pig or sheep or whatever bladder that they inflated.

But 100%, they had a lot of sheepskin balls back then. Those were just cheaper, you know, the sheepskin was cheaper than, than, you know, the steer. Steer hide.

I don't know if that was because there were just more sheep skins available that they didn't have a better purpose for or what.

But like, you know, a lot of times back then if you bought a new, you know, if a mom or dad bought a suit for their boy, they could get a free sheepskin football. You know, so it's like the cheap way to get a ball.

Yeah.

You know, so it's kind of more of a kid's toy. And then some of the early white leather balls weren't painted, but they were. They used elk skin because it was a lighter.

As they tanned it, it was a lighter leather. So, you know, that's, you know, so I just think that's kind of interesting. Again, it's.

I've always been told, and every source I ever came across said no, pig skin and balls have always been made of cow's leather. Well, no, that's not, that's not true.

And you know, there's just so much documentation on it that clearly there were sheepskin balls all over the place.

I'm glad you said that. There was pig skin. So now I don't have to change the name of a website and a podcast and call it the Steerskin Dispatch.

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, it, I mean the name, you know, the traditional wisdom as the name comes from pigskin bladder. But you know, I think back in the day it was like any bladder they could find, they'd inflate it and kick it around.

So they used a lot of sheep skin and, or sheep bladders and pig bladders and whatever.

The other one that, and this isn't really, you know, something that I found in the research as much as it just kind of came to me one day, is that, you know, for the most part, the football has pretty much always just been a plain brown ball.

I mean, yes, you know, there was the white and the yellow and orange balls used for night, but with just one or two minor exceptions like the WFL or, you know, some goofy league trying to do, you know, trying to do be innovative. The football has pretty much just been plain brown leather.

And yet when you think about the soccer ball, rugby balls, even basketballs, like the international basketball, it's this goofy, you know, like in the Olympics, it's this goofy looking thing, you know, so it's just one of those, you know, for whatever reason, you know, football has stayed true to using pure leather for the most part and, and unadorned with all kinds of goofy stripes and decorations and, you know, there's decals and there's burn marks into it and all that. But I know it's just kind of an interesting thing that for whatever reason, the football has remained just plain Jane.

Much like baseball just stayed traditional. Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, good, good points. So, so your trajectory is you're. You're taking us from the start of.

You know, rugby with, you know, using.

Rugby football, like you said, and you're taking us right into the modern era.

You know, a lot of people are saying, this leather thing's going away. We're all going to rubber footballs. And that never really happened.

And then obviously, you know, I cover the manufacturing process a fair amount. And so, you know, there, there have been changes. Right. But, you know, most those are changes that, like, you or I can't recognize them.

You know, you know, it's, It's. It's really the detail quality. I'm sure an NFL quarterback can maybe tell the difference, you know, of certain kinds of balls.

But, you know, I tell at least one story where, you know, a guy was given the AFL ball and the NFL ball saying, you know, you. You're blindfolded, tell me which one is which. And he couldn't tell the difference. So, you know, but the mind's a powerful thing.

And so, you know, if you believe a ball is different, then it is different, right?

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah. And again, I'm. I've never been an NFL quarterback that I recall. And so maybe there's differences that I'm just that are. I'm oblivious to.

Right, right.

Okay, now I got a question for you.

Now, when you talk about the rubber footballs and you talk, you know, we think about, you know, like, nerf footballs when they came out, and I guess they still come out. They.

They have the, the strings on them, and it makes you think about, you know, the strings, I take it, I mean, it had to be engineered like the spacing of the strings because they fit so well to the human fingers that, you know, when you have your four fingers on there to throw a forward pass or just to handle the ball, is that you believe that's on purpose, that they were spaced that way. And has that been consistent?

So it hasn't been consistent. You know, so I think it's one. You know, it's like the story of the spacing or where the stripes located, you know, that kind of evolved over time.

But, like, this ball has seven laces. A lot of the early balls only had six laces. And. And those. The laces were just.

It's kind of like the leather, you know, the rawhide that's used to lace up a baseball glove. That's more or less what that stuff was like. Right now, the white lacing is, you know, it's polyvinyl chloride.

It's like the stuff in your bathroom, you know, under your bathroom sink. You know, it's. It's a very tough. You know, it's a very tough, hard plastic. And I, you know, they can still lace. It's flexible enough to be laced.

But.

So when in. In the high schools allow an 8 or 12 laced ball, NCAA and NFL only use 8 lace balls. And. But, you know, so it, it varied over the years.

It varied a fair amount. And there were, you know, the book shows images of, you know, where they had cross lacing and, you know, people tried to do different things.

You know, I mean, they were probably trying to get a little bit better touch for a quarterback. And. And, you know, a lot of those goofy things kind of went away. But had they worked, then we wouldn't think they're goofy.

We would think they're normal. Right, right. So. So, yeah, I mean, it's been. It's been kind of all over the place, but it's pretty standard.

And then, you know, nowadays the, you know, the. The spacing is.

Is based on tolerances, and I just have to believe there, you know, if you're the development guy for football, somewhere back in time, you gave autogram five different footballs with different space lacing and said, which one do you like best? Right. That's. That's kind of what they would have done. And then they settled on a particular.

Pattern, and they've got to have tight tolerances, too, because you would. You would feel it. You handle footballs a lot.

I mean, as an official, I handled, you know, 100 footballs every week during football Season with all the games you would have and multiple balls coming in and out and, and they all pretty much felt the same, except different manufacturers felt different. So I, I, I will, I know you said a little bit, you know, football to football, but I, you can tell a little bit different.

At least maybe the quality of the football of, you know, the Wilson's definitely the, the gold standard for, for footballs at the high school, college and pro level. And when you bring a different manufacturer in, it definitely feels differently.

I know we had in Pennsylvania probably about 10 years ago, we had everybody uses Wilson footballs all season long. And we got an announcement from the PIAA that Rawlings was the official football of the PIA now.

And so for the playoffs, all teams, the only balls that could come in games were Rawlings balls. And I about know, freaked out of my skin. I'm calling some of my, my compatriots on my officiant crew.

I'm like, I gotta call these coaches because these kids have grown up with Wilson balls. These quarterbacks will go nuts, you know, say, hey, you can't use that ball anymore. Here, here's this.

And yeah, so it definitely has a different feel and the coloration we, we first game we had was a wet game. And the, the team wearing weight had just red ink all over their body. As soon as those balls got wet, the ink came right off them.

And they're a little bit darker than the Wilson balls.

Yeah, well, I mean, and you know, high schools allow the composite leather too, so, you know, that's, that's going to have a different feel. You know, I mean, composite leather is like, you know, fiber board. Right, right.

Well, when I officiate, you still could use a rubber ball too. I don't know if it still is. I believe it still is.

Maybe in high school it's been banned from NCAA for, since, since the 80s.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, some of that's just a, you know, it's a financial issue too, you know, and that's why the composite leather is cheaper too. So.

Yeah, I mean, it's not, it's not, you know, not everybody can afford the NFL quality balls and even those, you know, when they, when they, when they're making balls in the Wilson factory, which is an ada Ohio, they, you know, they make, you know, if they make. So if they got to ship 200 balls to the NFL, they end up making like a thousand balls.

And then they have inspectors who are checking for every little Deviation and steel and da, da, da. And the ones that they deem to be the best. And the rule, rule book even says like inspected balls or something like that.

They got some term in there, but those are the ones that go for gameplay and then the rest basically go to the growth or the, you know, target and, you know, exporting goods and all the rest, you know, so anybody can buy those, but. And then you, like, for autographs and all that kind of stuff.

Those are, those are separate balls from the, you know, from the NFL, you know, play level balls.

So listeners, if you are one of the fortunate ones that catch one of those kickballs or somebody scores a touchdown and launches, went up in the stands, treasure that for more reasons than one, because you've got a special quality ball, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, as much as they try to control the quality of a ball, you know, it still comes down to, you know, it's still human beings trying to make these things. And, you know, the leather is going to be slightly different. I mean, every one of the things that kind of interesting every.

When they cut the, the panels out of a piece of leather out of a hide, those four panels stay together and become a ball. You know, so it's not like just random panels. All four panels on any given ball came from the same hide. And then they, they.

Scott.

I think it's called skiving, but basically it's slicing them to take off excess leather so that they all are the same thickness. Right. So, and that, that means that then their weight is the same and, you know, all those kinds of things.

Interesting, huh?

Very cool.

Tim. We could go on and on about this. And, you know, you have so many different little aspects of the football.

You have some interesting stories and takes in tangents and all connected to the football and the story of how the football evolved over time and became to what we know it as today. And probably 100 years from now, somebody will be able to put, you know, a second edition out.

We won't be able to enjoy it, but it probably evolved maybe some more in manufacturing and however it's used, you know, however the game goes.

But, you know, why don't you let folks know how they can get a copy of the book and enjoy some of these little secret pieces of research that you've put together and collected here for us?

Yeah, so, you know, all my books are available on Amazon. That's really the primary place. So from Amazon you can, you know, buy the paperback copy. I think that's like 18.99 or 17.99.

There's a audiobook version, there's a ebook version on the Kindle. And, and if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, you get access to the book for free. So. Yeah, so really, Amazon's really the primary place to find it.

All right. Well, Tim, we enjoy having you here talking about the book. I personally have enjoyed the book.

I think the, the listeners and viewers are going to enjoy it when they get their copies in their hands.

And you know, give Tim a shout out on, on Twitter, on his Twitter page, comment on his football archaeology, let him know how, how you're enjoying the book and any questions you might have. Send him his way.

And Tim, if you read, if you read it, leave a, leave a review on Amazon.

Yeah, absolutely.

Whether you like it or not, you know, it's up to you.

Good, good point. That's definitely helpful to, to authors when you, when you do that, give them the feedback.

So, Tim, we really appreciate you coming on here and talking about this special edition here on your book and love to talk to you about some more football next week.

Very good.

Thank you.

Look forward to it.

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