The Significance of November 12th: Celebrating Pittsburgh Pro Football

It's no surprise to anybody that pro football in Western Pennsylvania is a big deal.

And November 12th is one of the biggest days of the year because there's a handful of items and events that happen on November 12th connected with Pittsburgh pro football that you might not know about.

So here's a handful.

Coming up with our friend ryan minig of the 304 collector corner that joins us with parts of his collection to help tell a tale right after this.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch.

A podcast that covers the annivers 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 to positive football history.

And welcome to this special November 12th edition where here in Western Pennsylvania, we are celebrating football.

Very special today because we have three events that happened centered around Pittsburgh and football.

And I had to bring in a specialist here to help me with this one because it's a big day.

Big Steelers fan, big Steelers poster on social media.

He also has a new substack, ryan minig of the 304 collector corner.

Ryan, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Yeah, thanks, Darren.

I always enjoy being in the Pig Pen.

I've told you once, I'll tell you a million times, any day we can talk football history.

We're having a great day, right?

And we get to talk a couple.

The two of these three are very Steelers oriented.

The first one goes a little bit before them.

But maybe if you want to, you know, maybe introduce our first one and tell us a little bit about this event.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, honestly, I think what we need to start the petition for first is for November 12th to be a sports holiday in Pittsburgh.

We need to start that one first.

So we could extend it to whole western Pennsylvania.

So I get the day off, too.

That'd be.

So we get up here in Erie, too.

So perfect.

It all counts.

It's all part of the program.

So dating back before the Steelers and.

And well before the National Football League, November 12 holds a significance as kind of the birth of professional football.

William Pudge, he, which I'm sure a name that NFL historians are well aware of, but for fans who may not know, Pledge was the first paid professional football player.

He was paid by the Allegheny Athletic association.

He was paid $500 to be the first professional football player.

It was often accepted that John Brower Braylor, I think Braulier, I always struggle with that.

I don't think I've ever actually said it out loud.

But was the Latrobe Historical Society where he is from and where he played, they call him Brailer.

So Brailer, perfect.

I will trust them because they're going to know better than me.

They probably said it out loud.

So.

So John Brailer was often considered the first football player.

And the thing that I always find funny about that is the difference of the money because pledge obviously being paid $500 and Brailer was paid $10 plus expenses for his services.

So I would kind of hate to find that out so many years later that I was not $490 more expensive for, for what I was doing.

Thank you to Punch Heffelfinger for accepting that money.

Yeah, he, he was a big time star.

And to get a star like that who was a tackle and you know, today we think of, you know, left tackles being really high paid people.

The tackles, you know, they could run the ball, they had the tackles back formations and these guys were studs not only as blockers and tacklers, but you know, they could run the ball as well.

And you know, Pudge Heffelfinger was a big name to be signed.

So he demanded big money.

That's why he got $490 more than Brailer got a few years later.

I do also find it funny that with all the competition in Pittsburgh, obviously there's the, the early Pittsburgh Athletic Club, Allegheny Athletic association, but the sandlot teams of the 20s.

The competition in Pittsburgh has always been fierce.

There's always a rivalry when those Pittsburgh teams were playing each other.

You could even equate that to the college game with like Pittsburgh and duquesne and the 20s and 30s.

There's always that crosstown rivalry and it's so funny to read the accounts of the Pittsburgh Athletic Club saying, were you paid players?

No, we didn't.

Only to find out some 60 years later that we paid a large sum of money so we could beat you.

Now, there was rumors, okay, so the.

He.

Pudge actually ended up playing for the Allegheny Athletic Club.

The.

The Triple A, they call themselves.

The game they were playing was against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, the paa, but there was rumors that the PAA was trying to sign Pudge also.

And they got in a bidding war, and, you know, Pudge finally said, okay, you're giving me 500 bucks.

I'm going with you guys, and went with Allegheny, and rest is history.

So pretty, pretty cool there, too.

So we also need to give him credit for being the first free agent of professional football history.

Right?

All right.

All right.

Yeah, most definitely.

It's kind of neat how that story broke, too.

Now, maybe you can correct me on it if I'm wrong, but the basic gist of it is, you know, Brailer was the by far accepted way, you know, in Latrobe, which is not far from Pittsburgh, it's like 40 minutes away from downtown Pittsburgh.

And, you know, and Latrobe would play against these Pittsburgh Athletic Clubs and Allegheny Athletic clubs, too, in later years, play against some of the other clubs.

But the.

It was, you know, 60 some years later, they.

Somebody brought a document, and I think it was to one of the Rooneys and laid it down and sort of didn't want to have his name said or anything.

So kind of coming a cool story there, too.

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.

And I think it's funny that when you.

When you think of kind of the history of Pittsburgh football, that even the discovery of the first player ties back to the Rooneys, because everybody equates the Rooneys with Pittsburgh and football, and they have such a deep, deep history in.

And I know they weren't there for the actual beginning with Heffelfinger in Brailer, but at the same point, they.

They have such a deep connection to it that it even goes back to them finding out who the first player was.

So I. I do.

I do like that story, But I think John Brer also deserves credit.

I know he's not the.

The feature of this day, but for the longest time, we did accept him, too.

And in my mind, also says that we have vastly underrated what Dave Barry did for professional football, too.

No, most definitely.

Most definitely.

You know, the resurgence of football in Western Pennsylvania.

And that Franklin team that I wrote about bought out everybody.

The Dave Barry led, you know, Pittsburgh stars, the Philadelphia Athletics and the Philadelphia Phillies had the original National Football League teams, which Franklin bought all their stars, and basically, you know, ended the organization after one year of the league.

So kind of a cool story there, too.

But, yeah, great, great stuff for Western.

Pa. Yeah, great, great little start to the.

Great little start to the Pittsburgh lore of November 12th.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, so what is our next event that happened on November 12th that's famous for Pittsburgh football?

Yeah, so I guess we'll.

We'll kind of jump around a little bit, because it's a birth.

So Butler, obviously not playing in the 20s and 30s.

And I mentioned Dave Barry being vastly underrated.

I think even though he's a Hall of Famer, I think people undervalue what he did for that defense.

And there's multiple publications that even kind of credit that to say, Pittsburgh's defense is great, but the offense doesn't have the firepower.

And.

And obviously, guys like Ernie Stotner, Jack Butler, Dale Dodgero and others, but Jack Butler, one of the stats that I still think of to this day, that.

And I think this is why it's important to contextualize history.

And I know you know this, Darren, and I know some of your listeners know this, too, but Jack Butler retired with the second most interceptions in NFL history.

When to know.

But if you ask people today, they would look at it and say, I'm not sure where he is on the list today, but they would say, oh, no, he's.

He's 25th on the list.

Why 25th doesn't really matter.

In his time, he was amazing.

So I think what, what we lose about Jack Butler is, is sort of that history.

We look at him more in terms of what we're looking at right now.

But looking back, if you put him in that era and put him up against those guys, he was as good as anybody.

Yeah.

And we think about from this perspective too, he had the most interceptions or second most interceptions when he retired.

But the passing game is nowhere near what it is today.

People were not putting the ball in the air, you know, 40 times, 50 times in a game.

This is, you know, the era of, okay, we run the ball and when we get in a little bit trouble from, you know, long yardage, you throw the pass.

That's your desperation.

For most teams, you know, I think it was, it was probably more like a 66, you know, 33 split with running being more prevalent.

So you didn't have as many opportunities to pick off passes.

And so that's pretty remarkable to have that many picks in that type of play.

And there were a lot of other good backs too.

And nor do offensive formations, but to that same point, looking at other stats, again, to kind of contextualize history a little bit.

So if you look at Steelers history, I think most people, if you would say who's the greatest defensive back in Steelers history, most people are going to come right out and say Troy Palomalu, Rod Woodson, Mel Blunt.

But if you look at it from this statistical standpoint, Jack Butler, in Steelers history, only six seasons has a player had more than nine interceptions and Jack Butler has three of them.

So half of those seasons are Jack BUTLER and he's one of only four with more than 10 interceptions.

I mean, he.

When you're an all decade team, that should almost be automatic.

You should be hall of Fame.

That means your peers think you were the best player at your position for those 10 years.

So that's kind of cool.

One of the other fun things about him though, that maybe lesser known is, is.

And I don't remember the exact number, I should have put it in my note, but he had a handful of reception touchdowns too.

When they brought him over to the offense, he was a receiving threat.

I believe he has like seven career reception touchdowns, something of that number.

So if he wasn't picking off passes, they could put him on offense to be a weapon too.

Yeah, yeah, we.

We forget about that, that it's right in the era where single platoon is on its way out.

But, you know, some teams are still saying, you know, we don't want to have that many specialists because the roster sizes were much smaller.

I think they only had, you know, less than 30 players on an NFL roster.

So you had to be able to do multiple duties and do them well to.

To play in that era because they didn't have the payrolls that they have today either.

So.

Yeah, so, yeah, definitely.

Jack Butler, an important part of Pittsburgh history.

And, you know, he was a Pittsburgh guy.

He was born in the city.

So when you have your hometown hero playing for your Pittsburgh Steelers, that makes it even more special.

It doesn't happen very often.

And really great thing for him.

No, great.

Great to have Butler as a Steeler because of all those legendary marks, but kind of leading into the last one now because I know people, you know, we've jumped around to the 50s a little bit.

So let.

I think we should take them back to the beginning of the.

The Steelers franchise to really give them the roots, the roots of Pittsburgh.

This November 12th was the day of the first Sunday home game for the Steelers after the Blue Laws were repealed.

The first home games that they played that season were all on Wednesday, which reminiscent of probably Covid a little bit.

I'm sure we.

We all remember that whenever we're watching games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, just whenever we could play them.

Now, unfortunately, it was forgettable losing to Brooklyn.

I have the score here.

I actually have them back to back.

Or maybe not.

I wrote them the wrong.

Oh, there we go.

So 32 nothing.

They were shut out in their first ever Sunday home Game, which was a little shocking because the week before playing in Brooklyn, they played to a 3, 3 tie.

So I, I guess Brooklyn made the adjustments, not Pittsburgh.

Yeah, that's definitely right.

Now it's really kind of an interesting story.

While you think about the early NFL and why games are played on Sundays, you know, we just grew up, hey, NFL is played on Sundays.

Well, now they've expanded to other days of the week, but you know, back in the day it was, you know, Sunday.

You know, most your games were played that day.

And the reason is because like we said earlier, college football was such a powerhouse and they would not have anybody going to an NFL game if they tried to play it on a Saturday.

And Sunday was also a good day because most of the workers, you know, a lot of industrial towns were playing in the NFL in the early NFL.

And Sundays was a day of rest and people didn't have to go to work and good time to go to catch a ball game.

And they wanted to take your money to sell you tickets to come and do that too.

So that's why the franchises were bought and they were started.

And it would have been really, really bad for them if, you know, that vote didn't go through and they use Wednesday games because nobody would want to play them and say, okay, you know, go, go pound salt your guys, franchises are over.

But yeah, pretty cool stuff.

Yeah.

And kind of in a, in a roundabout way, you know, looking at what Bert Bell and Dart Rooney did to kind of give us what we have today, I know it wasn't a direct one for one, hey, we're playing on Sundays.

But to give us the, the big fame and lights that we have today of the NFL is, is pretty cool to think about that it dates back to some of the earliest days of the NFL and some of our most historic figures.

Yeah, it definitely does.

Those of you just, you know, read the book that Jeffrey Payne and I wrote this year.

We just had the 100th anniversary of the Pottsville Maroons.

They were in there.

And Pottsville would play on.

On Saturdays, but I'm sorry, they played on Sundays.

They didn't care about the blue laws.

I don't know.

Pottsville didn't have the.

I'm cracking down on them, I guess.

But the Frankfurt Yellow Jackets did care about it being in Philadelphia, so they would play on Sundays.

But that's how those teams thrived.

They were both powerhouses, but teams would come from Chicago or Green Bay or New York or wherever and come and play one on Saturday, one on Sunday, a home and home game.

And, you know, poor, poor guys playing, you know, two days in a row.

That was pretty brutal, especially when you're traveling all the way from Chicago or, you know, wherever to come and do that.

But Frankfurt actually turned into the franchise.

I'm sorry, Frankfurt went a little bit longer.

They had like a year or two off.

And Burt Bell, actually his son Upton, who I've had on the show multiple times, has told the story often to say that Bert Bell and his w. His wife, Upton's mother, Francis Upton, who's a vaudeville starlet, they bought the franchise of Frankfurt and renamed it to Philadelphia Eagles.

And rest is history.

Yeah.

And we have great figures to.

To remember again, great figures to remember all that by, to give us the history that we have today.

Now, I.

Speaking of that, I actually have one more November 12th occurrence.

If, if you're up one more.

Yeah, we'll always take a bonus.

Maybe this one isn't quite as famous.

It's not Jack Butler, it's not Pudge Heffelfinger.

But I was talking with my friend on X.

If.

If you all were on X, you may know who Steel City Star is.

We were talking a little bit about November 12th as well.

And it is the only game ever that the Pittsburgh Steelers played the Baltimore Colts.

Now, that sounds crazy, because it's not.

But as.

They played their first season in the NFL along with San Francisco and Cleveland.

3.

So that's technically speaking the only time that the Steelers played the Baltimore Colts and also a record played the original.

Baltimore Colts, I guess.

Correct.

The original Baltimore Colts, which seems strange to say that they only played one season.

But in.

In context that's actually true.

And a Steelers record was actually set that day to quarterback, running back, kicker, punter, do it all guy.

Joe Gary actually set at the time the single season record for field goals for the Steelers as well in that game.

Wow, that is some great information.

I did not know that.

But we'll include that with our November 12th celebration here.

And yeah, Pittsburgh is really waving the flags here for football and November 12th is a very special day that most people don't know that even live in a steel city.

So we're glad that you were able to come here and help us preserve this and share it with others.

And you know, like we said, we'll petition to get the governor to make a November 12th Pittsburgh Pro Football Day.

I'm going to start writing my letter now because we're going to take all of our notes from this show and just transcribe it on official letterhead.

It's time.

All right.

Well, Ryan, really appreciate you coming in here and sharing this information with us, helping preserve the history.

Why don't you give tell us where people can see your works.

I know you got some new projects out there there.

Yeah, absolutely.

So as Darren mentioned earlier, I go by the moniker of 304 collector corner corner.

Sorry.

On socials you can find me on Facebook x Instagram.

I'm on Threads Blue sky and I just started my substack.

My substack's a little bit more of a collection of helping you collect.

As a collector myself, I feel it's important to kind of give people a cost efficient way to collect and the full scope of collecting, not just the big money cards that everybody sees.

But I post a lot about Steelers, Steelers history, Pittsburgh sports history.

But you can find me pretty much anywhere where social media is had.

Yeah.

And great project that you've been working on for, for months here is that Pittsburgh Steelers rookie collection that many of us have saw on on social media.

And if you haven't seen it yet, go check it out folks, because it's really cool what he's done.

Maybe you could explain that real quick.

Yeah, absolutely.

So my original goal was to collect one card of every single Pittsburgh Steeler ever.

A rookie card.

Come to find out that not all of them have cards.

So what I tried to do then was collect an item that depicts every single Steeler ever, whether that be a card, a program, a photo media guide, anything that would have these players represented.

And I'm, I'm down to double digits now.

We are inching in on, on this being completely over.

We'll probably redo a little bit of content to to go back to see some of these things.

Wow, that's amazing.

And just worried about the rookie card or rookie item I guess is that's really a cool project, very unique and I don't think you're going to find that anywhere else but on Ryan and his social media channels and his substack.

So Ryan, really appreciate that folks, if you didn't we're driving in a car couldn't write down to get Brian's connection.

We'll have a link in the show notes of the YouTube channel and the podcast and on pigskindispatch.com Ryan, thanks again for joining us and help us celebrate November 12th.

Thanks Darren.

I appreciate it.

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 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 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.