Football Archaeology of Stripes

One of the top experts in early football rules history Timothy P. Brown joins us on the discussion to explain the reasons and usage of stripes on a football. Timothy Brown's FootballArchaeology.com has a daily football factoid that he shares that are really quite interesting in a short read. They preserve football history in a very unique way and we are quite happy that Tim has agreed to join us each week to go over some of his Today's Tidbits. Click that link and you can subscribe for free to receive them yourself each evening.

A 1960's AFL football in the Pro Football Hall of Fame

Timothy Brown's FootballArchaeology.com has a daily football factoid that he shares that are really quite interesting in a short read. They preserve football history in a very unique way and we are quite happy that Tim has agreed to join us each week to go over some of his Today's Tidbits. Click that link and you can subscribe for free to receive them yourself each evening.

This week we had a discussion about a post Tim had a month ago on the reasons that there are stripes on some footballs. We expanded the history of Tim's original tidbit post found at White, Yellow and Striped Footballs.

An example of a ball without stripes "George Blanda" football displayed in the Pro Football Hall of Fame

The main reasoning for the stripes in basically a compromise of what would be best for night games (under poor lighting) and day games. The expiramentation of using white balls with black stripes for night games for visibility purposes ended up giving way to a more uniform approach by conferences, leagues and other governing bodies that wanted teams to be using balls that met different criteria to keep a fair and level playing field. As stadium lighting improved and night games became more popular some levels of football adopted stripes or at least partial stripes while others like the NFL felt no need to use stripes at all. The CFL uses the full stripe around the circumference of their balls near each end, while college and high school levels in the US have only two of the four leather panels pained with a stripe that goes only half way around the ball at each end, on the laces side of the ball. The latest USFL football in the 2022 season had a series of stars around the circumference in lieu of the stripes. Nowadays they are probably more for adornment and decorative reasons but the stripes once had a greater purpose of visibility to help promote the forward pass during evening games.

The banner photo is of an AFL football from the 1960's that is displayed at the Pro Football Hall of Fame

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from Timothy P. Brown and his exciting website FootballArchaeology.com and books.