Timothy P Brown

The football fields on which modern games are played have undergone many transformations over the years. The field has been morphed almost as many times as the rules of the game have been changed.

Our guest, Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology, has admired and brought to our attention the work of a historian who has really captured the evolution of the American Football Field.

James Gilbert has put together an impressive research study on the evolution of the American football field over the years of rules revisions and modifications since 1876, complete with graphics. Enjoy this Substack post that he put out recently.

-Transcribed Conversation on Football Field Evolution with Timothy Brown and James Gilbert

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 wow, we have a great episode coming on tonight.

We have Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology joining us, and we're going to be talking about the football field and some evolutionary changes that have happened to it over the years. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Darren, good to see you again, as always.

Thanks for having me. Never want to take it for granted that you're going to let me come onto your show. The invitation is always there, my friend, and I'm never going to take it for granted that you join us each week because it's quite a treat for myself and the listeners.

We get to learn about something new with football or be reminded of something maybe that's been long forgotten. And I think that's kind of typical of what we have tonight. You know, something that we see every single game that we watch, and it's so obvious that we probably take it for granted.

That's the football field itself. You know, without it, there's not much of a game going on. And you came across a friend of yours that you guys wrote a piece together a few years ago on the evolution of the football field, and it's really quite interesting.

And maybe you could talk about that a little bit tonight. Yeah, so this is, you know, the friend that you're mentioning is James Gilbert. And, you know, kind of longtime readers or somebody who's gone back through the archives might remember that back in November 2021, he and I co-authored a story about the University of North Carolina team from 1893.

They were the first Southern team to go to the North and play a game because they played Lehigh towards the end of the season in Manhattan. So, you know, he and I kind of worked together on that. And I forget, even now, how he and I first connected.

But, you know, he's in the kind of old football and just general sports, you know, arcane information, you know, like me. And I had, you know, like in my How Football Became Football, I documented at least the major sequences of how the field and markings changed. You know, goalpost locations, all that kind of stuff.

So, I mean, I took it to a certain level. And, but now, James recently launched a Substack newsletter or blog called James's Newsletter. And one of his first articles is an article about the evolution of college football field.

So basically, he's what he did, and he's been doing this for quite some time. He's been creating, you know, graphics, images of the football field and all the markings at each point in time. So, going back to 1876.

And then, you know, each time that it changed, either the dimensions or the markings, location, this or that on the field, he basically created all these graphics to show this information. And then what he's done now is mirror it in a Substack article. So he's got kind of the description of what was happening, you know, why it changed what was happening, the game led to the change, and then just the detailed description of the change.

And, like, when I did mine, I stopped at 1960, but he carried on to really to the present. So all the different changes that, you know, we sometimes don't think about the things like the size of the coach's box, the size of the team, team's box, how far off the sideline to get back, you know, they get back coach has to get back, you know, all that kind of stuff. You know, he just he's outlined, outlined, he put in detail all this information.

So this is one of these where, you know, normally we talk about my tidbits or an article, but this, I just wanted to make sure there's some attention brought to him and the effort he's gone through. Because it's just, you know, it's a great resource. And I don't know anybody who has documented how the field has, has changed over, you know, 147 years of football history, like he has, you know, so it's just a really neat effort.

He's done a couple of other things as well. Yeah, that's. I know exactly what you're talking about. I did a piece similar to you, where I covered the football field probably two or three years ago. Actually, it was an adaptation of an article I wrote back in 2003.

And I had my son, you know, throw some graphics up there. And but James's article, you know, I had the grid field in the early 1900s, but I had it going, you know, goal line to goal line, which it did. But I had forgotten about the aspect of the back in, and I believe it was 1903.

And we were just talking about it. I ran across an article the other day in newspapers.com, where they went from a 25-yard line to a 25-yard line with the grid. And then it was the normal stripes, you know, outside the 25s or to the goal line. Anyway, so just the detail, he's doing that.

And I can tell you from officiating, you know, the 27 years I officiated at the high school level, there was a field change every single year, you know, as you said, the coaches box changing by the yard or, you know, the teams were allowed to the 20s. And it was a 25s or boundary lines or a hash mark is now, you know, instead of three inches, it's four inches wide or whatever, you know, so I can imagine what the collegiate field has been doing over those years. It's probably every year; there's something small.

So, this is really a Galathian chore that James is doing, and it's much appreciated. We'll have a link here in the show notes, folks, to James's site and Pigskin dispatch.

So you can appreciate his work. You know, that's really going to take a lot of effort on his part. And that's appreciated.

Yeah, you know, the thing about it is like there's so, you know, there's a bunch of times when, um, yeah, there's, well, you and I go on a particular site that sometimes they post a pic, you know, these unidentified, you know, people can't figure out where's this, you know, who's this team in this picture? You know, there's a game in a stadium. Where is this? Who's playing? What's the period? So, a lot of times, you can tell certain things just based on the uniforms or the formations, and you have a pretty good sense of what's going on. But there are other times where, you know, if depending on the angle of the shot, you can see the field markings, and that tells you a tremendous amount.

In some cases, like 1903, it tells you exactly what year the game was played. You know, if you have the right kind of angle or the right kind of shot. So, so anyway, so just anybody who enjoys doing that kind of thing, or sometimes finds themselves looking back at an old photo and trying to figure out, well, when, when was this thing from, you know, his site will be really a great reference, you know because it just collects all that kind of information in one place.

You know, the other, the other thing that, another thing that he does that is interesting is, and he, some of his posts on it, on the, on his newsletter reflect this, where he's a, he's a North Carolina, you know, UNC graduate and fan. One of the things he's done is go back and try to figure out where every North Carolina football game was played. And I don't mean that at a very casual level; I mean out of detail.

And so, you know, like, you can go back, and there are all kinds of sites where there's a site called jhowell.net that I use all the time to find the old scores and where games were played and that kind of stuff. And so it might say the game was played in Milwaukee or New Haven or wherever it was, but it doesn't necessarily tell you the exit or the field. Well, a lot of the old football, you know, especially going further back, you know, in the 1800s, you know, maybe up till 1920, sometimes these games were just played in some local park, you know, and they slapped up temporary stands or the games were played in a minor league baseball park that got torn down 80 years ago.

And now there's, you know, an expressway is sitting on top of it or, you know, a shopping mall or whatever it is. There are all kinds of these past stadiums that just are no longer there. And in a bunch of cases, kind of people have lost track of where they are.

So he goes in, and I don't really understand all the resources that he uses, but I know he uses like these old, there's a bunch of online through like Library of Congress, there's these online insurance maps that used to document, you know, the streets and major cities and all that kind of stuff and which buildings were where. And so I think he uses those kinds of things and all kinds of stuff from, you know, the newspapers telling you, well, it's at the intersection of 42nd and Western or wherever. And so then he finds where this game or where this field was and then plots the field atop, you know, what it looks like today, like in Google Maps.

So it's just really kind of fun. And then he's created some databases that, you know, dig into other information. You know, it's very UNC-specific.

So, I don't necessarily care about UNC, but I really appreciate his digging into it. It's just, you know, just getting the details of a particular topic. But just think about all the fields that it covers, you know, everybody that UNC traveled to play over the years, where their stadium is, you know, you're going to know where Duke played their games when they were, you know, Trinity College or whatever, you know, at the time. So that's some really interesting stuff.

I'll have to add that to my bookmarks and check that out because, you know, you have like the uniform sites, you know, the gridiron uniform database, and you have the helmets, you know, sites that you can go to and see where helmets are from here. Now that having a resource to look at fields of an era and where football stadiums were, you know, that's pretty cool too. So that's why I'm sure a lot of people will be interested in having that information too.

So good job, James. Yeah, no, it's just kind of fun stuff. And, you know, just the, you know, again, as I said, I don't know the method that he uses to get there, but, unfortunately, he couldn't join us tonight.

Otherwise, you know, he wouldn't would have done so. But so anyway, it's just interesting stuff. And, you know, if you're enough of a geek, like you and I are, you know, you can really, you just, you know, it's like you see somebody who's got an interest in this sport or this aspect of the sport, and they dig into it, or they collect, you know, certain things.

It's just one of those things. There's nothing I had thought of, but I just have a really deep devotion to the particular aspect of the game. Yeah. Well, let's use a little bit of James's information.

Okay. Now, you just recently saw this and appreciated it. What's something that jumped out at you that either you didn't realize, or maybe you forgot, and it brought a different light on what James did in his fieldwork?

Yeah. You know, I think the, I don't know that for me it's, it's any one thing. I know he just did it, just did an article.

I think maybe it was today or the other day where, you know, he's pointing out that North Carolina is going to play a game in Charlotte. You know, I think they're playing at the Panther stadium. And so he's, the articles about, Hey, they played, you know, it's the eighth most frequent city that they played, you know, but for them, it's kind of like, you know, they played, they played at a lot of intermediate cities, you know? So, I mean, teams used to do that all the time.

I've got an article that's my Saturday tidbit is about this, where, you know, teams traveling, you know, we've got this big thing about the West coast athletes are going to be traveling to get to the Big 10 schools and all that kind of stuff, you know, with the conference modifications. But back in the day, when people traveled by train, they spent a lot of time on the train, too. And so a lot of times, they find these cities halfway between one another, and both teams would meet there and be a bigger city, especially if they were kind of rural schools.

So they played in all kinds of locations, you know? And so, but in North Carolina in particular, it just seems like they played a lot. They played in a lot of places, you know, a lot of different intermediate towns. And maybe it's just the geography of, you know, where they were in the transportation network at the time. But yeah, it's just kind of interesting, all the different places that they played.

Oh, very cool. All right. Well, why don't you go ahead and if you have James's information, if you want to call it out now, so people can do it.

But again, you know, if you're driving or something, you can go to the show notes and get the link there. But Tim, go ahead and let us know where we can find James. Yeah.

As I said, he's on Substack, which is just a platform. You can find him at jameslegilbert.substack.com. And I checked beforehand, just Googled James Lee Gilbert Substack. And, you know, it's one of the first things that comes up.

Then you'll have the link, you know, the actual link in the show notes. But James Lee Gilbert, Substack, should get you there. All right.

And folks, the graphics are really splendid. You're going to be really pleased, I think, when you see these graphics, especially of the football field evolution that we started talking about. I got to go and check out all these coordinates of where the fields were. I have to go. I appreciate that here when we get done.

So I can't wait to do that. You just added another thing to my to-do list tonight. So, thanks, James.

So far, he doesn't have a lot of those on this site. But you know, he's done a bunch of them in the past. So, I hope you know that he recycles them and republishes them on Substack.

Well, Tim, wow, that is great stuff. Thanks for bringing this to our attention so we can appreciate his work and your work.

Why don't you tell us how folks can get your daily news? Yep, just go to footballarchaeology.com, and you can subscribe. You'll get an email every night at seven o'clock Eastern with today's article. Otherwise, you can follow me on Twitter, Threads, or the Substack app. All right, Timothy P. Brown, footballarchaeology.com. We thank you once again for joining us, and we will talk to you again next week.

Very good. Thanks.

-Frequently Asked Questions About an American Football Field:

-How long is a football field? A football field from goal line to goal line is 100 yards long with two ten yard deep end zones. Want to know more about the evolution of the playing field, you are in the right place as we covered it here:Field Size Evolution.

-How wide is a football field? Most levels of American football play on a field that is 53.3 yards wide.

-What are the hash marks for? The hash marks are used for a few different things during a game, but most importantly they are the inbounds spot for the ball to rest fo the next play adjacent to where it became dead on the previous play outside of the hash marks or out of bounds. Here is a great piece explaining the has marks and their history and evolution: The Fumble Fiasco Out-of-Bounds Oddities in Early Football.

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The preservation of football history and rekindling memories of some bygone star of the gridiron is a passion for many of us. There are few greater research satisfactions than finding a long-forgotten story of a player one knows little about.

Timothy P. Brown looks back at how six promising athletes mentioned in a pre-season article actually did. The players are Don King of the Clemson Tigers, Frank Brooks of Georgia Tech, Joe Mastrogiovanni, a Wyoming quarterback, Kurt Burris, a linebacker of the Oklahoma Sooners, Notre Dame Fighting Irish quarterback Ralph Guglielmi, and Pat Eubel, an Army Black Knight runningback.

Presaerving the history of great players has never been so much fun!

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Football Archaeology takes a look back at the history of the helmet logo in some unique places, uncommon to the conventional ones we are used to.

The evolution of logos on football helmets has been a fascinating journey reflecting both aesthetic and functional considerations. Traditionally, football helmet designs featured team logos prominently displayed on the sides, serving as iconic identifiers visible to players and spectators alike. However, as the sport evolved and branding became increasingly significant, teams and equipment manufacturers began exploring alternative placements for logos to maximize visibility and impact.

One notable shift occurred with the emergence of logos on the fronts and backs of helmets. This departure from the conventional side placements allowed for larger and more eye-catching designs, enhancing team identity and marketability. The strategic placement on the front provided a focal point during televised broadcasts and close-up shots, while the back placement ensured visibility from multiple angles on the field.

The transition to front and back logos also mirrored broader trends in sports marketing and fan engagement. Teams sought to leverage helmet space not just for aesthetic appeal but also as a platform for sponsorships, charity initiatives, and commemorative decals. This evolution underscored the symbiotic relationship between sports teams and corporate partnerships, where helmet logos became potent symbols of both team pride and commercial endorsement.

Moreover, the strategic placement of logos on the fronts and backs of helmets has contributed to the evolving aesthetics of football equipment. It has allowed teams to experiment with design elements, color schemes, and typography, further enhancing their visual appeal and reinforcing their brand identity in the competitive landscape of sports.

In summary, the history of logos transitioning from traditional side placements to front and back positions on football helmets reflects a dynamic interplay between tradition, innovation, and commercialization. As teams continue to adapt to changing trends and technological advancements, the placement of logos remains a key element in defining the visual identity and market presence of football teams worldwide.

-Frequently Asked Questions

-Who was the first to paint a logo on a helmet? The answer in the pro game is Fred Gehrke of the Rams in 1948, check out more about it in the story: First Helmet Logo.

-Who was the first player to wear a football helmet? We have your answer in our in-depth study ofthe first to wear a helmet.

-What is the history of each college team and their helmet designs? Check out many of them with our series College Football helmet history of schools.

-How come some teams have player numbers on their helmets? We asked this question too and had a college football expert historian help divulge helmet numbers history.

-Why do some teams like Michigan and Delaware look so odd and similar? It's really uncanny isn't it that the Wolverines and Blue Hens look the same, check this out for a reason when helmets had wings.

-What do stickers on college football helmets mean? Some of them look really crazy but there is some goos reason for the extra adornments and we have the scoop Why all the stickers on some football helmets?.

-When did football helmets change from leather to plastic? Just after World War II saw the most abrupt changes, we have more in this in our chat with an expert:When helmets changed from leather to plastic.

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The 1921 Taylorville and Carlinville football scandal wasn't just a game gone wrong, it was a full-blown Wild West showdown played out on the gridiron. Imagine two dusty Illinois towns, steeped in rivalry and fueled by moonshine, facing off in a grudge match for bragging rights. But this wasn't just any local clash; it was a battle royale with college stars brought in as hired guns, bets reaching five figures, and whispers of scandal swirling thicker than autumn smoke. Timothy P Brown of Football Archaeology examines and recounts this pivotal contest in football history.

Taylorville boasted some Notre Dame standouts, while Carlinville countered with a University of Illinois heroes. Both rosters, packed with ringers, defied amateur rules, turning the game into a pay-for-play spectacle. The tension crackled like static in the air, and when Carlinville won 33-0, accusations of dirty play and illegal payments erupted.

College conferences scrambled, reputations were tarnished, and investigations launched. Ultimately, both teams got punished, losing eligibility for their college stars and facing public censure. It was a cautionary tale, exposing the underbelly of college football in its early days.

But here's the twist: some argue the scandal actually helped pave the way for professional football's growth. The public's thirst for the gridiron drama couldn't be quenched by student athletes alone, and the 1921 Taylorville-Carlinville brawl, despite its messy ending, might have been a messy nudge towards a new era of pro football.

- Transcribed Conversation on Carlinville 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. Today is Tuesday, and on Tuesdays, we love to go back in time in football and talk to Timothy P. Brown of FootballArchaeology.com about one of his famous stories. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Darin, I'm looking forward to it. I got a chance today to talk about some small-town football that had big-time implications. Yeah, our topic is a little bit scandalous today.

This has set the football world on its own, and it's still being discussed today. This is an article you wrote back in August of 2023, and it's titled The Carlinville-Taylorville Scandal of 1921. So what can you tell us about that, Tim? Yeah, so I'm assuming most listeners have not enjoyed being in either Carlinville or Taylorville.

-The Football Archaeology of Carlinville’s Football Fame

I know I've been to at least Taylorville, but I don't recall being in Carlinville. They're both flatland towns northeast of St. Louis, so they're in the part of Illinois where people cheer for the St. Louis pro teams rather than the Chicago pro teams. So, they're downstate.

And, you know, everybody, like I mentioned last week, that you were one of these fancy East Coast guys, and everybody on the East Coast thinks Austin and New York rivalry, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that's nothing; they've got nothing; that rivalry has nothing over the Carlinville-Taylorville rivalry or any small town. Two rural towns of less than 6,000 a piece can get hacked off at one another like nobody's business.

And that's what happened in 1921. Well, these are always great. You know, I'm familiar with towns being rivals of small towns.

I wrote a book on one, too. This is very similar in stories. And this might be the continuation of that story here in 1921 because it is a pretty good one.

So go ahead and please tell us more about this. Yeah. So, you know, here are these two towns in Illinois that, you know, moderate-sized towns, and they had a town team or a semi-pro team, you know, the guys, you know, people would pay to get into the games, and they'd share the gate.

But it was comprised of people who just, you know, who lived in the town or in the surrounding rural areas, and two teams, but, you know, two towns about 40 minutes apart. So they played every year. And then, in 1921, they had a game scheduled, like always, in November.

And they end up with three to 4,000 people attending, Taylorville with 16 to nothing. And that's the story. That's the end of it, right? No big deal.

You know, it gets written up in the Decatur newspaper because Decatur's, you know, next biggest town. And kind of nobody thinks about it anymore until, like, two months later, word leaks of the scandal that surrounded the game. And in hindsight, I think this is great.

There was a line in the Decatur newspaper the day after the story or the day after the game that said each team's lineup was almost entirely changed after the half. So if you, you know, now, did the reporter put that in there, knowing what was going on, or was it just an observation? I don't know. But so what happened here was that the Taylorville or, I'm sorry, the Carlinville people started scheming.

They wanted to beat Taylorville, and they wanted to make money doing so. So there was a kid that was from Carlinville, and he played for this 11-0 Notre Dame team. He was a substitute, but he was still on the Notre Dame team.

So, somebody in Carlinville connected with him and got him to invite some of his friends to Carlinville for Thanksgiving. And maybe, you know, those guys could play football for Carlinville that weekend, like when they were playing Taylorville. So, you know, they had it set up.

It was like seven or eight, you know, Notre Dame players were going to play for this Carlinville town team. And so, and they, you tell the guys who were setting up the scheme, tell their neighbor so that they can put a bet on the, you know, they can bet with somebody they know down in Taylorville. And, you know, everybody's going to make money on it.

No one's going to know any better. And, you know, they're going to be very meritorious as a result. And so it turns out that somebody in Taylorville gets word of this.

And Taylorville has a kid who's playing for Illinois. So they set up a deal where they get a bunch of Illinois players to play for Taylorville that day. And so, you know, so the day of the game arrives, and both teams put their normal lineups out there for the first half, and Taylorville is upset.

And then just before the second half starts, all of a sudden, a bunch of, you know, kind of a whole new set of guys appears for Carlinville, and they enter the game. And, you know, they, they hadn't been, they hadn't been around for the first half. And now they're playing for Carlinville.

And then, so Taylorville notices that, and they say, okay, well, let's pull out our guys. So they pull out their guys, who are the Illinois players, including an Illinois stud quarterback. And so, then the second half is basically played between a mostly Notre Dame team and a mostly Illinois team.

And then a couple of, you know, whoever the better players were from, from the normal teams, and Taylorville gets, you know, three kicks, three field goals, but you know, that Illinois quarterback is a kid who kicks them, and they ended up winning 16 to nothing. And so, so again, nothing is really said about it until two months later. And oh yeah, another quick thing is it, so enough money was collected by the Taylorville people that it overflowed the safe at the local bank.

And so the bank had to hire armed guards to just stand around and keep people out of there. Cause it's all like, you know, one in $5 bills or whatever. Right.

So anyways, they then somehow word gets out of what happened. And so both schools investigate and, you know, the kids are like, no, no, I didn't do anything. But then eventually they, you know, they kind of give it up.

And so, in both cases, a number of the guys who were playing, who played were seniors. So, their football eligibility was up, but you know, several of them were like top track or baseball athletes. So their eligibility for those sports, you know, is gone.

And then other guys, just their college eligibility, you know, their sophomores or whatever it may be, are gone. So unfortunately, you know, and supposedly, these guys didn't get paid, but you know, who knows? But one way or another, a bunch of people lost eligibility, and it was a big scandal. And I hadn't really thought about this before, but as I was thinking about this, you know, preparing for this podcast, you know, when, when Red Green signed with the Bears after the 25 season, that was a big scandal too, right? Because he finishes his eligibility, and then Sunday, he's playing for the Bears.

And that was like, you know, you can't do that. And so you kind of have to think that some of the attitude and their reaction to that was, you know, in follow-up to what happened four years earlier with this Carlinville-Taylorville scandal, you know, where these kids, a bunch of them just, they're done with their eligibility, football eligibility, and they play in this game and, you know, at a smaller level than the bears, but still it wasn't, you know, the bears weren't that big time at the, you know, the NFL was still just a, not much of a, more than a podunk league at the time, you know? So just kind of an interesting little sidelight to, to the, to the affair itself. Well, I'll take you deeper down that rabbit hole.

I mean, sit there and think about who our coaches who are getting affected by this are. Illinois has Zupke, you know, who's kind of, kind of a hard ass. I believe Newt Rockne is at Notre Dame in 21.

And, you know, he's, you know, he's no slouch to pull anything over. So, you know, they're losing their star players and losing, you know, their guys that they're counting on for that following season. And, you know, they were both. I know through some of my research that Zupke was very much opposed to professional football.

Probably, this scandal here started off, and Red Grange just put him over the edge cause he had a lot of comments as Grange was coming out about not wanting Grange to go into pros. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, back in the twenties, so Rockne had played pro football, so, you know, he, you know, that was after his college eligibility, you know, but still he played it.

So, he couldn't really make much of an argument in that regard. But then, yeah, I mean, it was like in the, like 2021 era, you know, the colleges basically said, if you're going to, if you're going to referee in NFL games, you cannot referee in college games. And I mean, officiate, referee, you know, so, I mean, they were doing everything they could to keep the pro game at bay, not help them out at all.

And yet you had guys like, you know, the four horsemen, you know, they'd go and, you know, once they were graduated, a couple of them, you know, like they're coaching college teams, they coach college team on Saturday and then go play pro football on Sunday. You know, so those kinds of things were happening. It was just one of those tides that the colleges could not keep it hold back.

I think at one point, you had three of the four horsemen on the Providence steamroller in the NFL play. And I think they, for a couple of games, but they were bouncing around all over the place. So they were one, one week, they're on one team, one week they're on the other team, but L.A. I mean, those pro teams didn't even practice, you know. I mean, maybe they got to practice on Saturday with the guys who could be there, but lots of guys were, you know, taking the train in for the Sunday game, wherever it was being played, you know? So, you know, I mean, it was a different game then, you know, far less coordinated in terms of plays and responsibilities and more individual skill oriented, but yeah, nevertheless, I mean, it just, you know, the college has tried like anything to keep the amateur ideal in place and not have it bastardized like pro baseball, you know, had done, but didn't work.

Yeah. I'm just glad we Easterners were squeaky clean in our football, not like the treacherous Midwesterners.

It's kind of mind-boggling, actually, how clean you guys have kept it. No wonder all the Americans were on the East Coast. Well, Tim, this has been a really enjoyable story and subject, and we poked fun at it, but it was pretty serious at the time and, you know, a lot of money and people's collegiate careers are getting upset, probably their educations, probably life-changing to some of them.

And we really appreciate you memorializing the story and both in your tidbit and talking with us here today, but you do this quite a bit in your tidbits and bring these little facets of football to light once more. So maybe you could share with the listeners how they too can partake in your tidbits. Yep.

Very easy. Just go to footballarchaeology.com, submit your email to, you know, subscribe, and then you'll get an email with the contents of the story every day at seven o'clock Eastern. And then, you know, read them then or let them pile up.

And then alternatively, you can follow me on Twitter, on threads, or on the Substack app. And I go by the name Football Archaeology on all three of those. Well, Tim, again, we appreciate you coming on and sharing these great stories with us.

And this saga of the Taylorville-Carlinville scandal that happened in 1921, you know, over a hundred years ago. And we'll talk to you again next Tuesday about another subject. Yeah.

And remember, it's a much bigger deal than the Yankees and Red Sox. I mean, much bigger, much bigger.

-Transcription of Fielding Yost and the Fake Field Goal with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends, Darin Hayes and PigskinDispatch.com. It is Tuesday, and once again, we are going to visit with Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com. Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Thank you.

Look forward to chatting again. I think we've got a good one to cover this evening. Yeah, this one is a subject that I know a little bit about.

I've talked to an author that's wrote quite a bit about this famous coach, Fielding Yost of Michigan. This is probably his most famous stance or most famous position. That's where the school he's most associated with.

Let me try to get that out of my mouth. But you have a very interesting story on him that sort of takes back through his whole career and sort of settles a dispute by digging through the old newspapers and everything. It's a really interesting, great job of work on your part.

I will let you take it from here, sir. Yeah, thank you. This is one that you're kind of digging around for playing detective, reading old newspapers.

All of a sudden, you find something that I wasn't expecting, quite the ending to the story. This is one of these ideas or issues where everybody talks about football. There's nothing new, right? There's nothing new in football.

Everything gets recycled. Everything gets adapted. That's, at some level, reasonably true.

There are certain true innovations, and one of those is embedded here. It's also a bunch of these people copying ideas over and over again. Part of the funny thing about this story is that there's an instance where things got copied, and this sports writer didn't know that.

Apparently, it was the first time he saw this occur in a game. What it was is that I came across an article from a 1913 game when Michigan played Penn. During the game, Michigan attempted a fake field goal.

This writer just wrote a follow-up after the game about this fake field goal attempt and praising Fielding Yost, talking about what a great innovator he is and blah, blah, blah. When I came across that, I was like, is that possibly the first time somebody ran a fake field goal? I would have thought, even just due to a bad snap or whatever, somebody would have tried one. Then maybe said, geez, this works pretty well.

I'm going to do this again. I'm going to back up just a little bit and say that until 1886, every field goal attempt was a dropkick. There was no snap from the center to a holder who held the ball for the kicker.

It took some human beings to figure out how to do that. It turned out it was these two brothers who played at Otterbein in Ohio, a small school there. They figured out, hey, we could snap the ball, have a guy hold it, and the kicker could kick it.

We've got a better chance, especially under the right weather conditions, a place kick typically had more power and was more accurate than a drop kick because the ball didn't bounce true off the uneven turf and grass at the time. We moved ahead then to 1913 and this Penn-Michigan game. Michigan sets up for a regular field goal attempt.

They snapped the ball, but instead of the holder putting the ball down on the ground, the kicker moved forward and swung his leg forward just like normal, but the holder stood up and then went sprinting around the left end. He scored a touchdown rather than the field goal attempt. Part of what's funny about that is that the writers said, this is tremendous.

The execution of this play was incredible. In fact, the play got called back due to holding, so the execution wasn't that great. Then it was like, here was a fake field goal, obviously a planned fake field goal.

I started looking around, when did these things first occur? As I said earlier, 1886 was the first time that any team snapped to a holder and then executed a placement kick. The first fake field goal that I could find, and this is just through searching newspaper articles, was an 1897 game between Kansas and Iowa when Kansas faked a field goal. Then, the next year, the second one I found is 1898, when Nebraska ran a fake field goal against Kansas.

The guys who did it, as far as I can tell, invented it, and have it executed against them the following year. Then the key thing about that, or the interesting thing about that, is that the coach of Nebraska in 1898 was Fielding Yost, a coach at Michigan whom this writer was just effusive with praise about. So anyway, after doing additional searching and everything, there were fake field goals all over the place.

I'm not saying there were thousands a year or anything like that, but most years, once the placement kick from scrimmage got started, people were also executing the fake field goals. Unfortunately, the writer was an anonymous column, so I couldn't figure out who the writer was that came up with this because otherwise, I would have tried to reach his relatives and tell them that their grandpa was lacking in his football history skills. Okay, so Kansas did it first, and then they had it done against them the following year by Nebraska.

That's correct. Fielding Yost was the coach at Nebraska, and then he was coach again at Michigan when they did this in 1913. Well, I was trying to think about it, because I know from a previous author I had on the biography on Yost, I know he was in Kansas too, but I'm looking right now, he was in Nebraska 1898, he was at Kansas 1899, so it was reverse, where I was thinking he might have been a coach for both of those games, head coach who did it, but he was Kansas on the other side.

And then he ended up, he was at Stanford, right? In 1900? Yeah, Stanford, and then at the end of the season, San Jose State, he did a championship game and then went to Michigan. Pretty well-traveled coach. Yeah, for a little bit there.

And he was Ohio Wesleyan before all of that too. And he was a ringer when he played in college too. Yeah.

He went to West Virginia, but he played for Lafayette in the big game where they took down Penn and snapped their win streak, whatever it was, 2018. Yeah, Park H. Davis, the famous historian, was the coach of Lafayette. So yeah, there's a lot of historic ties there.

Which is why he names that team the National Champs. Yeah, he named a lot of odd ones, National Champs. You can go back and scratch your head a few times.

Yeah, that's a really, really cool story. I love how that sort of circles back around to him, you know. And what was there, 20, almost 20 years in between, 15 years in between the plays.

But I guess the credit is due to him in some respects. Yeah, well, hey, you know, he picked up something, he saw something he liked and executed it. Yeah, plus I think there was, I don't have my note here on it, but I'm almost positive Michigan ran a fake field goal too before the 1913 game, so under Gilst.

Yeah. You know, it brings back that fake field goal. And I'm sure it wasn't a rule at the time.

I'm sure it was a rule put in afterwards. But there was a rule in high school, and I think it was at the collegiate level too, that if somebody, you know how a holder was usually down on a knee to take the snap. That's the only exception where you can have a live ball with a person with their knee on the ground.

So with that exception, they have to hold for a kick or an attempted kick. So if that holder is on a knee, takes that snap, and stands up and throws a pass or runs, it's a dead ball because he was a runner with his knee on the ground with a live ball. So I'm sure, like I said, it probably wasn't back in that era.

They probably put it in. So we had a game, a high school game, where a very clever coach told us before the game, you know, usually they want to make sure we don't kill their brainstorm idea that they had all overnight or something. This guy would get down in a catcher's position.

So both knees are off the ground. He's just in a squat. And the defense, you know, is probably not paying attention to what he's doing, but he would catch the ball.

The kicker would come up similar to what you're saying, fake a kick. This kid would, the holder would pound the ball with his hand. So it sounded like there was a foot hitting the ball and then taking off.

And I think he was going to throw a pass is what his intent was. So, you know, just some clever things that they do out of these, these fake field goals, but that knee-on-the-ground exception. Well, you know, back then, both in the 1898 and the 1913 example, having a knee on the ground, wasn't yet a rule that made the ball dead.

Right. I mean, in that race, you could be tackled and still get up and run. You know, you had to be held to the ground still, but yeah, you know, the, the, the, the catcher squat that you mentioned, that was actually some of the early field goal teams did that.

I mean, those, those executing a placement kick, they did that instead of, of going to the knee. And part of that was because that was still in the time when they, when a lot of teams, still were rolling the ball sideways back from the center to the quarterback. Right.

And so the quarterback, if he was on one knee, he couldn't, you know, the ball would bounce crazily. And so, you know, the squat helped them just, you know, catch the ball properly, or at least be able to reach the ball. And I've even, I've got a picture of Arizona.

And I want to say it was like 1938 or 1936, something like that, where their, their holder is in that kind of squat position. So people continue doing that for, you know, for some time. And probably, you know, they may have just been in a situation where, you know, who knows? It might've had a substitute center, or somebody just wasn't a very, very effective long-snapper.

And so. He was a substitute center. He was also a starting catcher on the baseball team in the spring.

Yeah. Great stuff. That's very fascinating.

Just like every evening, you have these great little pieces and nuggets of information about football history that you don't hear mainstream. And you don't see in every football history book you read in, you know, just like tonight, you took, it took some digging for you to do that. I'm sure, you know, it took a few hours of research going through the old newspapers.

I can feel your pain on that sometime, but it's fun. Yeah. The problem is that, you know, half the time I'm doing these things while I'm watching some football games.

So I don't even watch half the game. I'm just looking online where those 30 points come from. Yeah.

Yeah. Good stuff as always. Why won't you share with the listeners that they, too, can enjoy your tidbits each and every night? Yeah.

So, you know, my website is footballarchaeology.com. So you can go on there. You know, every post allows you to subscribe, which then means you will get an email every night, you know, into your inbox with the story. You can also follow me on Twitter at football archaeology.

And so whichever one works for you, whichever way you prefer to consume information, have at it, or hey, you can do both. So either way. Yeah, I do.

And you get double the pleasure. You get the, the Twitter and the email. So good stuff as always.

Tim, we appreciate you sharing this with us, as well as the great research you do at footballarchaeology.com, your daily tidbits, and, you know, your great writings. Thank you very much for sharing with us each and every week. We hope to talk to you again next Tuesday.

Very good. Always enjoy it. And glad to, glad to spread the word with you on football history stuff.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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Timothy Brown takes his Football Archaeology focus towards some player protective gear evolution our way, was he studies early face guards.

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The Football Archaeology website has a powerful look at this 1922 game that featured the University of Floridaand an American Legion Post team from Tampa.

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The Lexington Avenue Armory was the first team to be called the Fighting Irish, per Timothy Brown's research. The military unit fought and played hard and earned respect from their travels that many Catholic schools adopted their nicknames of the Fighting Irish and/or Ramblers, including the University of Notre Dame

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Timothy Brown's FootballArchaeology.com shares a daily football factoid that is interesting in a short read. They uniquely preserve football history, and we are quite happy that Tim has agreed to join us each week to review some of his Today's Tidbits. Click that link, and you can subscribe for free to receive them.