Football

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There was an era of football where the punt may have been the most effective weapon for an offense. It just doesn't sound right to our modern gridiron minds to understand. No worries we brought in an expert to help.

One of the top experts in early football rules history, Timothy P. Brown, joins us to explain the kicking game strategy of early football. The story is eloquently shared below in the link that takes you to Tim's article, complete with photos of the era. Timothy Brown's

-Transcription of Punt Often with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to Tuesday, Football Archaeology Day, as we bring in our friend Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology.

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Hey, Darin. Great to see you, hear from you again, and looking forward to lots of Tuesdays during 2022, or 2023, I should say.

We already did a bunch for 2022. Old habits, old habits. It's hard to change that date. That's one of the toughest things to do.

We'll be doing that into March, I'm sure, all of us. Hey, you know, we have had a great football season. You know, we've had some great Tuesdays on Football Archaeology.

You know, I shared a lot of Rose Bowl memories with you. And, you know, now we've got into some of your interesting tidbits from November. One that really caught my eye is you had one titled from November 14th called Punning Early and Often about some early football strategy.

We'd really like to hear about it. Yeah, you know, I think for me, this is kind of a, it's kind of a fun topic, you know, for two reasons. I think, you know, one is just kind of the nature of, you know, punting was a much bigger part of the game, you know, back then.

But for me, it also, I think, just generally, you know, in line with that thought, it kind of just reinforces, you know, just the, when we're going back and doing history and reading about things that have happened in the past, it can be very difficult to make sure you have, you know, you're wearing their hat. And what I mean by that is, you know, you're working under the assumptions they worked under, not the assumptions you now work under, you know, because 100 years or 120, you know, some years have passed. And so, you know, the point of the overall article is just kind of discussing how, back in the day, teams often punted on first or second down.

And then once, you know, they got four downs, and they would punt on third down, too. But, for us, that seems like just such a strange way to play the game, right? It's like, why in the heck would you punt on first down? And yet it's, you know, if you kind of put yourself back under their assumptions and under their rules, then it starts making a bit more sense. And so, you know, in my mind, there's two kinds of key things that, you know, that are different about the game that they played versus what's played today.

And so one is just that people punted early on or on, on early downs, because it was difficult to move the ball. You know, you know, they just, you know, pretty much everybody with the, you know, exceptions here and there, but pretty much everybody played close formations, you know, with three or four backs, you know, inside the, the both ends being tight. And sometimes there'd be a wing or, you know, whatever, whatever it was, but I mean, for the most part, everybody's playing really tight together.

And, then, the defense has had a wide guy on either side to stop anybody from sweeping. So everything just got funneled into the middle. And so it was just hard to move the darn ball and do it consistently.

So it's one thing to get a first down. It's another thing that, you know, string together five, six, seven first downs, drive down the field and score. So, you know, it's just that, that whole idea that the, in a game of reasonably well-matched opponents, it typically was going to be a pretty low-scoring game.

You know, they did not have Yale and Harvard or Yale and Princeton or whomever, Michigan and Chicago, or when they played one another, they didn't play a bunch of 47 of 43 games, you know, it was 13 to 10, it was six to nothing. So just, you know, the fact of the matter is against well, you know, well-matched teams, it was really difficult to move the ball. So, they played the field position game, and they just booted it.

Right. And they booted it thinking, Hey, I'm going to have to keep the ball in their territory, and then they can make a mistake, and then I can capitalize on it. And so this particular article has a quote by a guy named George Brooke, who was a famous player and coach back then.

And, and, you know, wrote a lot of articles that were in, you know, syndicated newspaper articles, but he, he basically made an argument that the maxim he called it, that if the ball is inside your 40, you should punt it. That's it. Right.

Which is like, you know, again, what, one of those things we just can't even imagine. And so, just the way that he phrased it, I got it here. So, he considered that if you were inside your own 40, he considered dangerous ground.

And he said this is called dangerous ground because if the team should lose the ball for some foul or offside play fumble or other common means of losing it, then, you know, then their goal is going to be in danger. So it's kind of the reverse of what I was saying, which is why you want to punt it, but it just points out that, you know, so our assumptions are offenses can move the ball. And then the other assumption, you know, we understand fumbles or interceptions or something like that, losing the ball, but we don't think about it in terms of the first thing he mentioned, which is some foul or offside play.

So back then, most penalties resulted in a loss of possession, did you know? So, you know, yes, there was, you know, if you interfered with the center five-yard penalty, piling on or a couple of other things for 15-yard penalties, but an offside, if you were offside loss of possession, right? And then like, you know, the old, the forward pass before the forward pass was legalized, you know if you pitch the ball forward that was lost possession, you know, was another, another example of that. So again, it's just that we don't think about the game that way.

We don't think about, you know, jumping offside, boom, the other guy gets the ball at the spot, you know? So, so, you know, there was just, I think that much more reason, you know, you, you were risking yourself and your field position if you kept the ball and you were inside the 30, inside the 40, whatever it was. So anyway, it just kind of makes more sense now. Or, you know, if you kind of think about those two terms, you know, the offensive inefficiency and then loss of possession.

So no, no, just interesting to me. Yeah. It made me start really thinking about it, you know, especially before the forward pass was legal.

You know, we, we talked now, you know, we watch a game when they say, Oh, you know, the defense has eight in the box, or they're to stop the run. Well, they were putting, you know, 10, 11 in the box back then. There was no threat behind them to that.

So they could fill every gap and have an extra guy to shoot the gaps if they wanted to. So, so probably made moving the ball on the ground real ineffective. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, yeah. And you know, there are so many things that we just take for granted, the opposite of forward pass, but just other ways of just moving, you know, trying to move the ball, you know, just like a, well, I guess a shovel, shovel pass would have been illegal then anyways, but you know, option plays and those kinds of things that just, you know, hadn't come along yet.

So it was, it was tough. Yeah. Well, it's great.

Definitely that article and some of the photographs, the pictures you have in there and you know, Mr. Brooks quotes and things that really make you think and takes you back, you know, 120 some years ago and appreciate how the game has evolved over time and made a lot more enjoyable from a fan's point of view. And probably from an offensive and defensive strategist to make, make some headaches for them too, for the defenses, but the forward pass stuff, but Hey, just some great stuff and how important the kicking game was at that point. It really comes to light.

So we thank you for sharing that with us. And Tim, why don't we take this time? You know, you have these tidbits coming out each and every day. Maybe you could share with the listeners how they, too, can appreciate your tidbits each day.

Sure. So, my site where I post the tidbits every day is called football archeology.com. It's a site where you can just sign up for free, and you'll get, and you'll get an email delivered every night at seven o'clock Eastern. I also post on Twitter.

And so, but just to, you know, if you want to make sure you get it every day, you don't have to read it necessarily, but if you want to make sure you get it every day, just subscribe. And it'll pop right into your inbox dutifully. It most certainly does.

So, Tim, we appreciate you coming on again. Again, Timothy P Brown, footballarcheology.com, and Tim, we'll talk to you again next Tuesday. Okay.

Very good. Thanks, Darin. Appreciate it.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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NFL legend Bobby Layne wasn't just a great player, he was a player who adapted to the changing tides of the game. Today, we'll delve into a pivotal moment in his career – his transition from playing in the single-wing offense to thriving in the emerging T-formation. This wasn't just a simple position change; it was a testament to Layne's versatility and his ability to excel in a rapidly evolving landscape.

The single-wing, known for its reliance on a powerful running back and a more static quarterback role, was giving way to the T-formation, which emphasized a mobile quarterback with a stronger passing presence. Join us as we explore the challenges and triumphs of Layne's position switch, and how it not only impacted his career but also foreshadowed the increasing importance of the quarterback position in the NFL. So, grab your playbook and get ready to analyze the fascinating story of Bobby Layne's transformation from wingman to T-formation titan!

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on Bobby Layne

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And it's that time of the week again when we're going to visit Timothy Brown, the author and historian at Football Archeology, and see what he's up to with one of his famous daily tidbits.

And Tim Brown, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, thanks, Darin. Looking forward to chatting once again.

Yeah, this is a great weekly thing we got going on here. And Tim, before we get going into the tidbit, maybe you could, without giving away your secret sauce recipe here, tell us what your normal routine is for finding such interesting and off-the-wall topics for football for your writing. Yeah, you know, so I think, you know, some of it is really kind of planned out, and some of it's just happenstance or luck, I guess.

So, some of the topics are just things that, you know, I just have this the way my mind works a lot of times. I'm like, well, why is it this way? Why why do we do things this way? And so, you know, I just generally look at the game and ask the question and, you know, why do we call halfbacks, halfbacks and fullbacks, fullbacks and quarterbacks, quarterbacks? You know, I mean, just I ask kind of goofy questions like that. And so, anyways, as a result, you know, I just spend a lot of time researching football topics.

And so some of them are really kind of purposeful. I'm trying to find information on a specific thing. But oftentimes while I'm doing that, I just, you know, the article next to the one that I found, you know, for whatever I was researching happens to the headline that I noticed.

And that ends up being the more interesting article. So, you know, so and then other times just, you know, you're reading an article, and they're not just they don't just cover one topic. They talk about two or three things in an article.

And so sometimes the second or third topic is as interesting, more interesting than what I was really looking for. And so, you know, I just kind of notice them. And I have, you know, a couple of ways of tracking that information and kind of putting them in buckets. This is something I'm going to follow up on.

And once I'm done with the research I'm doing today. I just come up with judgments that are either worthy of a long article or a tidbit. Well, you really are quite the magician because I find myself quite often when you have that tidbit come out.

Yeah, I'm saying, you know, Tim's asking a question that I didn't even know that I wanted to know, but now I do want to know it. So it's something I never even thought of half the time. Like, wow, that's that's great.

This is really interesting. And it really dives into it. I think the listeners will enjoy that also.

And we'll give you a way to find Tim's tidbits here in a moment. But we're going to talk about one of his tidbits that really caught my eye back in early May. And it's on the great, legendary Bobby Lane and him switching some positions during his career.

Yeah, so this is an example of one that I kind of stumbled upon. I mean, I've always known about Bobby Lane and yada, yada. But, you know, I was I can't remember what I was looking for.

But at one point, I came across an article that said that leading into his senior season at Texas, he was going to be switching positions. And but he was just, you know, he was he played at a point when football was switching from the single wing and, to some extent, the Notre Dame box to the T formation. You know, so the T really came out.

You didn't say 1940 was really the word really bowed and then had the warrants that stopped some things. But so he's a post-war college kid, and his coach, Dana Bible at Texas, was a single-wing proponent. And so Lane was fullback slash halfback within the single wing.

And, you know, that was an offense that required. Required, I mean, the ideal was the Jim Thorpe, you know, triple threat, the guy who would who could kick, who could run, and who could pass. And Lane was all three of those.

You know, I mean, he was, you know, an absolute stud. The 46 Rose Bowl. He had three TVs rushing.

He had two passes and one receiving any kick for extra points, you know, which is, you know, 40 points every point in the game. He was a part of, you know. So, he was that kind of guy.

And, you know, some single-wing teams relied on their, most of them relied on their tailback to be the primary pastor. Some also had the fullback passing. You know, it depends on whether you have two talented pastors, and that's what you do.

But pretty much nobody had the quarterbacks pass the Notre Dame box. Yeah, they did. The Packers did that kind of stuff.

So anyway, they bring a new coach, and he installs the team. Oh, he looks around. He says, who's the best pastor on the team? Bobby Lane.

Boom. He became the quarterback during his senior year at Texas and was a total stud as a quarterback. But, you know, and it is because he was a great passer before.

You know, he's a great pastor in the single wing. So, he's a great pastor on the team. In some respects, he probably didn't utilize all his talents as well as a single wing did, but they wanted to move to the team.

OK, now I believe, you know, when he became professional, he went to the Pittsburgh Steelers, which is near and dear to my heart. And I think you even say that the Steelers were a single-wing offense at the time when they drafted Lane. I believe Jock Southern might have been the coach there and after the postwar days when they got Lane.

But then they they traded him away to the. Was it the Lions that they traded him to the Bears, the Bears, the Bears, who were a T formation team? It just seems odd to me. OK, he was a single wing in college, converted to the the the T formation and then a single wing offense drafts them and trades them to the T formation.

I'm just wondering, you know, a little bit curious about that. You know, it's part of my Steelers anxiety is part of that. But it's just a little interesting question.

I was wondering if maybe you knew. Yeah. So, you know, I think what happened there is that so he was drafted third overall by Steelers, and they were the last NFL team to be running the single league.

So that kind of tells you, maybe, you know. Maybe they should have thought it was an antiquated office at that time, right? It belonged as well. But that was the case.

But what was happening, too, is that right after the war, you had the All-American Football Conference. And so Lane also got drafted number two overall by the Baltimore Colts. So now he's in a situation where, OK, do I want to play for the Colts and the AFC, or do I play as a T formation quarterback, or do I go back single wing with the Steelers? And he basically told the Steelers he wasn't going to go play for him.

So, in order to recoup, you know, some value, the Steelers traded him to the Bears, who were one of the teams that pioneered the T formation back in 1940. OK, so he never played single-wing and professional. The Steelers traded him before he even played for him.

OK, that makes sense. OK, gotcha. Gotcha.

Because he wanted to be a T formation quarterback. Yeah, correct. Correct.

All right. That explains it. By then, you know, the NFL rules were, you know, a lot, you know, they were just more protective of quarterbacks.

They recognized the value, and they started just doing some things, liberalizing, blocking, et cetera, that just allowed quarterbacks to flourish and attract fans. And now we know what happened with NFL versus college games. Well, very interesting indeed, and a great glimpse back into both college and pro football history and one of the great players in Bobby Lane and Tim; why don't you tell people where they can find your daily tidbits and your website? Yeah, you can find the tidbits at www.footballarchaeology.com. You know, just hit the site and click on an article.

It'll give you the opportunity to subscribe. If you subscribe and you subscribe for free, you can. You'll get an email every day around seven o'clock in the evening with the tidbit or the full article.

That's what I published that day. There's also paid subscriptions that offer some additional value for those that are really into the stuff. And then or you can follow me on Twitter or Facebook using the same football archaeology name and but those, you know, potentially a few a few of my articles.

So I hope you subscribe. All right, folks, and if you're driving the car, don't try to stop and write it down or write it as you're driving. We're going to have it in the show notes.

So you can just come back later. And on PigskinDispatch.com, we'll get you right to Tim's site and to where his social medias are as well. So, Tim, thank you once again for this little glimpse into football history.

And we'll talk to you again next week.

Very good. We'll see you in seven days. Thanks.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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The 2016 AFC Divisional playoff game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Tennessee Titans was a truly exceptional event, far from being just another playoff battle. It was a rare confluence of talent, a game where five Heisman Trophy winners graced the field. This essay delves into this historic matchup, exploring the players involved and the profound significance of such a unique event.

Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology discusses the 2016 NFL contest that saw four former winners of the Heisman Trophy playing in the same game.

The Baltimore Ravens boasted a potent trio. Lamar Jackson, the reigning Heisman winner (2016), was a dynamic young quarterback waiting for his chance. Mark Ingram (2009) was a seasoned running back with a Heisman pedigree and a knack for finding the end zone. Robert Griffin III (2012), another former Heisman winner, served as a veteran backup. Across the field, the Tennessee Titans countered with their own Heisman firepower. Derrick Henry (2015), a bruising running back with exceptional power, threatened to break tackles on every carry. Marcus Mariota (2016), the newly minted Heisman winner facing his first playoff test, aimed to orchestrate the Titans' offense.

This competition shattered the record for the most Heisman winners in a single NFL game. Previously, a 1998 matchup between the Raiders and Bills featured four Heisman winners – Tim Brown, Desmond Howard, and Charles Woodson on the Raiders' side, and Doug Flutie for the Bills. However, the 2016 Ravens-Titans game upped the ante, showcasing the evolving landscape of college football and the increasing emphasis on dual-threat quarterbacks.

While the individual accolades added a layer of intrigue, the true significance of the 2016 AFC Divisional playoff game lay in the clash of styles. The Ravens, led by the dynamic Lamar Jackson, represented the future of the NFL – a mobile quarterback unafraid to use his legs. The Titans, with Derrick Henry's punishing ground game, embodied a more traditional approach. This clash of styles turned the game into a defensive battle, ultimately won by the Ravens 22-21. Even though not all the Heisman winners took center stage statistically, their presence highlighted the culmination of years of college football excellence on the biggest stage.

The 2016 Ravens-Titans game was not just a simple playoff matchup. It etched a unique line in NFL history, showcasing an unprecedented number of Heisman winners on the field. It was a testament to the talent pipeline of college football and the ever-evolving landscape of the NFL, where athleticism and versatility were becoming increasingly important. This game serves as a snapshot, where college football glory converged on the professional stage, captivating fans and leaving a lasting mark on the NFL record books, a mark that will be remembered for years to come.

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Football Archaeology's Timothy Brown shares the story of an interesting field equipment predicament that occurred in a 1974 college football game.

It is an odd case of game management versus fandom and how the outcome of a game was at stake.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on the Missing Goal Post

Hello, my football friends; this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal for positive football history, and welcome to another Tuesday where we get to go to footballarchaeology.com's Timothy P. Brown, pick his brain a little bit, and talk about one of his recent tidbits. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, thanks, Darin. Looking forward to talking again and talking about something that goes missing. Yeah, and we've been missing you since last week, but that's not the missing that we're going to be talking about today.

You're going to talk about a recent tidbit you titled, The Case of the Missing Goalposts.

It sounds like a Sherlock Holmes theater here for footballarchaeology.com. I can get that in my mouth, right?

Well, I was a Hardy Boys guy as a kid, so everything was The Case of the Treasure Chest. I think Nancy drew, too, but I wasn't into Nancy. Yeah, so this one, The Case of the Missing Goalposts, goes back to the old, I should say, Princeton and Rutgers.

They played the first intercollegiate soccer games in 1869. Note, I did say soccer there, but then eventually they started playing football, gridiron football. They're very close together geographically, and so they played 60-some times, whatever it was, over the years.

Princeton totally dominated the match or the matchups, but starting in the 60s, Rutgers started winning a lot. Then, they became the dominant team. It's somewhere along the lines in the 60s that, back then, there were a lot of... Nowadays, hardly anybody tears down the goalposts because they used to... Number one, they used to be constructed of primary wood, so they're easier to tear down.

We didn't have the same level of security, and there were a lot of those. The other thing was that a little bit later on, when goalposts got torn down, a couple of people got injured, and then they sued the universities and so on. Anyway, it's easier to get into Fort Knox now than it is to tear down some goalposts.

They just made it nearly impossible to tear down a goalpost. Back in the 60s, it was very common, 50s as well. People just tore them down all the time.

What happened in the Princeton and Rutgers series was that no matter where the game was being played, the winning team and their fans tore down the goalposts. Then, there were a couple of occasions where they tore them down before the game was over. That happened in 1974 when Rutgers scored a touchdown earlier in the game.

They didn't make the extra points. They were leading six nothing with three and a half minutes left in the fourth quarter. Princeton gets the ball and they start driving.

They drive all the way down. Partly during the time that they're driving, the Rutgers fans come onto the field and tear down the goalposts at both ends. Now the field doesn't have goalposts.

With 22 seconds left, Princeton scores. It's 6-6. They've got an opportunity to go for the extra point or the two-point conversion.

They want to go for the extra point, but there's no goalposts to kick towards. The officiating crew gets together, and then they bring the coaches in, and they're having a conversation. The Princeton AD tells the referee that they've got a spare goalpost sitting on the stands, and they can have it up in five minutes.

Somehow, that got lost in the translation, and the referee didn't hear that. He basically thought they could start building a new goalpost in five minutes. They start looking at whether they should go over to a practice facility outside the stadium. The referee didn't want to go there because they were already having control issues.

He's like, I don't even know how far away this practice facility is. Then, Princeton volunteered their cheerleaders, had one cheerleader mount and stand on the shoulders of another cheerleader, and held the crossbar in place. Then they'd attempt to kick.

I'm just imagining an errant kick, like the double doink, and taking a cheerleader out. Yeah, it's a risk to the profession. Ultimately, the ref just knows, Princeton, it's on your home field.

You're responsible for field security. It doesn't matter who tore the things down. No goalposts, you have to go for two.

So Princeton goes for two. They don't make it. So the game ends in a 6-6 tie.

But basically, after that, that game is 74. In 75, the NCAA had a requirement that facilities had to have a spare set of goalposts that could be put up rapidly if they fell down during the game. But again, it was this kind of stuff that kind of encouraged the adoption of the, some people call it the fork of a slingshot style, single post goalpost and then fortified with depleted uranium or something.

They make those things, titanium, whatever it is. Those things do not come down. Except for that Fanville commercial and Dr. Pepper commercial a couple of years ago, where Brian Bosworth is the cop, and he's looking for the missing goalposts.

One guy has a satellite dish up on it, and the other one across the street is a swing set, and he can't find the slingshot goalpost. Well, I know that a lot of people are fans of the Dr. Pepper commercials. I don't count in that group.

I just said it because I had the reference of the missing goalpost. That's actually pretty funny when you watch it. Kind of clever.

Yeah. Actually, some of them are pretty good. Yeah.

But that's just something that sounds so foreign. It sounds like something maybe would happen in 1911, but in 1974, this is modern-era football and a goalpost for two major colleges playing each other. That's just crazy.

It's unbelievable that within 50 years ago. Yeah. It's like anything else.

Until something happens, you don't make the rules, or you don't make the investment. It's just easier. Back then it was kind of like, well, yeah, the kids are going to tear them down.

So let's make them cheap because they're going to tear them down anyway. And then somebody went the other direction and said, I'm going to build me a fine goalpost. So that's what we have today.

Yeah. The next thing you know, we're going to have bands out on the field before the game's over. Oh wait, that did happen, too.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh boy.

Tim, that is some great stuff. And we always enjoy your tidbits each and every day for stories just like this and learn something new from 50 years ago or a hundred and some years ago. And we really appreciate that.

And there are folks out there who would like to get in on the action, too, and read your tidbits each and every day. Maybe you could give them some information to share. Sure.

The best way to get to the tidbits is to go to www.footballarchaeology.com and subscribe. You can subscribe for free, and then you'll get an email every day with that day's story. You can also get the Substack app or follow Football Archaeology.

You can also follow me on threads or on Twitter. And I post on both of those locations every day. All right.

Well, Timothy P. Brown, footballarchaeology.com. We really appreciate you. And we will talk to you again next Tuesday.

Very good.Thank you, sir.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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Timothy P. Brown discusses the home playing fields of the Michigan Wolverines football teams. Regents Field, Ferry Field, and finally yes the Big House, Michigan Stadium opened by Fielding Yost in 1927.

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There are times throughout football history when things just didn't look right to our modern pigskin eyes. You might even say they appeared "ass-backward," and in the case of our subject matter formation today, that may be true.

Timothy Brown had a great piece awhile back in his tidbits titled: footballarchaeology.com/p/innovation-or-oddity-the-reverse?utm_source=publication-search">Innovation or Oddity? The Reverse Center

-Reverse Center With Timothy Brown

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 we have a Tuesday.

And once again, we are going to go down the road of football archaeology with Timothy P. Brown of that website. Tim Brown, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Hey, Darren.

Thanks for having me back. Look forward to having a little chat. Yeah, I think it's going to be a pretty interesting chat.

And this is probably going to be one where folks are going to want to go to your website, footballarchaeology.com, and go to your tidbit from September 27th of 2022. And because there's a very interesting picture that's sort of the forefront of this discussion tonight, and that's on the reverse center. Yeah, well, so here's one thing about this reverse center: it's, you know, football coaches, just like, you know, any business, probably.

They're always looking for something new. They're always trying to find a way to, you know, just improve their process, do something more efficiently, or just trick somebody. And so, you know, one of the things that has been kind of a dynamic in football forever is the difference between, you know, an innovation or an oddity or exploiting a loophole, right? So when somebody does something new and, you know, almost no matter what it is in the game, if it fits within the rules, OK, then, you know, the football world adapts by either saying, hey, that's a great idea.

We're going to start doing it, too. And, you know, others take it on, or they look at it and go, no, that's not the way we're supposed to play this game. And then they they ban it.

They change the rules and get rid of it. So, you know, any time something new comes up, you don't know which one it's going to be. Right.

So you have stuff like huddling, which was new in the 20s. People didn't know before that, you know, a couple here and there to platoon football, icing the kicker, calling plays from the sideline. All those things were not part of the game at various points in time.

But, you know, somebody came up with a cool idea, and, you know, others bought into it. But you also have things like Bo Schembechler, whose Michigan teams kept getting beat in big games that were played on grass. So he decided he was going to. He had their equipment; people put washers on the bottoms of shoes because the rules said you couldn't have, you know, spikes longer than a half inch.

So he had him put washers on and then screw the spikes in so that they extended further. But they still were only half-inch spikes. Right.

So then the next year, you know, the rule makers got up and changed the rule. It said, you know, you can't. Your spikes can't, you know, be the end of the spike, which can't be more than half an inch from the bottom of the shoe. Right.

To get away, you know, to stop people like Bo from doing things like that. Anyway, you know, I've had a couple of different topics in the articles on the site. For example, we're going to talk about reverse center tonight. But, you know, I've done one in the past on the reverse quarterback, the tower play, the 12th man on the field, you know, who was a coach rather than a play.

It was a student coach rather than a player. You know, just all these kind of goofy little ideas. But so the reverse center, just to describe it to the listener, was, you know, if you just think about a center who's going up to snap the ball, just like normally approaches the line and, you know, facing the defense.

Well, that's the norm. But in the reverse center, the center turns around. And instead of facing the defense, he's facing he's facing his backfield.

And then he squats down, reaches between his legs. And grabs the ball. And then he snaps it double underhanded.

Right. And so, you know, you kind of go, well, that's stupid. But, you know, it first came up in, like, 1912.

And then, you know, mostly what I wrote about was 1941 when when Syracuse implemented the system and his the coaches thinking and it was, you know, Ozzie Solem, he he he wanted to be able to pitch the ball or snap the ball to running backs who were further spread out. He also used what he called the Y formation. So there was a quarterback immediately behind the center.

There was another, like a fullback type, immediately behind him. And then the two halfbacks were behind the tackle. So they were, you know, a little further spread.

And so by snapping in the reverse center mode, the center could swing his arms to the right or to the left and get it to a halfback who, you know, at the snap was already heading, you know, you know, starting to sweep. So just, you know, it enabled them to sweep to send the ball in a wider arc. But he could also just put it, you know, give it right back to the quarterback.

And then they thought at the time that the center facing away from the defense also gave the center the ability to pull, you know, more quickly. And so the funny, well, one of the interesting things about it is the line coach at Syracuse that year was a guy named Bud Wilkinson, who became a pretty famous, successful football coach. You know, so anyways, he had, you know, two pretty good football minds working on this thing.

And, you know, they came up with this tactic, the reverse center. So, you know, there was some contention about its legality early on in 1941. But, you know, then some folks on the football committee said, hey, it works.

It's it's within the rules. Nothing wrong with it. We may not like it, but, you know, here it is.

Syracuse had a pretty successful season. They upset they weren't, you know, they went to Wisconsin and beat them when they weren't expected to. I think they ended up like six and three, you know, something like that.

However, at the end of the year, the football gods decided that by the time they met in early January of 42, they had Pearl Harbor that occurred. And so they basically, you know, we're going to make virtually no changes in the football rules kind of for the duration. And we will adjust some things here and there.

One of their adjustments was they require they they modified the rule to say that the seven men on the line of scrimmage have to be facing their opponent. And so with that, the reverse center. Died never to be seen again.

You know, I'm sitting here thinking about when I first saw that. You know, first I laughed and said, oh, this can't be right. And then I read your post on it. Then, I started thinking from a defensive side.

And I'm sitting here thinking, OK, you're explaining that Y formation and a good portion of the snaps are either going to the quarterback or the fullback directly behind him. Well, I'm going to put somebody, you know, in a nose guard position, a zero technique will become today. And I'm going to blow that guy up from his rear end.

And is it easy to go ahead first and blow that play up into the quarterback and fullback? So they had better be pitching to the halfbacks every time they're doing their off-tackle plays or whatever they're doing. So, yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, I can't tell you exactly how they adjusted or how they, you know, how they managed that. But they did. And, you know, it proved to be successful.

And, you know, you know, they won. They won a couple of big games doing this reverse center. But, you know, again, the football god said this isn't football the way we intended it to be.

And so so it became an oddity rather than an innovation. Well, it's interesting when you were talking about some of these innovations that people haven't seen before. I know, at least in the high school rulebook, at least from six years ago when I was still officiating, they had a rule near the beginning that was kind of a catch-all rule, which I thought was probably one of the most brilliant things they put in a rulebook.

It said that if anything happens, that is not explained in this rulebook, it's at the referee's discretion to make a decision in the fairness of, you know, football, a fair and level playing field, which, you know, not exactly in those words, I forget how they are, but that's basically the gist of it. And I read that, you know, I remember as a young official coming on. I'm like, OK, where there's so much stuff in here.

Where are the people going to come up with stuff that that's not in the rulebook? Well, when I ended up getting a white hat, it seemed to happen quite often. And one thing that comes to mind, at least in our area, is that quarterbacks at the high school level were starting to go more and more in shotgun and spread formations. So they had what was called, you know, the foot kick or the stomp start, you know, to kick a man in motion where you see it's we don't even blink at it today because it happens all the time in the pro level where, you know, quarterbacks back there in shotgun, he kicks his foot, and the guy goes in motion.

Well, back when they were first doing that, there was a big discussion. I know in officiating circles, hey, is this a false start? Should this be considered a false start, or is this, you know, part of it? A false start is anything that simulates action at the snap, and the ball's not snapped. That's the basic definition of a false start.

So this is an odd occurrence. And but he's not really simulating action to snap. So there's a lot of discussion there.

And there were some inconsistencies in particular. One team we had in our area, from crew to crew, from referee to referee, how they were handling that. And we had to get our heads together real quick and decide what we were doing.

But yeah, just some things like that that happened. And, you know, the reverse center was probably something like that. Well, and that's one of the things when huddling first came in, you know, it was just like you're saying, there were some referees that said no.

You know, this is stalling and therefore we're going to penalize you. That was a it was a two yard penalty at the time. But but they, you know, they penalized him.

And others said, no, this is perfectly fine. As long as you get the ball, you know, snapped in a reasonable time, then we're good. So, you know, they had that same kind of discussion.

But just because it was new, you know. But, you know, that whole issue of the referee having that discretion is one of the. I remember, you know, coming across it, that is at least part of the conversation when, you know, there's been a couple of times where some guy's running down the field out ahead of everybody, and a fan or a player comes out on the field and tackles.

Right. And so then, what do you do? Is it that you award the touchdown? Do you do you give them the ball at that spot? You know, and so those kinds of just bizarre situations. They are one of the reasons that they've empowered the referee as they did.

And they should. Yeah, it's as an official, I learned, though, because those are judgment calls like what you just described, the kickstart, you know, things like that. The reverse center.

That's a judgment in whoever's officiating its view if that's legal or not. And giving a fair or unfair advantage to one team over another. And, you know, that's when you would call a foul.

But judgment is the toughest thing to call a judgment call because that's something where half of the people in the stands are going to like it, and half of them are not going to like it. At the same time, we have things that are cut and dried, like an offside or a false start or, you know, things like that. Those are just plain fouls.

It's, you know, it's penalized. There's there's usually no question about it. It's not. There's no judgment in it at all.

So, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.

Interesting. It's always interesting to get the kind of viewpoint of a referee, right? Because there are not that many. You know, there are a lot more people who've played the game and watched a lot of football out there.

Wearing a zebra shirt. Yeah. Well, they're always looking everywhere for officials.

So if somebody is interested, you'll contact your local high school chapter or, you know, your local school athletic directors, and they can for sure get you into a game of officiating because it's a great way to look at the game and you learn a lot of the game and see some things from the other side, so to speak. So it's very interesting, at least from a rule's take. So, Tim, why don't you take the time right now to share with listeners where they can find your tidbits and how they can get them in their email inbox or their Twitter each and every day? Yeah.

So, number one, if you just, you know, if you want to check out some of the articles and the things that I write about, just go to FootballArcheology.com and, you know, all the archives and everything's available on there. You know, I release it today's tidbit every day. And so if you want to make sure you get it every day, subscribe and you'll get an email with the content sent to you.

You know, that's seven o'clock Eastern every evening. And then you can also, you know, I post everything on Twitter as well. So, you know, I'm Football Archeology on Twitter.

So find me there if that's the way you'd prefer to consume. But you might miss some stories that way. So that's the problem.

That's the danger. Yeah, you don't want to do that. Don't want to subscribe.

It's easy. It's very painless. So, Tim, thank you very much.

Keep up the great work of preserving football history and enlightening us on some of these great antiquities of the game. And because we sure enjoy them and love to talk to you about them. And we love to talk to you again next week.

Very good. As always, thank you again, sir.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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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.

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The winter wonderland gridiron clash of 1925 between the Wisconsin Badgers and the Iowa Hawkeyes as told by FootballArchaeology.com.

On a crisp November day in 1925, the battle lines were drawn at Iowa Field in Iowa City. The Iowa Hawkeyes, seeking revenge for a narrow loss to Wisconsin the previous year, clashed with the Badgers, hungry to solidify their position in the newly formed Big Ten Conference.

Wisconsin, under the guidance of first-year Head Coach George Little, entered the game boasting a 5-0 record against non-conference opponents. Iowa, coached by Burt Ingwersen, sported a respectable 3-2 record, eager to prove their mettle against their Big Ten rivals.

The game unfolded as a defensive stalemate, with both teams struggling to move the ball consistently. Neither offense could find the end zone in the first half, leaving the halftime score locked at a scoreless tie. The tension crackled in the crisp Iowa air as fans of both teams held their breath.

The second half brought a glimmer of hope for the Hawkeyes. A sustained drive fueled by the running of Howard Baxter culminated in a field goal by Harold Swanson, giving Iowa a precarious 3-0 lead. The crowd erupted, but the celebration was short-lived.

Wisconsin responded with a punishing ground attack of their own. Doyle Harmon, the Badgers' star halfback, weaved through the Hawkeye defense, finally breaking free for a 15-yard touchdown run. With the extra point, Wisconsin snatched the lead 7-3, sending a wave of elation through their supporters.

The remaining minutes ticked away with agonizing slowness. Iowa made desperate attempts to equalize, but the Badger defense held firm. The final whistle blew, sealing Wisconsin's 7-3 victory.

Despite the defeat, the 1925 Hawkeye-Badger matchup remains a noteworthy chapter in both teams' histories. It marked the first competitive Big Ten game for both programs, setting the stage for a long and storied rivalry. It also showcased the defensive prowess of both teams, with strong performances from players like Doyle Harmon and Harold Swanson.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on the 33 Fumble Snow Game

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to another Tuesday of football archaeology nature, where we get to visit with the founder of that website, footballarchaeology.com, Timothy P. Brown.

Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen. Darin, I look forward to chatting once again. Let's see on this hot summer evening, we can talk about a winter.

Well, I guess it would have been a late fall day with a tad of snow. Yeah, the headline of this tidbit jumps right out to anybody looking at it. And the word 33 fumbles is what caught my eye.

And the title, listeners, is the 1925 Iowa Wisconsin Snow Games 33 fumbles that Tim posted back in April. And boy, Tim, this is an interesting one, and it is all of our attention right now. Yeah, so this is one that, you know, I. I really suggest that listeners try to get out to the site and take a look at it because it's got like eight pictures that I grabbed off of, you know, University of Iowa's, you know, library or photo archive.

So folks get to a rest stop or something, pull the car over, stop running on the treadmill, pull over. We got a link to Tim's site in the show notes. Click on it and get to these photographs, because these images are outstanding, like he says.

So, yeah, so, you know, this is obviously a big rivalry game, and they tend to be. Probably all the way back then, they probably had fairly stagnant offenses and really tough defenses, but it's kind of the history of both teams. But, you know, this was a day where, you know, it's a November game, but they had an unexpected or not unexpected, but an unseasonal, seasonable blizzard.

So, you know, the game starts, and there are already four inches of snow on the ground. 30-mile-an-hour winds coming from the north. And since football fields are oriented north-south, that meant you had a real advantage if you were heading south and not so much if you were heading north.

And so, you know, basically, a game played in blizzard conditions. Both teams came out there without gloves, you know, in the first half. I don't know about the people sitting on the bench, but those on the side, you know, playing, didn't have gloves.

And so, you know, the first quarter especially was a mess. There were 17 fumbles between the two teams during the first quarter. Wisconsin, so Iowa had the wind in the first quarter.

So at one point, Wisconsin was punting into the wind. And, you know, sounds like the punter got the ball up in the air a little bit. But he was, they had the ball on their own 49.

So he was probably on the 39 or something along those lines. But he gets a snap, punts the ball, and it gets caught in the wind and starts flying backwards. And ended up landing on the 35 yard line, plopped down in the snow.

And an Iowa player comes over and either grabbed it, you know, picked it up or touched it and then fumbled it. And so Wisconsin got the ball back. So that's kind of the game right there in a nutshell.

You know, if one play captured it. Another one that I really liked was, you know, the newspaper articles described an Iowa player who had a breakaway run in the second quarter. And he starts chugging along.

He's 17 yards downfield, and he just drops the ball. The ball slips out of his hands. And then Wisconsin recovered.

So 33 fumbles, you know, the whole game. It was they had, as you can imagine, had trouble keeping the sidelines and the goal lines cleared and how they determined whether anybody got a first down or not. I'm not entirely sure because they, you know, didn't have yard lines for most of the game.

But, and there were only, you know, as it turns out, there were only six first downs between the two teams all game. It was just a mess. I can sympathize with them because when I started officiating, there were no turf fields in our area.

We were all grass fields and were right by one of the great lakes. We get a lot of lake effect snow, especially in, you know, late October and November, and we had a lot of games, playoff games that were pretty, pretty important. You know, more, a little bit more important than a, not a regular season, the games are unimportant, but you know, a little bit more high profile and you have white lines on a field with white snow and that whatever the substances they use to align the fields and it would like to dissolve.

So the line would be spread out. You'd have these yard lines instead of being four or five inches wide, which might be eight or nine inches wide. You use those lines to mark your chains to measure for the first down.

Do you have a clip on it and you measure first down? So that was a disaster. Then I worked a game where the team, they knew it was going to snow. And so as it snowed, they would run out in between quarters and right before the game, they would put yellow lines on top of the snow where the yard lines were.

And that was a mess too. Cause then you start trudging through the snow and these yellow lines are getting kicked all over places. Seen it all yet.

And then you come home and we were wearing white knickers at the time. You have yellow all over your, your pants and you know, you get home and the wife's ready to kill you for trying to clean these white knickers anyway. But, uh, yeah, I can sympathize with them with the snow and, uh, you know, football game.

Yeah. Yeah. I, um, well, I don't recall.

I probably did cause, you know, I, I grew up in Wisconsin, and you, you know, played, played there and then coached in upstate New York. And then I went down to St. Louis. So I've, I've been in, you know, snowy weather conditions.

Right. Um, I don't remember playing in the snow or coaching the star. I've sat in the stands many times, you know, during snowy games or, you know, when the turf was filled with snow.

Um, I don't remember being in a blizzard situation though, like this, you know, cause this game, it was like, um, Wisconsin. They lost their yardage from scrimmage, and their penalties exceeded the yards they gained from scrimmage. You know, and I, Iowa had, uh, lost more, lost 95 yards on fumbles, which was more than a game from scrimmage.

So no, just a crazy game. Um, Wisconsin ended up winning cause in the fourth quarter, they had the ball on, I was one and then they lost it on a fumble. Uh, Iowa had to punt.

They punt out of the end zone. Wisconsin gets the ball on the 11th. Uh, you know, then they ended up scoring.

So they went like six, nothing. They couldn't convert. So just, you know, crazy, crazy game.

Um, and then just the last one is just that there was a, uh, there was only one pass attempt and that was Iowa on the last play of the game. Uh, you know, they, they attempted a pass, but didn't complete it. So I wonder, I wonder why when you have cold hands, a cold football and no points of reference on the field.

Yeah. You know, and that would have been still in the days when they used one ball the whole game. Right.

So that thing was, I weighed 150 pounds by the end. There were no long snaps in the second half. But, oh, but wow.

Well, I guess the only good news is that there was a, is in an era before there was game film. So the coaches didn't have to beat the snot out of their players for all the errors and everything in the game. They could do it by memory, but, uh, you'd have to witness it time and time again on film day.

So that's. Yeah. Well, you know, I came across this, this game because I'd written an article about Iowa's early, uh, uh, games on radio.

Uh, so this game, you know, they did end up broadcasting this thing on radio. Uh, so I can imagine, you know, just, just, you know, these guys had to somehow keep the tubes warm and, you know, that was, that was early radio, so how did they manage to do it? I don't know.

Especially, uh, with all the, uh, you know, because back then games were much quicker cause there's more running plays. So you're running the clock. Can you imagine that with all the turnovers stopping the clock 33 to extra times, that's probably like a three-and-a-half, four-hour game?

These people were probably going nuts trying to sit there through that. Well, and press boxes were open back then too. So it wasn't like you weren't sitting in some nice comfy heated, uh, location.

It was either down on the sidelines or up in a little shack on top of the stands. Uh, well, there are some things that we can greatly appreciate in the modern era of football compared to what our forefathers did on the football field. So, Tim, great stuff is always, uh, you know, you always have something interesting to talk about, and you do this daily in your tidbits and some of the other posts that you do both on social media and on your site.

And maybe, uh, you could share with the listeners how they too could share in this experience of having these daily items from football's past. Yeah, sure. It's really simple.

Um, you can follow me on Twitter just to, you know, find me at football archeology, um, or, and you know, my preference is that you subscribe on the, on the site, um, football archeology.com, uh, every, every post, every page gives you the option to subscribe. And so real simply enter your email and then every night you'll get it, get an email with the story at, uh, seven o'clock Easter. And as I always say, let them stack up if you want, or read them, you know, two minutes later, whichever you prefer.

And, uh, but just a way to get, get, uh, you know, most of them are one- or two-minute reads that are pretty quick stuff. Uh, but tells a little story of some silly element of football or, you know, something that has changed over time. And, uh, so hopefully, it's fun.

Yeah. Then, the reads might be one or two minutes, but if you're like me, uh, some of the interesting images you have on there that you talk about, I find myself studying the, the, the pictures after I read it and I glanced at the pictures or read it and I'm like, Oh, let me go back and look what he's pointing out here. And then you find all kinds of crazy things in there and, you know, blowing it up.

And it's good times. It's great stuff because of the imagery and the wording, and the stories that you tell are very interesting. Well, good.

Well, Tim, we greatly appreciate you coming on and sharing this story about this great game from 1925 and this, uh, blizzard, uh, turnover battle that was played between the Hawkeyes and the Badgers. And, uh, we thank you. And we will talk to you again next Tuesday.

Okay. Very good. Thanks, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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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 ofFootball-Fun-Facts/Facts-about-who-wore-the-first-helmet">the 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 Football-Fun-Facts/Helmets/History-of-the-Winged-Helmets">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.