Football History

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The tipped pass is an exciting play that we see often in the pass-happy offenses of modern times and the athletes on both sides of the ball downfield. The rules we know today concerning the play were very much different than they are today. The video covers the early history of tipped pass rules in American football.

Darin Hayes, is interviewing Timothy Brown from Football Archaeology. Besides the video we have the audio on our podcast too. Brown discusses a time in football history, from 1907 to 1911, when a tipped pass was considered a fumble. This means that if a pass was tipped by a player from either team, the ball was live and could be recovered by either team. This rule was implemented to increase player safety, as the forward pass was a new and dangerous play at the time. However, the rule was eventually changed because it led to too many scrambles for the ball, which could be dangerous for the players.

The video also discusses other interesting facts about the early days of the forward pass, such as how teams would sometimes try to create a circle of players around the receiver to protect him from being tackled.

Modern rules concerning a tipped pass go along these lines. A pass tipped by a defender can be caught by anyone on the field, including a previously ineligible offensive player. Only an eligible offensive player or any defender can legally bring a tipped pass by the offense.


-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on When Tipped Passes Were Live Balls[b]

Hello, my football friends; this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome again to The Pig Pen, your portal for positive football history. It is Tuesday, and we have another special treat: Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com will join us to discuss one of his most recent tidbits. And this one is recent and fresh.

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Hey, thank you, Darin. Yeah, this is a good one.

This is kind of one of the more bizarre rules or one that most people had no idea was out there because, you know, I just recently came across it. So, yeah, when I read it, I had no idea. You enlightened me.

And I thought I knew, you know, a lot about especially the rules and things like that, but this one caught me off guard. And you've titled it when tip passes were live balls as a little bit of a mystery, but also, you know, sells a point and just sounds odd to our modern year for football. So why don't you explain this to us a little bit? Yeah, so, as I tried to explain in the article itself, you know, with the forward pass, which had been around for a long time.

You know, it just was illegal. You know, if you threw a forward pass and what we would think of as forward lateral, you know, now, but if you did that, you lost possession of the ball. And then, in trying to, you know, open the game following the 1905 season, the rule makers made just a host of different changes to the game.

But one of them was a legalized forward pass. And, you know, the rule book for six only laid out six or seven rules related to the passing game. You know, they just couldn't see what this might become in the future.

And for them, they were thinking of forward laterals, this short little right in the area, kinds of, you know, not not the down downfield passing, which, you know, a couple of teams actually did in 1906. So they had just a really simple set of rules. But, you know, they were and mostly, you know, the game.

They risked the forward pass a lot. You know, if you threw an incomplete pass, it was a turnover and a spot foul. So it returned to the spot of the pass.

If the pass hit an ineligible receiver turnover, if the pass crossed the goal line on the fly, or if it bounced turnover. So, you know, things like that. And then you couldn't throw the ball until you were five yards to the left or the right of the center.

You know, so it was consistent with the checkerboard pattern field. And, you know, the first person to get the ball couldn't run until they were five yards left or right. So so anyways, you know, it just there were a lot of things, restrictions that just are inconceivable today.

But then, you know, they kind of went through a season and they decided to add a few rules. And one of them that they added in 1907 was that if the ball was in the air and touched an an eligible receiver, so an eligible offensive person or defense, then the ball and it it then hit the ground. That ball was locked.

So basically any kind of batted ball by a defender, but, you know, a tipped ball, a dropped ball, you know, from an offensive player, was essentially a fumble. And so, you know, there'd be a pass and somebody would tip, you know, try for it. They wouldn't get it, but they'd touch the ball.

So then, you know, the balls are rolling on, you know, like any kind of situation where there's a fumble, it's a mad scramble to get to the thing. And since the pass was probably a little bit more in the open field because it had to be five yards right or left, you know, all that kind of stuff. There were guys flying in all over the place, trying to get to that ball.

So so it's just one of the it's one of those rules. It just it seems so bizarre that they that they did that. And yet, you know, it was.

So the 1907 season, you know, it's always, you know, if you read through, you know, some of the commentaries, you'll just're reading like an old newspaper report of a game and saying, you know, the ball bounced off of Smith, and there was a mad scramble for the ball. And, you know, Pittsfield State recovered or, you know, whatever. And so then, you know, again, the whole rule of the game rule changes were supposed to be for player safety, and they recognized that there were too many scrambles.

So they made a change for 1908 where they said only the first offensive player that touches the ball. Can you recover it, right? So if you think about it, you know, the football rule that only you know, like if an offensive player touches the ball or touches a forward pass, then it has to have a defensive player touch that pass before an offense can then before a second offensive player can grab it. However, that originated in the 1908 rule, which was trying to eliminate some of the scrambles.

So and then, you know, so it remained in place until 1911, and then they then they cut the rule out. But so you had, you know, so you had seven, eight, nine. So you had a four year period where.

The tip ball was a fumble, you know, effectively. And the other thing that's just funny about that is, you know, talking about teams being unable to really conceive how to throw the pass and how, you know, how do you create a pass route if you've never seen anyone throw a forward pass before? And one of the things that teams did fairly frequently back then until, I think, it was maybe 32. The offensive lineman could go downfield on a pass.

One of the approaches that the teams took was to you'd send all your offensive linemen to the left or something. And then whoever the receiver was, you know, maybe an end, would get in the middle of those offensive linemen. They kind of form a circle around them.

And then they try to pass the ball to, you know, to the middle while the offensive line blocked. The difference is trying to get at him because, again, there was no pass interference yet. So it is probably while the quarterbacks get mauled by like five guys that aren't getting blocked because they often lose the line.

I mean, yeah. So it's just crazy when you think about, you know, what that had to be. You know, plus, you know, again, most guys weren't wearing numbers.

If they had numbers, it was only on the back of their jerseys. But even like Carlisle, as far as I can tell, Carlisle was the first school to paint their helmets. And they did it because they wanted to be able to identify who their players were, you know, in, you know, as they ran downfield, you know, for passes.

That old Glenn Warner was a clever guy. Well, he wasn't there yet. He wasn't.

He was OK. Yeah, he went back and forth between Cornell. You know, he started Cornell, went to Carlisle, and went back to Cornell.

And then he was back at Cornell or Carlisle in 07, but no six. One of the former players, you know, the coach. But they.

They had, well, one of the other things that teams did was like when they circle the guy, some lift them up in the air, like in a, you know, the rugby lineouts, you know, when they're tossing the ball in. And, you know, which was just a few years before, had still been away. One of the ways that football teams brought the ball in from the sideline, you know, from out of bounds, was the law.

Or they call it a fair as well. Anyways, they'd lift the guy up in the air and throw him the ball. But so it's just one of those things that just, again, made sense at the time, maybe, you know, I mean, they were just trying to make some up some things, you know.

But the idea of a tipped pass being effectively a fumble is just kind of bizarre. Yeah, you know, maybe four or five years ago, if you would have said that with the guy in the circle and everybody else, you know, helping him with the before the tush push and brotherly shove or whatever you call it, maybe we would have said, oh, you're out of your mind. That wouldn't happen.

But maybe it's a little bit more the normal activity we see in football these days, which I hope they get rid of because I hate it. But go back to the rule. I'm OK with it.

I'm OK. You don't like the tush pusher. No, I like when they used to have the rule, you know, you can't aid the runner.

You know, that's. Yeah, yeah. Let him know you can block guys in front of you.

You can't pull, push or otherwise move that runner, help them go. I I still I'm a traditionalist. I think that should be the maybe it's not so traditionalist.

Maybe they were helping the runner long before that rule, as you're saying. But yeah, the football I grew up with, you couldn't do it. Yeah, no, exactly.

I mean, it it it went away, you know. Quite a while ago, but I mean, it was part of the original game and then they then they got rid of it really as a player safety issue. I blame it.

I blame it on Matt Leinert and Reggie Bush against Notre Dame in 2005 or whenever it was. That's because they're like the next year that they changed. Right.

Right. Plus, they beat Notre Dame on that play. Yeah.

Well, well. But, you know, back in the day, they. You know what? At the time that they instituted, you know when they.

Said you couldn't aid the runner. Part of it was, you know, you only had three officials on the field. And so that call, you know, officials were reluctant to make the call.

Right. And so anyways, that's part of it. I'm kind of getting a little bit confused now, but anyway, so, you know, it was one of those things where the trying to force the officials to make the calls that that's actually one of the justifications for why they brought it back, because people, you know, nobody wants to make that call.

But yeah, that's true. That's true. But it's getting crazy.

Somebody's going to get hurt. That's my theory. And that's when the rule all of a sudden change and be banned again.

But I don't want somebody to get hurt. You know, it could be offense, defense, alignment, whatever. But somebody's going to get hurt.

But, Tim, you know, we love how you bring up some of these, you know, oddities of football and things, unique aspects or something maybe a team did, you know, a hundred years ago that we never heard of before. And including this rule here, you know, that's just part of football. And it's a great history.

And you do things like this each and every day that you write about and explain very thoroughly, and a lot of times with images that you find in old yearbooks and newspapers. And how can people share in these tidbits that you put on to see them as they're coming out? Real simple. Just go to footballarchaeology.com and subscribe.

Then you'll get an email. Alternatively, you can follow me on Twitter. You can also get the Substack app on threads or through the Substack app because, you know, my blog newsletter is on Substack, and you can follow me on Substack as well.

So, whatever floats your boat. All right. Well, his name is Timothy Brown.

Footballarchaeology.com is his website. And Tim, we appreciate you coming here this Tuesday. And we hope to talk to you again next Tuesday about some more great football.

Very good. Thank you, sir.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

Timothy P Brown of Football Archaeology joins to discuss the first jersey numbers retired in the College game. Here is a link to Tim’s original;l Tidbit. Th... — www.youtube.com

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College football jerseys are more than just fabric; they symbolize school pride, individual achievement, and moments etched in memory. But did you know some jerseys transcend even that, becoming so iconic they're permanently retired, hanging, and preserved for all to honor, forever out of reach?

Join us in this visit with FootballArchaeology.com's Timothy Brown as we delve into the fascinating stories behind the first three college football jerseys ever retired, uncovering the legends who wore them, the moments they immortalized, and the legacy they left behind.

Prepare to be transported back to a time when gridiron giants walked the Earth, their jerseys becoming more than just numbers but testaments to their enduring impact on the game we love. Buckle up, college football fans, and let's embark on a journey through history, one retired jersey at a time!

-[b]Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on the 1st 3 retired jersey numbers

Hello, my football friends; this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to Tuesday. And it's FootballArcheology.com day with Timothy P. Brown, the founder and host of that website.

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Good to see you.

I was trying to adjust my little white light here. I've tried a bunch of things to brighten up this room, but I'm down in, you know, I've got a basement office, and it's always kind of yellow. But you're not here to look at me.

You're here to listen to that. That's right. And nobody wants to look at me either.

And I have too much light, and it washes me out. And I look like I'm, you know, a marshmallow man or something. So, hey, that's the way it goes.

But, you know, we're not technology people. We're football people. And we're here to talk a little bit about football and some football of ancient times here for at least, you know, a while back.

And you have a really interesting tidbit I'd love to discuss today. You talk about the first three retired jersey numbers in a recent tidbit. And gosh, that piques the interest.

Just hearing that. Maybe you could tell us about that story, who these three jerseys were, and who wore them. Yeah, so, you know, so first of all, before numbers could get retired, people had to wear numbers and, you know, when football was first when numbers were first being used to identify players, it they were like on the scorecards.

The players didn't wear them, but they wouldn't wear a number necessarily. But the school would publish a scorecard that, if somebody did a certain thing, they made a tackle, scored a touchdown, or came into the game as a substitute, they would post that player's number on the scoreboard in a particular spot. And then that is what, you know, you'd have to OK, number five.

And then that was, you'd find the corresponding number on the scorecard. So then, you know who the player was. But that was kind of a thing people don't realize, and it is a goofy little thing that occurred.

But one of the other things when that process was going on was that, you know, the numbers could change from week to week. I mean, normally, it came up with one order at the beginning of the year, and then they just numbered the guys one through twenty-five. Right?

And then whoever the visiting team was, they'd number them to, you know, assign them a number. So, you know, the numbers didn't mean it to the players. But then they, you know, so starting 1905 is the first time, numbers were in a football game.

But it didn't really until mid-teens when, you know, a lot more teams started wearing them. And so it wasn't until, you know, 1925, there's this fellow named Red Grange, who turned out to be a pretty good running back at Illinois. And he happened to wear number 77, you know, not a number we associate with running backs nowadays, but, you know, that's what he wore.

And he had such a fabulous career that Illinois decided, you know, once he, you know, played his last game, that they would never allow anyone else to wear number 77 for the Illinois football team. So he became the first player to have a number retired, as far as I know, that's across all sports. And so, so, you know, range number 77, boom.

So he's the first guy. Then the next guy was a similarly talented running back out at Stanford, Ernie Nevers. And so the funny thing about his story is that he wore number one.

And when they retired, you know, this at the time, on the Pacific Coast, a lot of the student organizations kind of ran sports much more than they, I mean, eventually that got professionalized. But the student organization voted and said, we won't allow anybody else to wear number one at Stanford. And so, somehow, they slipped up in the next year, and a running back got issued the number one for one of the games.

And what's just kind of kind of cool about it? It's just that, you know, it was kind of a big thing. It got caught, you know, in the newspapers and everything.

But then there's a picture in Stanford yearbook for that year that shows this guy wearing number one in a game, you know, and, you know, it's just at that time, they didn't have a lot of pictures in the yearbook. But anyway, that's what, and then I've got that in the tidbit that we're talking about, you know. Nevers was probably a little bit ticked.

He was playing pro ball next year for the Duluth program. I'm assuming that point, but he's probably, hey, I thought you retired my number. Why is this guy wearing it? What the hell? Yeah, well, I tell you, he wasn't and didn't see it on TV.

So he wouldn't have seen it at the time. But yeah, it's kind of a story. And then, you know, they stopped it after that first time.

So then the third guy should have his number retired. That came in 1927, so two years later. And it's a guy that kind of everybody, you know, it's like today, you know, there's certain players that everybody knows.

And so, at the time, he would have been, you know, certainly known by anybody on the West Coast, probably, you know, other parts of the country because he was all American. But he was the captain of St. Mary's football team in 1927, named Larry Betancourt. And unlike the first two guys who were running backs, Betancourt was a center.

So, you know, apparently he was talented enough and just an honorable guy, all that kind of stuff. So then they ended up retiring his name. And then he ended up instead of signing with the.

He signed a major league contract with the NFL and played for three years with the St. Louis Browns, the same organization Ernie Nevers played baseball for. He played for parts of three seasons in the majors and then retired at age 32.

And then he played for the Packers in 1933. So, six years after getting out of college, he went and picked up one season anyway with the Packers. So anyway, Larry Betancourt.

Interesting trivia answer to a trivia question for you. Yeah, it is. Now, Tim, maybe you can answer this question.

Now we know today, when players' numbers get retired, you know, it is definitely in a professional sport. Even college football is usually like at their final home game. I've seen it happen many times, or they'll say, hey, this is the last time this number will be worn on a field.

So people appreciate that player a little bit more. In the 1920s, when Grange and Betancourt and Ernie Nevers were together, was it the same kind of thing at their last game, or did they have a separate photo shoot or ceremony or something? Yeah, I don't think it was all that formalized. To my knowledge, certainly, nothing occurred at a game.

So, like Illinois, a picture was taken at the time with Grange holding his jersey and his hands after a game. So, I mean, it was it was a staged photo. So, you know, they knew they were doing this, but to my knowledge, I don't think they did any kind of ceremony, you know, as part of his last game.

And then, you know, the others, Nevers and Betancourt, I think with Nevers, they kind of heard, hey, this is what happened with Grange, we should do the same thing with Nevers. So, I think that came a little bit after the fact. And then Betancourt, too, I mean, as far as I could tell, you know, looking at their yearbooks and things like that, I didn't see anything about this happening to him during the time he was, you know, still playing for them.

And then, you know, he played baseball for them the following spring, too. I'm trying to think that was Nevers, like a year ahead of Grange, because I know Nevers played, and Stanford played Notre Dame in that 1925 Rose Bowl. And Grange, I think, was a junior in the 1925 or 1924 season.

So 1925 would have been his final season with Thanksgiving. I think they were both seniors in their 25s. OK, OK.

If I'm not mistaken, Nevers was a junior when he played in that Rose Bowl. OK, that's why I was a little bit confused.

And I thought the Rose Bowl was his last game. OK, that makes sense. Yeah.

So yeah, anyway, I mean, it's just one of those things that we take for granted now, but, you know, it's like everything else. Somebody had to think this up. Right.

Somebody thought, hey, we're going to not let anybody else wear Red Green's number. I think it's lost the time, you know, who that was. But it's, yeah, it's just one of those things.

Somebody made it up, and now it's a tradition and a tremendous honor, regardless of sport and whether it's your high school or anything. You must have done some pretty good things if they return your number. Right.

It's also caused some interesting situations. I said to him that a couple of years ago when J.J. Watt went to the Cardinals, he wanted to wear 99 like he wore at Houston. But that was Marshall Goldberg's number for the Chicago Cardinals.

He also had to ask permission from the Marshall Goldberg family. They, of course, allowed it. I think about Joe Montana, you know, when he was 16 with the 49ers, when he went to the Chiefs, of course, 16 was retired from Len Dawson.

So he had ended up wearing, I think, 15 when he was with the Chiefs. But just some interesting things with these legends going to another team. And, hey, you can't have your old team number because we have our own legend here by that number.

It's kind of a neat thing there, too. Well, and it's just, you know, like at the professional level, you get into merchandising and all that kind of stuff. But it's just kind of funny how attached people become to a number, you know, that is often just randomly assigned somewhere along the line.

They got that number, and then, you know, it becomes part of their identity. And so, anyway, I think the whole thing is amusing in some respects. Yeah, it is.

And it's amazing how we do become attached to the numbers. I know I was a being a Steelers fan even to this day. When I think of number 10, I think of Roy Jarella, the kicker from the 70s, because that's who I grew up number 10.

And, you know, you have Santonio Holmes catching, you know, Super Bowl-winning catches wearing that number. And you've had many other players wearing that number 10, not Roy Jarella, the kicker. They're much more athletic and doing some better things than kick and field goals and things like that, too.

It's just amazing how we associate that. It was a good chat and a great discussion. You point out some really cool aspects of football that are sometimes so obvious and staring us right in the face.

But you bring up some history and some stories to it. Maybe you could share with the listeners how they can read you. Yeah.

So, the best way is to just go to football archaeology dot com and subscribe. It's free. And otherwise, if you don't want to do that, then you can follow me on Twitter on threads or subscribe to the Substack app, and you can follow me there and not necessarily get emails, you know, kind of whatever works for you.

Yeah, most definitely. And Tim, we appreciate you coming on here, folks. The link to the tidbit Tim spoke about today is in the podcast show notes.

It'll also take you to football archaeology dot com. Once you're there, you can check out some of these great tidbits he has there. And, you know, hit him up on Twitter and some of these other social media as he's on and message him on threads.

I or on Substack, I'm sorry, as I quite often do reading these and putting my two cents worth. We have a little banter a couple of times a week on this, along with some others. And it's good, good fun reading a tidbit.

The comments section is good fun, too. So, Tim, we appreciate you. We would love to talk to you again next week about some more great football.

Very good. I'm sure we'll find something to chat about.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

Love the football jersey designs and evolution wait till you check out the History of American Football Jersey.

-Football Jersey Frequently Asked Questions

-What are American football jerseys made of? Modern jerseys are a mix of synthetic fibers such as polyester or a blend of different materials such asspandex, for more check out our in-depth study ofThe Make up and Materials of Football Jerseys.

-What are some of the unique football jerseys in history? Gridiron jerseys with logos on the front were some what of fad once upon a time. Check this story titled Football Jerseys with Emblems.

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We travel back almost 120 years and revel in a phenomenal play that changed the course of history in the gridiron realm.

Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology joins us to tell the saga of the 1905 Michigan Wolverines and Michigan's Goal Line Punt Return of 1905.

Michigan's Goal Line Punt Return of 1905

The 1905 Chicago Maroons and Michigan Wolverines clashed marking a turning point in college football history. This epic matchup, also known as the "First Greatest Game of the Century," held immense significance for both teams and the sport as a whole. Michigan's Point'A'Minute teams had a rather lengthy unbeaten streak and the U of Chicago wanted to break it.

The scoreless affair came down to the final minute when the Wolverine punter could not get a kick off nor escape the rush and a safety won the game for the Maroons.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on the Michigan Goal Line Punt Return

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal for positive football history. Welcome to another football archaeology day with Timothy Brown on that website. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, thank you, Darin. Look forward to chatting. And I was going to say this subject is kind of about my back-to-the-future game.

So that's a kind of fits in really well with your, the broader sports history network that you are a part of. But this is definitely my back to the future game. Well, that that's a great way to look at it.

I'm going to try to hold that line. And as you talk here, the title of your recent tidbit is Michigan's goal line punt return of 1905, the era that I love of football. For some reason, I'm just enamored with the early years of the 20th century and the ball game that was played.

So I can't wait to hear what you have to say about this. Yeah. So, you know, if any listeners aren't as aware, Pigskin Dispatch is part of the Sports History Network.

And, you know, Arnie runs that, and one of his, you know, kind of themes of the things that he uses, you know, consistently when he does his own podcast is he says, okay, get hop in the DeLorean and let's go back in time. Right. And so, you know, this was asked recently in another context, but it's like, if you could go back and watch one football game in history, what would that game be? And so I actually named two.

I said, if it was NFL, I'd go to the ice bowl, but if it's college or just general football, I would go back to the Chicago, Michigan game of 1905. And it's just like, you know, you just can't even imagine how big a game this was, you know? So it's, it is literally the last weekend of college football when the whole system is under attack because of the violence in the game and the number of deaths. And there's not going to be a whole; there's going to be a revolution before the 1906 season.

But so this is still, it's the last of the old guard. And you've got two teams entering the game, Michigan, who has been running roughshod over everybody, including Chicago for the most part, you know, in the most recent years, you know, Michigan was in the first Rose Bowl in 1902. They got their point-a-minute offense on their field in Yost, and leading into the game with Chicago, Michigan had outscored their opponents, 495 to zero, 495 to zero, you know, reasonably dominant, right? Now, Chicago was nowhere near as impressive. They had only outscored their opponents 269 to five.

I mean, they'd given up; they'd given up a touchdown, right? I mean, so they couldn't have been that impressive. Um, so anyway, it's just one of these things where it's just like, you know, these two just dominant teams. And I think that was probably the first time, you know, maybe some of the earlier Michigan teams where people were like this game, but for sure, this is the first game where it's like, this is a game that's better than any game being played that was played in the East all year long, right? Michigan had some great teams, and they were national champs, but this is the first game where the Midwest has the two best teams in the country.

And I, you know, nobody would have doubted that at that point. So it's a huge game, huge game. And just to add onto that, you probably have two of the biggest innovators of the game of football in history, but, you know, fielding HOs, as you said, and Amos Alonzo Stagg for Chicago, they don't get any bigger than that for college coaches.

Yeah. And so, and so, you know, they're playing in Chicago because that's where the big stadium is and that's where the big crowds can be, you know, and so they, you know, they get more, the gates bigger in Chicago. And so it's zero, zero in the fourth quarter, you know, it's a back-and-forth type of game, obviously, if it's zero, zero, and Walter Eckersall is the quarterback of Chicago.

He's also their punter and their drop kicker. So, midway through the fourth quarter, he's punting from the 55-yard line. Cause they still had a 55-yard line there.

Then he boots the ball, and it lands somewhere close to the end of the goal line. Michigan had two players back. One of them was a guy named Denny Clark.

He fields the ball on the two-yard line and apparently, you know, took a step back. And as he steps back, a guy named Mark Caitlin hits him. The hit carries over the goal line into the end.

Well, it wasn't the goal-end zone yet, but you know, it was past the goal line for safety. And so, you know, at that time, football did not have forward progress. So if you got hit on the one-yard line and carried into the, into the, you know, behind the goal into touch, you know, behind the goal line, then you, you know, if you got down there, there was safety.

And so Chicago goes ahead to nothing, and then fundamentally, nothing else happens the rest of the game. And Chicago wins two to nothing. And they're the national champs because of that play.

And two points were scored against Michigan for the season, out of safety. And so, you know, one of the things that happened in 1906 was that the football rules initiated forward progress.

So, that play would not have counted as a safety in 1906, but it did in 1905. So it's just one of these, you know, like great moments in college football. So, you know, it just would be really fun.

And unfortunately, I think Denny Clark was kind of a troubled guy his whole life, you know, even before any of this happened. But he, you know, he just was so distraught. He may not have even gone back to Ann Arbor with the team.

I'm not sure about that. But he literally he transferred, you know, he couldn't stand being there. He transfers to MIT graduates, you know, he's a smart guy.

And then, but he never really got over it. He ended up committing suicide in 1932. But, you know, it was just one of those things where, you know, forgetting about the Danny Clark or Denny Clark issue, you know, just the atmosphere at that game just had to be crazy.

You know, it's just, you know, just the best football that was being played in the country, and for it to end the way that it ended was just something else, you know. That was a humongous rivalry back then because the Chicago Maroons were part of the Western Conference Center that was called the Big Ten. But they were part of that.

Ohio State really wasn't anything to call home about it as a football program yet. And that was that was Michigan's big rival. And the other thing about that was there was a guy, and I'm going to leave his first name blank, but I think his last name is Elbels or Ebels.

Anyways, on the way back. No, no, it was a year or two before that. On the way back from a game when Michigan beat Chicago, a guy who was a Michigan student is taking the train back, and he writes this song that is now, you know, the victors.

So Michigan's fight song was written in response to a victory over Chicago. So that kind of gives you a little bit of a sense of, you know, Chicago's stature and the nature of that rivalry. And even like, you know, on Wisconsin, there's a line in on Wisconsin that now says, take the ball clear down the field, boys.

You know, we're going to win this game. But it used to take the ball clear around Chicago. We're going to win this game or along those lines.

So Chicago was a big deal for Wisconsin, too. You know, so they were a, you know, they're a big deal back then. Yeah, most definitely.

Well, that is a great story. And I'm glad you shared it with us today and just brings back, you know, get your blood boiling a little bit to watch some live football. And I can see why it would be one of your wishes with Arnie to go back and watch that game.

Did he ever show you his DeLorean when you were on with him? I don't think, you know, so when he and I did one or two podcasts, we just did it by telephone. So I didn't; I wouldn't have seen a visual. I think I was; I was probably one of his early Zoom video calls.

And he decided to show me the DeLorean as he was telling me. And here it was a little matchbox car. I was a little bit underwhelmed.

And I was a little bit disappointed. And it's like a, there wasn't a buzz, you know, he's all a smoke and yeah. Yeah.

Don't look at the DeLorean behind the curtain. Tim, Tim, that is a great piece of football history. And you share for pieces of football history a lot on your website.

And maybe you could tell the folks where to go into to look at some of your stuff. Sure. You know, the site is footballarchaeology.com. It's a Substack site.

So you can, you know, just go to footballarchaeology.com and subscribe. You know, I'm also, you know, I basically post everything on Twitter and on threads, and then, you know, you can also use the Substack app if you just want to follow as opposed to subscribe. So anyway, those are the kinds of options, or you can just go out to the site whenever you want.

And there's an archive now with about a thousand different, you know, articles out there. So have at it. All right, Tim, we thank you again for sharing with us and, you know, telling that great story.

Like I said, the hairs are still on the back of my neck. I have to go back and comb them after we're done here. But we thank you for that.

I'm going to hit the cold shower, and we will talk to you again next week. Hey, very good. Thanks.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

---

The draw play – a staple of football offenses, a play that keeps defenses guessing. But where did it come from? Who first thought of faking a pass and then handing the ball off? Today, we're joined by renowned football historian Timothy Brown to crack open the dusty playbook and uncover the surprising origins of the draw play.

The story originates from a recent Tidbit of Tim's titled: The Origins of the Draw Play.

The Draw Play in football is still used as an element of surprise at all levels of football. It is also quite a common play choice when a team is in the unenviable position of third and really long as a way to garner some cheap, safe, and easy field position to set up the punting unit,

Timothy Brown joins us to talk about the origins and the purpose of the draw play in this episode.


-Transcript of the Origins of the Draw Play with Timothy Brown

Darin Hayes
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 where we get to visit with our friend Timothy Brown of football archaeology dot com. Tim, welcome back to the pig pen.

Timothy Brown
Hey, Darin, I am looking forward to chatting, and hopefully, this discussion will not get too drawn out, if you know what I mean.

Darin Hayes
Oh, you are just the master of the Segway, and folks, these are not pre-rehearsed, So these are just as much a surprise to me as they are to you when they come out, but

Timothy Brown
They got it. Dad jokes are what make the world around.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, we are both dads and grandfathers, and we have the jokes coming at us. So, you know, so pardon our humor. But Tim is segueing into a title that his tidbit he's going to talk about tonight, which he had titled The Origins of the Draw Play, which is a very famous play. And when it's still common today in football. So, Tim, what do you get to tell us about the origins of the draw play?

Timothy Brown
Yeah, so well, I think part of what's fun about the draw play, like a lot of things in football, is kind of, you know, people always talk about, you know, the game, you know, football repeats itself that, you know, that there's this whole thing about, you know, well, we've seen and done that before. And, you know, in a lot of cases, that has been the case, but it always kind of comes back to, well, what do you mean, you know, so what is it about like today's draw play that you can see and spot in earlier versions of that play. And so that's kind of what this tidbit was about. And so, so, you know, like a lot of things, you know, I recently did a tidbit on homecoming. And the first homecoming, so in order to talk about that, you have to define, OK, well, what a homecoming is and what the elements of a homecoming are. So with the draw play, it's like, well, what's a draw play? And, you know, for me, it comes down to the draw play is a play in which it is a, it's a fake pass with a, with a, with a run that is, you know, a predetermined run. So it's not, you know, back in the day they used to, out of the, you know, single wing, double wing, and probably, you know, out of the Notre Dame, you know, and Minnesota boxes and all those kinds of things. You know they, they'd send a back out wide on a run-pass option, not the RPO we know today, but a run-pass option, where it was like, OK, you either run the ball, but if the guys open, throw at home. So that's an option that was still an option play whereas, you know, draw it's predetermined you call it, call it in the huddle, you're going to fake a pass, and then run it, you know, and it's an attempt to kind of take advantage of the pass rushers coming at you.

Darin Hayes
And what you're saying is that you're basically having your lineman pass block instead of the traditional run block where they're trying to go beyond the line of scrimmage. They're trying to stay on their side of the line of scrimmage and just protect but open a hole.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, I mean, back in the day, there wasn't that restriction on the linemen, you know, they could go downfield. Right. So I mean, some of that stuff gets a little bit mixed up. And even, you know, as far as I can tell, there wasn't a heck of a lot of difference between past blocking and around blocking back in the day. But you know, now in today's world, yes, 100%, right. But that's, you know, that's our, you know, 21st-century mind, defining, you know, what a draw play is. But back then, so the first, you know, I wrote this about Fritz Chrysler when he was coaching at Michigan. And he had drawn up a play for, you know, postseason or preseason guide that Grant let Rice was doing. And he basically had his single-wing tailback get the deep snap. And then he rolled out as it's drawn up anyways, he rolled out left, you know, kind of stood there for a second. And he had like, you know, the whole backside of the line, and the backs were out there starting to block for him. But a couple of them leaked out into the, you know, downfield. And then, you know, I mean, everything appeared that he was going to pass it, and then boom, he takes off. Right. So now that, you know, in my definition, it would be a draw play. Right. I mean, it's not what we think of today as a draw play because this is 1939. And then modern tee with a quarterback under center and then dropping, you know, kind of straight back, you know, backpedaling or, you know, turning and kind of carioca, but, you know, peddling back that first showed up in 1940, you know, a year later. So anyways, you know, it's one of those things where there's a lot of football references that say that that the draw play that we now think of, you know, tee quarterback, you know, backing out and then giving it to a fullback or a halfback. A lot of people say that that was, you know, one of the Chicago Bears plays. But it's not in the 1946 Chicago Bears playbook that, you know, Hallis and Shaughnessy and those guys wrote. So, you know, so then I'm going, OK, well, I don't believe it then. Right. Because they've got 80 plays there. So the first place that I saw the term draw play in newspapers anyway came in the 1950 Rose, not Rose Bowl, but Cotton Bowl. And so that was a game with, you know, two games or two teams you wouldn't expect to be in the Cotton Bowl today necessarily. But TCU, which, OK, you can believe TCU is in the Cotton Bowl, then Carnegie Tech. So, it's not a team that is going to show up in the cotton today. But you know, TCU had three top 10 NFL, you know, first-round picks the next year. One of them was an All-American quarterback, Davey O 'Brien, you know, who was a stud. I'm sorry, I'm messing that up. They had Tobin Roat, and Rice beat UNC. I'm mixing up which story I'm talking about. So Tobin Roat was a quarterback, and he, you know, operated out of the dropback tee. And then, you know, the other thing. So it was a low-scoring game, and he ends up, you know, basically, they won the game as a result of, you know, running a draw play, you know, and a draw play the way that we think of it today. But still, at the time, they didn't call it a draw play, or at least if they called it a draw play on the field or in practice, that didn't get communicated out to the wider world. Because the first time I found the term draw play in the newspapers, you know, came a few years later. And so it was a guy by the name was Dick Cullen, who was a Minneapolis sports writer. And he must have been a guy who was, well, I know for sure he was because I've read enough of the stuff. He was one of these sports writers who kind of got into the play, and the terminology is more of a technical sort of guy, you know, so if you think now about the like the color analysts that are on TV or radio, he was like, maybe a little bit more of a football expert who could provide that kind of, you know, input into the game. And because he's, you know, so draw play, you know, that shows up in his writing, you know, not too long, you know, after the Cotton Bowl. And then he's also, ironically, the first guy to use the term dropback quarterback, which isn't, you know, T formation play or T formation term, but that didn't show up until 1964. So it was, yep. You know, so the T was there in 1940, the modern T. And it's 24 years later before it shows up in print. Wow. And then, two years later, he's the first guy to use the term skill positions. So, you know, it's just one of those things. It's kind of cool that, you know, I started noticing, like, you know, when I wrote, I wrote a book called Hut Hut Hike about the origins of football terminology, and so he kept showing up, and it's like, OK, well, this guy, you know, I mean, he obviously is one of those guys who kind of liked that side of the game and wanted to educate his, his, uh, his audience, you know, his readers on what was happening and what was different about the game today than it had been the previous year.

Darin Hayes
OK. Well, I'm glad you mentioned Hutt Hutt Hike. Cause I was going to go right into that a little bit. With your Hutt Hutt Hike, uh, storytelling and your research on there, where, what does the draw play, where, where does the draw come from? Is it from drawing the defenders in to fool them?

Timothy Brown
You know, sometimes it's hard to tell that's my assumption. OK, it's that you're drawing, you know, you're drawing them into your trap.

Darin Hayes
OK.

Timothy Brown
Yeah. And that's even another like a trap, you know, that comes from originally that was it was called a mousetrap. You know, that you were the trap lady on somebody and then and, you know, hitting them from the side. But it was it was called a mousetrap, not a trap. And then they just shortened it because it took too long to see the mousetrap.

Darin Hayes
Oh, thank, thank God that our football forefathers were simple people like us and the naming, you know, you can like to dropback quarterback. OK. We can figure out where that came from. Uh, but yeah, but some of those things, like the trap play and the draw play, were our explanation. So, thank you for that. So.

Timothy Brown
Now, so sometimes, it's just fun. For example, dropback quarterback is one of those where you'd think, well, what did they call it in those 24 years? Like if you were teaching somebody, here's what I want you to do. I want you to backpedal. And a lot of times, they were just, you know, straight backpedaling back then. You know, so how did coaches describe it? Yeah, you know, I don't have. I've only got a handful of playbooks from the old days. Most of all, I'm dealing with newspaper articles to try to figure it out.

Darin Hayes
But think about that the first time a player's told to do that. You know, football is a game of moving forward. You know, when you're on offense, you're, you're, you're trying to go forward. And now you're, you have a coach telling you to retreat a little bit, to give up ground, uh, to make something happen. So that had to be kind of a wide, wide, eyes wide open type of situation.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, well, you mentioned the pass blocking. So, you know, the whole, you know, cup blocking, you know, that was, you know, you had to teach somebody to give ground, you know, and before that, what they used to do a lot of times is, you know, the center and tackles would meet the, you know, meet their guys, you know, straight up, and the guards would if they were covered, but if they weren't covered, you know, then they'd loop back and pick up the ends, you know, coming off the edges. And yeah, you can see the plate drawings from back then. And I mean, it's very clear what they're doing. But you just don't see that anymore. You know, that's just not, you know, the cup was a really interesting innovation because it was basically zone blocking, only you're doing it passively, you know, so it was really a, you know, kind of a revolutionary way to think about, you know, blocking.

Darin Hayes
Until the defense of coordinators was countered with stunts and all kinds of craziness.

Timothy Brown
But actually, it was because of the stunts that they started doing it, you know, because they were stunting and like what we now call blitzing, they called Red Dog back then, you know, they'd send somebody, you know. And, you know, for so long, it was just, you know, seven guys on the line of scrimmage, and they just come at you. So you had the man who was over you. But then once they started dropping backers, then they start, you know, they start doing twists, and they start, you know, there are all kinds of things that happened, but really, pass blocking is zone blocking, you know, but you're doing it passively. Whereas, you know, zone blocking on the run, you know, you're picking up an area, it's area blocking, you know, you're, and then there's more to it than that. But nevertheless, I mean, so it's really, I don't know, it's just one of those things that it's just this kind of a revolutionary way of thinking about it. And so sometimes, sometimes it's like it happens right away. Somebody devises a new scheme, and other times, they, you know, football, just took baby steps to get there, but it's fun. You know, to me, that's the fun thing: the whole evolution of the game and how it got from here to there.

Darin Hayes
And, as you said at the very beginning, it's sort of a cyclical thing. So you've seen, you know, in the last ten years, uh, elements of the single wing coming back with, uh, you know, what they're, you're calling the, um, uh, what are the pros calling it out the wildcat offenses that are coming out, which is really single wing concepts to it.

Timothy Brown
You know, I've seen a number of plays in the US field games. You know, they're running, and they're running the modern T, a straight T in the backfield. So it's just a change-up its way to, you know, challenge the, you know,

Darin Hayes
You sit there and think about some of these younger defensive coordinators and players. You know, they've never seen anything like the single wing. So it's a whole new offense to them and they got to figure out how to defend it. So I'm sure there are coaches going back through some old books and film and trying to figure out, hey, how'd they do this in the 1940s?

Timothy Brown
Yeah. And part of it is just, you know, so the game has gotten to be so much of a speed, speed game, spread them out the game, that, you know, you want to come at me with, you know, 11 men in the box, then that changes, you know, the kind of people I need on the defense, right? So, you know, I mean, it's just total, you know,

Darin Hayes
That even I'll skip them.

Timothy Brown
It's a lot of fun stuff.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, definitely. Well, Tim, since we talked about it a couple of times, so what do we give the opportunity to help people get their hands on a copy of Hike? Because it's really an interesting book.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, thank you. So, you know, it's out on Amazon. You know, my three books will be on Amazon soon. My fourth one will be on Amazon, but Yeah, so just you know, look for me, look at my name or look up Hut Hut Hike or how football became a football, and You know, If you can find my name, then all three of them are gonna be available, and worst case go to go to football archaeology calm, and you know that I've got you to know, the books list in different places on the site.

Darin Hayes
OK, excellent. Well, Tim, we really appreciate you bringing back this concept of the draw play, explaining it to us a little bit, telling us some of the history and the origins of it. And we'd love to talk to you again next week about another early football concept.

Timothy Brown
Very good. I look forward to it. Thanks.

---

For college football fanatics, few names inspire more reverence than Walter Steffen. A coaching giant whose legacy stretches across decades, Steffen's impact on the game is undeniable. Now, you have a chance to delve into his wisdom in a captivating video interview with Timothy Brown of FootballArchaeology.com. This exclusive conversation promises a treasure trove of insights, offering a glimpse into the mind of a true gridiron mastermind. So, buckle up and get ready to learn from a master coach as we explore Walter Steffen's storied career and the timeless knowledge he brings to the game.

-Transcription of Walter Steffen 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 another date with Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com, where he's going to share one of his recent tidbits on some of the facets of football from yesteryear.

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Darin, thank you. Looking forward to chatting and judging you based on the quality of the questions that you asked this episode.

Oh my gosh. Okay, we're back. I will be the judge.

Folks, we are back to the dad joke segues. We've had some quizzes lately and some factoids, but now we are back to Tim Brown and his finest segueing into an article that you wrote not too long ago, titled Judging Walter Steffen's Coaching Career. So Walter Steffen is an interesting figure indeed in football history.

So what do you get on him, Tim? Yeah, so, you know, you and I were talking a little bit before we started the episode proper. And, you know, Steffen is just one of these guys, and it's a name that I kept coming across over and over again. And I was just like, sometimes I got to, you know, kind of look into this guy and figure out what he was about.

And he turned out to just be this really interesting character that just is impossible to imagine today. Right? I mean, he just lived a life that no one can live anymore, not at the major college level.

You could do it at D3, which is probably the right situation, but in high schools, you know, but not at the major college level. So, I mean, you know, he really, you know, kind of a classic guy.

He grew up in Chicago, you know, 1880s, 1890s. He ends up at the University of Chicago as a freshman in the fall of 1905. So he's playing for, you know, the famous Alonzo Stagg.

So, he's on, you know, 1905, Chicago was national champs. So, he's in a pretty major deal as far as, you know, football is concerned. In 1906, Walter Eckersall was the All-American quarterback at Chicago.

So, Steffen is the, you know, second fiddle running at halfback. But then Eckersall graduates, if he graduated. He wasn't much of a student, but anyways, he leaves.

Steffen became a quarterback in his last two years, and he became an All-American quarterback as well. So, and this is him carrying the ball back here. I see the only guy without any head protection.

Yeah, and so, I may actually have the wrong image up there. Anyways, but he played in that era. So, Steffen is hanging out around Chicago.

He goes, he was unlike Eckersall. He was an excellent student and went to the University of Chicago Law School. While he's going to law school, he assists Stagg on the football team.

And so, and then, you know, he graduated from law school and worked a couple of years in the law. And, you know, it's hard to trace whether he was, you know, he may have assisted with some schools. I know he did some refereeing and things like that, which was pretty typical of the time.

But in 1914, he became the head coach at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh. And so, you know, he was living in Chicago. And back then, it was not uncommon at all.

There were a lot of coaches who would live in one city for nine months of the year, and then they'd go coach wherever they were coaching for the other three. And so, that's what he did. So, he hadn't, you know, he was a first; he was a Chicago alderman for a while.

He, you know, worked in different government capacities, you know, in law. And then, so, you know, he basically, in the fall, he would, he would basically move to Pittsburgh to run the team. And then, you know, probably maintain some level of practice.

But basically, you know, he'd shut down whatever his business was, you know, for those three months, and then return and, you know, work as a lawyer the rest of the year. So, in 1922, he became a Cook County judge and Chicago's in Cook County. So, what he did was he couldn't just go to Pittsburgh for three months of the year.

So, he basically stayed in Chicago, and then he would travel on the weekend to Pittsburgh if it was a home game or wherever they were playing. You know, whoever they were playing, he traveled to the game. And then there was a guy who was a former Carnegie player, I believe, but there was a guy who basically ran the show during the week, a real trusted assistant. So, and all the time that he was there, he was upgrading the schedule.

So, Carnegie had been playing, you know, kind of the smaller schools, schools are now, you know, D3 schools in, you know, Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, you know, that kind of type of school. But while he was there, he started upgrading. And so, they're playing, you know, basically a national schedule, but more, you know, like a Midwestern, you know, Midwestern schedule, mostly against, or at least a mix of kind of the smaller schools, like a lot of teams did.

And then they were playing, you know, some top talent. So, just as an example, in 26, they opened the season, they beat, you know, three lesser teams, and then they go on a run, and they beat Pitt, who has had been national champs a bunch of times by then. Detroit, who was playing, you know, pretty solid football.

West Virginia, who used to kind of not be very good, but by then was starting to, you know, come around to be a pretty good football team. And then they went, they hosted and beat a team called Notre Dame, was being coached by Newt Rockne at the time. But this is 1926.

And that was the year that, you know, Rockne and Notre Dame won the 1925 national title. So, they were big stuff. However, in 1926, Soldier Field opened in Chicago.

And that game, the stadium opened with the Army-Navy game. Well, Rockne was in Chicago for that game, while his team was in Pittsburgh, playing Carnegie Tech. And Carnegie Tech beat them.

Which was like, it was a massive, you know, massive story. I mean, the only thing that, so the Army-Navy game was just a huge story in the papers, you know, nationwide. Second to that was the fact that Carnegie Tech had beaten Notre Dame, you know, reigning national champs.

You know, which nobody had expected. So, then, to show that that wasn't just a total fluke, in 1928, Carnegie Tech went to Notre Dame. So, they go to South Bend.

And they beat Notre Dame there. So, that was Notre Dame's first loss in South Bend under Rockne. It also made Carnegie Tech and Stephan the only team or coach to beat Notre Dame twice, while Rockne was the head coach.

Other than Nebraska, under Fred Dawson, did it twice. And then Howard Jones beat Rockne at Notre Dame when he was coaching Iowa, and then twice when he was coaching USC. So, Howard Jones has won up on Walter Stephan.

But nevertheless, I mean, so it's one of these things like you hear nowadays, well, Carnegie Tech, and now it's Carnegie Mellon because, you know, the schools merged. But and you think, ah, you know, that's not big-time football. Well, it was, you know, if you beat the reigning national champ, you're playing pretty good ball, right?

And then when you beat him two years later, you're still playing pretty, pretty good ball. So, he ended up from 1922 through the 1932 season, he basically, they used to call him the commuter coach, living in Chicago, you know, take the train into whatever city they were playing in, coach him game day, and then head back, you know. And so, you know, how they kept it, how he kept in touch with the assistant who was running things day to day.

I don't know, but, you know, they did very, very well. Just, you know, another thing that was kind of fun is he was the guy who gets primarily credited with inventing the spinner play. So, you know, anybody listening, you've seen these, if you've watched any old-time football film, you've seen the spinner, where a lot of times it'll, the ball might get hiked to a quarterback, or a fullback, who's, you know, kind of, who basically catches the ball, like literally does a 360 in place, as they're faking handoffs to different people.

And then they might, you know, kind of do like a QB sort of draw, or they might run left or right, or, you know, or handoff. So, the spinner was a huge thing starting in the mid-20s when he first, you know, implemented it. And it remained in place, you know, probably mid-30s when it was dying out.

However, there are a couple of other little factoids about the spinner, such as that he first used it in 1924. And the guy who was, who ran that play, it was a guy named Dick, I've never been sure of his name, I think it's Bede, but maybe it's Bede. And he was the guy who became the Youngstown State coach.

And he's the guy who invented football's penalty flag when he was coaching Youngstown. And then people who aren't that into, you know, older football stuff, maybe recognize the fact that one of his last quarterbacks, or perhaps the last quarterback that he coached at Youngstown, was a guy named Ron Jaworski. So, anyway, that's the little tidbit on that one.

But, so then, you know, he ends up 1932, announces he's going to retire, he just can't, you know, he's starting to get a little ill, I guess, and just couldn't keep up the pace. And so, you know, he ended up with an 88-53-9 record. So, you know.

Respectable. Yeah, especially at a school like that and playing the kind of schools that he played. And then, so, 32, if people remember from an episode or two ago, that's the year Amos Alonzo Stagg is let go at Chicago.

So, he's, you know, Stefan's retiring from Carnegie Tech. So, basically, he and Fritz Kreisler were the guys everybody said, oh, they're going to use one of these, they're going to name one of these guys to replace Stagg. And instead, they brought in Clark Shaughnessy from Tulane, who was, you know, kind of the father of the modern T formation.

So, and then, unfortunately, you know, poor health, he passed away in 1937. So, he didn't get to live the good, long life that Stagg lived. But, you know, he may have been one of the last of the, you know, he was certainly one of the last of these part-time coaches at a, you know, in a major school environment at the time.

You know, probably at the time, they would have been like a G5-ish or G3 or whatever. However, there are more. You know, that level of football. And here he's a judge in Chicago, you know, lawyer, that's what he does.

You know, a couple of episodes ago, I mentioned Clarence Spears, who's a physician. There were a bunch of guys like that, you know, but he was one of the last ones who was, you know, still running a major program. And then in his case, especially, he wasn't even there, you know, during the season, you know, the commuter coach.

So, really an interesting, you know, days gone by, you know, kind of deal, yeah, just when we think that our lives are busy dealing with football on a daily basis, you have guys like him and, you know, the Paw Porners and Fielding Yost that sometimes coach multiple teams in a season and these commuter coaches and did some other full-time jobs. So, yeah, it's amazing to think about that era of football.

Yeah, I think he had five kids, too. So, you know, he was a busy man. Well, at least the chores got done at home.

I didn't have to do them all. So, that's good. Tim that is some great stuff that, you know, is a gentleman that we probably don't hear about very many places in this day and age.

And it's great to have some preservation of Mr. Stephan and his accomplishments and some of the things that he did, you know, beating Notre Dame twice and, you know, all the other things that he did, which is amazing. So, you have things like this all the time going on on footballarchaeology.com, and you share them in some little bite-sized chunks. So, maybe you could explain that to everybody and how they can enjoy it.

Sure. Just go to footballarchaeology.com, and, you know, you can subscribe. You'll get an email every time a new article is posted.

Otherwise, follow me on Twitter, on the Substack app or on threads, or just go out to Football Archaeology, you know, kind of whenever you please and see what some of the new articles are out there or check out the archives. There's a search function. Just put in a topic and see if there's something out there.

Well, sir, we thank you once again for helping us understand football of yesteryear and how it became the mega game that it is today that everybody enjoys. And it's these little pieces getting put together in a history that really make it enjoyable. And we thank you for sharing it again and we'd love to talk to you again next week.

Very good. Thank you, sir.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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The timing of a football game has changed with the technologies available to fields of different eras. Timothy P. Brown takes us to early football before artificial light was used to illuminate the Gridiron. How did this affect the timing of the games? Tim lays it out for us in this podcast episode.

Here is the link for Tim's original TidBit House of the Setting Sun.

-Transcription of House of Setting Sun 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, FootballArcheology.com day. We have Timothy P. Brown, the founder of FootballArcheology.com joining us as he does each and every week to talk about one of his famous tidbits. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Darin, good to see you, see your smiling face. It is about time.

About time. Yeah, great segue. Your segue-isms are getting better and better each and every time.

I am upping segue game. The dad jokes are a-flying, that's for sure. But Tim, now that you set it up, you have an interesting article from back in September that maybe back in September didn't mean as much as it does this time of year as we're getting closer to the winter season.

Sun going down and how it affected the timing of games. And I'll let you take it from there and tell us all about your tidbit. Yeah, so actually, the interesting thing is there is a, I will just say, an unidentified reader.

I can't say who that is unless the reader gives permission. The reader gives you permission, Tim. Go ahead.

Oh, OK. So, one time, Darin asked me. Why is it always me? So, yeah, so just, you know, it's like anything else.

You know, you question, you go like, how did this work? So, as he was doing his own research on some things, he kept on seeing in the old newspapers. You know, 1800s and early, you know, 1900s. Oftentimes, the box score would have a little thing right at the bottom of the box, and it would say, you know, time of halves or time of quarters.

It would say 15 minutes, 15 and 10, or something like that. And so, and then typically, if there was a short quarter or a short half, it was the second half. So, you know, the question is basically, well, why the heck did they do that? Why did they shorten games? And so sometimes that happened because one team was getting blown out, but that was not generally the reason, you know, so even in tight games, it wasn't unusual to shorten, shorten a quarter or a half.

And so, you know, when I wrote it, I kind of used the, you know, the old terminology of de jure versus de facto. So de jure means, you know, by the rule or by the law, whereas de facto is in practice. Right.

And so when football first started, when we first brought it in, you know, when we were playing rugby. Football was just one of those stew of games that came out of, you know, 18th-century England and the norm was to play 45-minute halves. And so soccer still plays 45-minute halves, and rugby still plays 45-minute halves.

And when football got started here, we were playing 45-minute halves even though there was nothing in the rules that said that's how long it was. You know, the original football rules don't mention how long a game is supposed to last, but everybody knew it was 45 minutes. So that's what you did.

When football kind of, you know, as partly safety measures, you know, they were trying to give people rest and just reduce the amount of time that they're on the field. You know, football started, it went to 45 minutes and then 35 and then 30. And it's perhaps so.

Now, another tradition that was quite common was that, a lot of times, games started at about 2 o'clock or 2:30 in the afternoon. And so part of that was, you know, you had a lot of people, you know, fans who, you know, if they were factory people, they and, you know, clerks and whatnot, they work six days a week, as did their bosses. And if they were rural folks, well, farm chores have to be done.

You know, if you got a dairy herd, well, guess what you're doing every day. You know, so just from a lifestyle standpoint, a lot of people had things to do in the morning. On top of that, a lot of teams didn't have the budget to send their team to an away game and stay overnight.

So, you know, they would want to be able to take the train in the morning of the game, show up, play the game, turn around, and get home. And so not only did that mean they had to schedule a game a little bit later, but then there were times where they needed to, you know, the only way they would get home and make their connections that night was to be at the train station at, you know, 430 and or, you know, five o'clock or whatever it was. So, you know, for a combination of reasons, they ended up needing to cut games short.

And, you know, eventually the the rule makers, you know, it was kind of a it was kind of an understood thing. It wasn't. Again, it's one of those traditions.

It was, you know, in fact, people cut games short, even though the rules didn't say, you know, didn't allow it. But everybody did it. Right.

So then we end up in a situation where, you know, during World War One, the government instituted light savings time, daylight saving, no S on that, daylight saving time. And so that came into effect in 1918. And so that was the first time that anybody had experienced that, at least, you know, in the US.

So you just kind of put yourself. I mean, we know what happens when daylight saving kicks in. But they just didn't anticipate it.

So there were teams that showed up at practice on Monday afternoon, right after daylight saving kicked in for the first time. And it was dark, you know. And so it's just one of those things where, you know, and then obviously that applied on Saturdays, too, because, you know, it gets dark on game day just as much as it does on practice.

But, you know, and in the tidbit, there's a discussion of like. And the USC and somebody, you know, playing in a game, and it's just like nobody could see by the end of the game; it was just so dark. And it's it's one of those things, you know, we take for granted that everybody's going to have lights.

Well, guess what? Very few places had lights. And if they did, it was jerry-rigged like the Navy used naval searchlights to light up the field for practice, you know. And, you know, so you have examples like that.

And that's that's one. I mean, some people had used them earlier, but they were painted white balls and yellow balls that came in right around. Yeah, that really became popular around that time.

That's when you start seeing them showing up in sporting goods catalogs. And it's really, you know, like. I know it's one of these things depending on where you have lived in the US; if you have not moved around a fair amount, you don't realize how much where you are in the time zone from an east, west, and north-south standpoint.

You don't realize how much impact that can have on how dark it gets early. So Chicago is right on the east side of the central island. So it's like it's getting dark where it's like I'm in Detroit.

So, you know, still across the state, but if you're on the west side of Michigan, you know, it's light in the summer. It's like until.

You know, 10, 10 o'clock, you know, and, you know, beyond where it's like it's the same thing in Chicago, but it's nine o'clock. Right. So anyway, I mean, it's just one of those things you just and if you're northern, you know, then it's great in the summer, but then it gets darker early if you're further up north, because that whole sun, you know, the earth rotates and it tilts and not enough.

So anyway, it's just one of those things you don't think about, but like. Daylight saving was a big story in 1918. So then, because of that, in 1922, they formalized the rule that said at halftime, the referee could approach the the two team captains and ask if they wanted to shorten the halves.

And then then they they'll do so as needed. And whether whether that's because of the lighting or the one team getting blown out or whatever. Basically, they had they had the chance to do that.

Yeah, it's just thank God that the football didn't adopt what soccer does now with, you know, you have the two 45-minute halves, and then we're going to just kind of arbitrarily throw some time on at the end, you know, just and not tell anybody, you know, how much time is left. Just, you know, whatever that drives me crazy. Drives me nuts, you know, that they don't have that public with how much time is going on there.

But yeah, very interesting stuff, Tim. And I'm glad you mean you really cleared up mine because I kept seeing this, you know, you'd have like a 25-minute first half and, you know, something like 10 minutes for the second half. I'm like, why are they doing that? You know, you have a 13-to-nothing game.

You know, it's still still a ball game. You know, it's just driving me crazy. So, I'm glad you could clear that up for me and the listener.

So that's that's great. So, yeah, again, it's just one of those things you just don't even think about because, you know, basically, there are very few people living today if there's anybody, you know, that that's that, you know when Daylight Savings first showed up. So.

Yeah, crazy. And there are probably more people who see live games under the lights, you know, at your local high school than you do in the daytime anyway nowadays. So we're so used to the lights.

It's taken for granted, I guess. Yeah, but Tim, you have interesting items like this each and every day on your tidbits and people really love reading them. And maybe there's some listeners out there that aren't familiar with how to reach you and get ahold of your tidbits.

So maybe you could help them out with some information. Yeah, so the easiest and best thing is just to hit my website, footballarchaeology.com. In order to find it, you have to put the WWW in front of it. And then, you know, you can every, you know, every story gives you the opportunity to subscribe.

You can subscribe for free. And then, as a result, you'll get an email every night in your inbox. And, you know, some people let them pile up, and they'll send it to you.

I know every Monday morning, I get a bunch of hits on my site because people who send them to their work address, you know, don't look at them until Monday morning. So anyways, and then you can also you can follow me on Twitter, on threads or simply, you know, or follow me within the within the Substack app. And so kind of whichever flavor works for you, have at it.

All right. Well, he is Timothy P. Brown, footballarchaeology.com. The links to Tim's site and to the tidbit are in the podcast show notes. You want to enjoy that, you know, the images and some of the great writing that Tim does there and some of those other tidbits.

You have links to get to it that way, too. So, Tim, thanks a lot for joining us again and sharing. And we will talk to you again next week.

Very good. Thank you, Darin.

-Frequently Asked Questions About Football Field Equipment

-Who invented the scoreboard? A man named Arthur Irwin came up with the concept of the modern scoreboard for baseball and then created a modified version for other sports like football. Learn more about Irwin and his design in this conversation Arthur Irwin's Scoreboard.

-Where did the term "Visitors" come from on the scoreboard? A Harvard professor was observing the scoreboard in the newly built Harvard Stadium shortly after its construction in 1903, when it bothered him that the word "Opponents" was on the score column to identify the guests of the Crimson. He found it offensive so he asked for a revision. Learn more about this story in this conversation Opponents Versus Visitors on the Scoreboard.

-How was time kept in a football game before the scoreboard clocks existed? Officials would use hand held and later wristwatches to time the events. Check out this article on the evolution of the game clock.

---

When did American Football actually first start being played? Timothy P. Brown answers the question of when football began, dispelling many of the mainstream experts' erroneous preconceptions.

While there's no single definitive date for the birth of American football, several key events and influences mark its evolution from a blend of other sports to the game we know today:

-1869: The first intercollegiate game played between Rutgers and Princeton using rules heavily influenced by soccer. This is often cited as the "official" birth of American football. It was more like soccer than anything else, though.

-1876: The Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) is formed, standardizing rules and fostering the development of a more unified game.

-1880s: Walter Camp, known as the "Father of American Football," introduces key rule changes like the line of scrimmage, the snap, and the forward pass, shaping the game into its modern form.

-1892: The first professional game is played between the Allegheny Athletic Association and the Pittsburgh Athletic Club.

-1906: The forward pass is legalized, revolutionizing the game and opening up possibilities for aerial attacks.

-Transcribed Conversation of When Football Started with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes, PigskinDispatch.com. And once again, it's Tuesday. We're going to have another great chat with football archaeology's Timothy P. Brown.

Tim, welcome back. And glad you're here tonight.

Thank you, Darin. I'm glad to be here myself. It's always a good thing, isn't it? Yeah, you know, I'm starting to get to the age where it becomes dope. But I know that I am. Here I am.

I know the feeling. Well, we're certainly glad you're here tonight.

And we're even more happy that you're here to talk a little bit about football history from one of your recent tidbits. And you've got one that really caught my eye, and I think it would be very interesting to all listeners interested in football history. And that's when did the football history really begin? When did the start of football happen? Yeah.

So, you know, I wrote that piece. It was actually the anniversary, the first anniversary of today's tidbits. So that's why I chose that topic to say, OK, what better thing to talk about than where did football begin? And so, you know, the received wisdom would be that football began with the games between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869.

So and then, but you kind of have to go like, well, why do we consider that to be the first football game? What was it about those two games that made it the start of football? And for me, when I look at it, I go, well, though that wasn't the start of football, I don't, you know, I mean, yes. You know, I wrote a book about the hundred first hundred first 50 years of football, and I based it off the ninth or 1869 date. So, you know, I'm part of the problem, but I'm trying to make amends.

So they've got everybody drinking that Kool-Aid. That's right. That's right.

You know, so but, you know, it really kind of comes back to, you know, what was going on back then and, you know, regardless of what was happening. How would you judge? You know, what is the basis of when a new game begins? It's kind of like the difficulty biologists get into in terms of evolution. When does a new species begin? You know, what came first, the chicken or the chicken or the egg? But in this case, I mean, for me, you know, I look at at that the 1869 games.

And it was a, you know, negotiated rule, but it mostly resembled association football or what we call soccer. You know, you couldn't carry the ball. It was a round ball.

There were 25 players per side, and, you know, there were other things going on. So, like, was that really football? I mean, it was an intercollegiate game between two schools, but those had happened before, too. So, you know, in my mind, the main reason it's considered the start of football is that Park H. Davis went to Princeton, whatever, you know, 25 years later than that.

And he is the first football historian. And he decided that that was the first that was the start of football. And so, therefore, you know, given the influence that he has had on football history, that's what it is, you know, and then nobody ever doubts that.

I mean, a lot of other people have, but. And I just look at it and say, OK, so that's not good enough. You know, what would mark the start of the game of football? And for me, I think of it as when did when did football break away from.

Soccer or rugby, it's kind of two, you know, origin, you know, origin games, but it wasn't a wasn't a soccer game. So I'm then saying, OK, get rid of soccer. When did football move away from rugby? And for me, it's it's the 1876 meeting where the IFA set up a new set of rules.

So. The IFA, the Intercollegiate Football Association, was founded three years earlier, but they adopted soccer, you know, I mean, they didn't adopt this specific set of rules; they just said, hey, we're going to follow the association game rules from London. So they were just playing soccer.

Then, the next year, Harvard plays McGill. First in a Boston rules game, then in a rugby game, and they end up saying, hey, we like this rugby game. So they start playing it, and then they play Yale the next year in what they call the concessionary rules game, which is a mix of, you know, an adapted rugby game.

And then in 76, they adopt what are now the basis of they adopted the IFA rules, which is the basis of football. And then. You know, from there, you can trace.

You know, those rules got adopted and then adapted year after year after year, and there's a continuous line of football rules that come from that original 1876 set that are now the rules we play under today, you know, and in the 1890s and early 1900s, there were multiple rules committees, and there were some conflicts because one group didn't like the other. But at the end of the day, you know, all of the all those committees all use, you know, the preceding rules that had come from 1876. So, for me, I look at it as, hey, they created a new set of rules, and they only made a couple of changes from the rugby rules of the day, but they took a different path.

Rugby then went on and made all kinds of changes to their game. You know, so the rugby game of 1876 is not the game that's played today. They made a lot of changes, too.

But, you know, our football took a different path. And, you know, it's kind of like, you know, maybe anybody who's, you know, Catholic or Lutheran or maybe, you know, Episcopalian, something like that, where there's this whole succession of bishops, you know, from Peter all on down finds that logic attractive, you know, or understands that logic. But it's, yeah, there's a succession from here, you know, from a starting point to now.

And that's kind of the way I see the IFA rules. It was a starting point for football. Let me entertain you.

Oh, wait, you're not going to argue with me, are you? No, I'm not going to argue. I'm just going to propose something to you. All right.

I totally agree with you. The 1869 Princeton Rutgers game. And I agree with your whole theory on Park H. Davis having the influence on it.

Of course, Park H. Davis, in that 1911 book, also had biblical references to football, Roman, and Greek. And he had a bunch of ancient societies football. So the people really hung on to the Princeton Rutgers game.

But I agree with you. Let's take that out of the equation. I don't know.

I mean, I think the IFA rules were important to the development of football. But I think the 1880 rules meeting when Walter Camp proposed the line of scrimmage in the center and the quarterback followed through, players were 11 aside. That was sort of when that got sort of hammered in stone.

And I almost wonder, could we not consider that the birth of American football? 1880. Well, yeah. So, I mean, by your logic, I could argue that 1906 is the birth because that's when the forward pass came in.

So, I mean, you're totally right that 1880 was a big deal. 1884 was a big deal. The whole 1906 to 1912 period was a big deal.

But I would just always go back to the fact that 1876, the rules that they modified and made some like line of scrimmage and things like that in possession in the 1880 or early 80s, those still, they were modifying the rules that they set in 1876. So, it was. I've posted this on an earlier tidbit, but if you go to the Canadian Football Research Association site, they have an 1873 set of rules that they adopted, which are almost word for word, the ones that were the rugby rules at the time and that the Americans then adapted. So, but for me, it's just, they formally said, these are the rules we are going to play under.

The game has been played under those rules since then, subject to annual changes. But that's the point when they said, here's, we're going to play this new game. In fact, in the first half or most of the season of 1876, they played under the kind of a mixture of rules, but the games played after that meeting followed the 1876 rules.

And so, you're saying that because of the standardized rules that were adopted widespread, that's OK. I'm basing it more on 1880 is when American football shot off of rugby and became basically a different game. That's scrimmage from scrummage thing.

That's why I said, but I will, you know, defend what you say to the hilt because that's your right. The standard rules came out, and that's the derivative of what American football came out of. So, yeah.

And I mean, there's lots of things like, you know, the scrimmage thing that was going on before 1876. And I mean, it was just a terminology difference. They were using scrimmage and scrimmage in the UK and here.

So, you know, now the difference is obviously in 1880, you know, you had what we now really consider a scrimmage. So, controlled possession of the ball for multiple downs, right? So, you know, so you retain possession. It wasn't the toss the ball, you know, in the middle kind of thing.

But, you know, I guess I view that as just one rule to change the game, but there have been hundreds and thousands of rule changes. And while I consider that one of the top 11 changes, it's just one of the top 11. Yeah.

But I guess at the end of the day, if you look at those three games that were association football, rugby, American football, they're, you know, probably the three of the most successful athletic ventures of organized sports in the world that has popularity right now. You know, they're definitely in the probably top five. I reached back and grabbed a book that I still hadn't finished, but it was by a guy named Tony Collins.

He's a professor in the UK. The book is called How Football Began. And he basically, you know, goes back to the stew of games that was going on in the UK.

And, you know, I think sometimes we have this impression, or at least I always, you know, used to have the impression that, well, they just had, you know, they just had a couple of different versions. But in fact, you know, in the UK, they had a bunch of different versions of football, and then they kind of started consolidating, and you got into an amateur and professional differences, which is, you know, we're like rugby union and, you know, rugby, you know, anyways. Anyway, it's a really interesting book, and it gets into Australian rules and other things.

So it's just, you know, he kind of goes from where everything was muddled together to how it started breaking off. So it's really a fun read. If somebody's interested in period football, I would say definitely grab that one.

But it's really interesting. Well, Tim, a great subject, great discussion. Really appreciate you being able to talk about that.

Why don't you share with the audience where they can get information like your tidbits that this came out of on a daily basis? Yeah, it's very simple. I've got a site on the Substack platform, but it's just footballarchaeology.com. So you just go on and check out an article and there's a sign up process that you go through. And so you subscribe for free and then you'll get an email every day.

In your inbox is whatever that day's article is. Other people subscribe on Twitter. But if you're interested enough, I'd say just subscribe to the site.

And I have some people that read 10 articles in a row and they just store them up when they're flying or whatever it is. But other people read stuff every day. So either way, do what you want.

All right. Excellent. It's a great investment of time, whether you do it daily or build up 10 of them.

It's a great read and something different every day. And I highly recommend it. Tim Brown of footballarchaeology.com. Thank you very much for joining us.

And we'll talk to you again next week. Thank you, sir. Enjoyed it as always.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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Knockoffs and copy cat manufacturing are each nefarious elements of open Capitalism and industry. There have even been many times that football equipment and ideas have been copied and sold.

Timothy Brown examines some cases of Bootleg footballs,on a recent Tidbit he wrote on his Football Archaeology website, It all comes from his original article titled: Bootleg Footballs and Changing Specifications, concerning the 1925-1926 GoldSmith catalog and the "Slim Jim" ball. Tim shared the story with us on the podcast.

-Transcription of Bootleged Footballs 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 the portal that we're going to go back in time and look at some great football archaeology, some great old stuff that our friend Timothy P. Brown of FootballArchaeology.com is going to share with us from one of his recent tidbits. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Darin, thank you. Looking forward to chatting about bootleg footballs. It's kind of an interesting idea or issue. Everybody talks about bootlegs, but this is a different deal.

These are bootleg footballs. When I first saw that, I was picturing a football full of illegal bathtub gin back in the prohibition days, but after I read it, I was straightened out right away. Sorry, the way my mind works, but why don't you explain to us the story of bootleg footballs? Yeah, well, so just following up on your comment, so the bootleg initially, the first bootleg was Pop Warner at Stanford.

He had a fake, so he basically ran a fake Statue of Liberty and the fullback because he was running a double wing at the time with a fullback getting a direct snap. He faked the Statue of Liberty to the wing coming around from right to left, and then the fullback ran to the right, and everybody went with the, you know, chased the right wing who was running to the left, and he just, the fullback ran into the end zone. So, that's where the original bootleg came from, and it had, you know, the name came from bootleg gin, bootleg rum, you know, so it was prohibition time, and you know, so that's where the name originates.

So, it's the idea of fake and illegal and inappropriate, and so during the same era, one of the things that was happening to teams were, you know, some teams were choosing to pass more often than others, and so some of the, you know, back then there were lots of different companies manufacturing footballs, and so some of those manufacturers began making balls that were, you know, the ball had changed, I think it was 1912, maybe I'm off on that, but, you know, somewhere in that area, the ball had been slimmed down from the big fat rugby ball. So, it had been slimmed down, but it was still bigger than what we're used to today, so it's remained difficult to throw. Typically, only guys with big hands could really throw it effectively, and so they, some of the manufacturers, started producing slimmer balls, slimmer footballs that didn't really meet the game specifications, because the game, you know, by then they had specified it's got to be, you know, you know, there was tolerance, but it had to be this much around this length, and so they started producing these balls, and obviously, if you were a running team, you looked at the slim balls of the, what is this doing here on the field, because I don't need it, you know, my team is going to run the ball, we're not going to go crazy and pass it 12 times a game like some of these passing teams.

So, you know, they, you know, it became a controversy, and so, you know, it kind of went back and forth for a while, and then eventually the, you know, the things, they changed the rules basically in 1934 to make, to change the regulations on the ball specifications, so the ball would be about an inch thinner around the girth, but, you know, so one of the things that, you know, sometimes it doesn't seem to make as big a difference, but, you know, you know, you have to realize that the ball in the night before the mid-1920s was not only a bigger, fatter ball, but it's kind of a different ball too, and by that I mean that at that, until the mid-20s, when they, when somebody invented the internal valves, if the ball deflated, and they did so regularly, because they just didn't have the quality control on these rubber bladders that were inside the ball, when the ball deflated, you had to unlace the ball, pull the bladder out, inflate it, much like you would a balloon, I mean, there was like a nipple kind of thing sticking off from the bladder, and you inflated that, and then you tied it off to keep the air inside the bladder, and then you stuffed it back inside the ball, and then you took this leather lacing that was comparable to the lacing, you know, any baseball glove today, you know, it's a flexible lacing, and you weave it in and out with the different fingers, and you know, the, but you know, so that's basically what the lacing was on a football back then, you know, now it's this really hard, it's polyvinyl chloride, this hard plastic, it's stuff we make plumbing pipes out of, you know, that's a stiff material, and so, but back then, it was the same laces that were on a foot, you know, in a baseball glove, right, and so it was fairly flexible, and it could only be as tight, the lacing on a football was only as tight as the guy who tied it together when they reinflated it, so, you know, quality control and standardization just weren't part of that picture, you know, at the time, so it's just one of those things where, you know, we kind of, it's easy to lose sight of the difference at the time, but so, you know, the ability for a quarterback to throw that, you know, to throw a spiral and flick their wrist, you know, and, you know, flick it over to get a nice tight spiral, it was just much harder to do, because these laces barely stuck up over the leather on the surface of the ball, right, and so once they, once it had the internal valve, and that became, you know, the late, the second half of the 20s was kind of a transition period where some balls had it and some didn't, but when they, you know, if you think about a football now in lacing, they, there's the laces that go, I'll call them, you know, perpendicular to the length of the ball, right, but then there's two laces that are underneath those perpendicular laces that kind of go back and forth, right, does that make sense? I don't know if you can picture that, but so under, so putting the lacing underneath the perpendicular laces raised the profile above the surface of the ball, and because they no longer had to replace the ball, they could make that lacing stiffer, even before they used plastics, they could make the lacing stiffer, and therefore, it was easier for the quarterback to grip the ball, to throw a spiral, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, so anyways, I mean, it's one of these things where there's a lot of parts of football blocking, you know, what we call blocking now was interference originally, that was illegal, and then guys started doing it, and they didn't call it, so then it became part of the game. The bootleg footballs, people started using them, they were illegal, but they kind of let it go, and then eventually, they changed the rules to reflect that, right, so there's a lot of parts of football where people did stuff that was against the rules or against the sportsmanship standards of the time, and eventually, people kind of said, oh, yeah, let's just let that go, and it became part of the rules, so bootleg footballs are the reason people throw long, tight spirals 60, 70 yards downfield nowadays. Hey, that, you know, fascinating stuff, your story of you telling us, you know, with the vulcanized rubber bladders, you know, pulling those out and blowing them up, it took me back to some things I read, I believe, from the rugby days, where they still used an actual pig's bladder, and the poor soul that had to unlace it and blow up that rotting pig's bladder, put their lips on that and blow up the ball, that poor sucker had to be the worst job you could have, I think, on a football field.

Well, and, you know, I mean, talk about the pig's bladder, but the, you know, a lot of people think that the reason football is played in the fall is because, you know, people had piglets that they raised all summer, you know, spring and all summer long, and then they slaughtered them in the fall, and what comes along with slaughtering a pig? Well, you have pig's bladders available all of a celebration. They have this kicking game where you try to kick this pig's bladder from your town into the next, or your village into the next, and that's where this football kicking game originated. And eventually, people started covering that pig's bladder with a leather cover to make it, you know, more sustainable or, you know, just to last longer.

But, you know, that's the origins of the game, right? So, it's kind of crazy, you know, kind of how it's all evolved. It's like every other technology; things become more uniform and consistent. But, yeah, that's where the game starts.

A lesson within the lesson. That's good stuff. And I'm sealing up my envelope right now from these advertisements for Goldsmith that you have on your website on this post to get my $10 football.

So, the F5 and the X5. So, I'm going to get one of each for ten bucks. Well, hey, you know, one of the images, so, I mean, for those who are just listening and haven't seen the post, this would be a fun one to go look at, just because there's a number of images from period catalogs that show footballs.

And there's one from D&M, which was a big manufacturer supplier at the time. They had a football they called the Slim Jim. And it was slimmer than the standard ball.

And they're advertising. It's right there in their catalog. There's no secret about it.

But it was slimmer than the specifications required it to be. Well, now you're making me hungry for a meat product that comes in plastic now. So, talk about Slim Jim.

Check-in with Nancy Pelosi. I think she's got some. She was eating some, well, you know, long story.

Hey, Tim, this has been another great lesson in helping us to understand the game of football, where it came from some of the intricacies and equipment, and just the history of the game and how the folks before us had to play with less than what we see today on TV and what the players play on a high school level even. We really appreciate you digging up this research and sharing it with us each week and evening. You can read it on your phone or computer.

Tim has a great way of delivering that message. And, Tim, why don't you share the information with us right now? Sure. So, footballarchaeology.com. You can just go out there and click on any link, and all of them are going to provide an opportunity to subscribe.

So, if you want to subscribe, it just guarantees that you get it every day. You don't have to read it every day. You can save them up and read them on the weekend, whatever.

But it'll be delivered to your inbox at 7 o'clock Eastern every night. And then alternatively, you can follow me on Twitter at Football Archaeology. And if you don't like either of those options, just go out and check out Football Archaeology anytime you want.

And you can see the most recent article just listed out there in order of how they were posted. All right. Tim Brown, footballarchaeology.com. Thank you, once again, for sharing these stories and this information.

And we'll talk to you again next week. Very good. Look forward to it, Darin.

Thank you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

---

Players can tell you that the surface condition of the turf they play on can make all the difference in a game and how they perform. Field conditions are affected by weather, surface, slickness, and even lawn care.

Long before the modern surfaces and machines we see football played on today, grass fields were the only surface that mattered. Have you ever considered how these playing fields were cared for and kept? Our man Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology has, and may we hear what he found out.

This discussion originates based on Time's Tidbit post titled: The Wretched Field Conditions of Football's Past - In Pictures.

-Transcription of Football Field Grass Cuts 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 another evening where we get to discuss some football archaeology with the founder of that website, Timothy P. Brown. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Darin, thank you for chatting tonight, as we seem to do every week, every Tuesday. So yeah, looking forward to it. Yeah, I feel very blessed and honored to be able to talk to you every Tuesday and get this information that you share with us.

Just a few months ago, you had a very interesting topic on one of your tidbits about the field maintenance of the grass that was played on. There was no artificial turf; it was all natural grass, and we're very interested to know how they manicured their fields. Well, yeah, so I actually had an earlier one.

I think I probably have a link to it in this particular tidbit but about the terrible field conditions of the past. And so now we've got artificial turf, we've got prescription grass, and most fields have good drainage and watering systems as needed. And there's just other ways.

The fields are so well-maintained. Back in the day, especially in some stadiums that used to get really heavy use, if you just had one game or one weekend where it was rainy, the rest of the season, the whole central portion of the field was just mud or dirt. It just got torn up.

There's no way to avoid it. And that's one of the great benefits of artificial turf, which is that the central part of the field doesn't wear out, so it's between the hash marks. But back in the day, it sure did.

And so that's kind of a lost element of the game, or of the experience, both as fans and especially as players. But so I'm always looking at old yearbooks and other photo sources. And so back in the day, there were certain things going on in the field that you just noticed, and they were just like, what the hell are they doing there? And so obviously, the muddy fields that I just mentioned.

One of the ways that they try to maintain or dry out muddy fields is by tossing sawdust all over the field. And so I've got images, Yale Field, where there's sawdust all over the field. I'm just trying to draw it out or dry it out, I should say. And then they'd sometimes put hay on the field prior to the game, like if it was going to be icy, and then they'd rake it all off, so all kinds of crazy stuff.

So then once that dirt got all, well, once the field became dirt rather than grass, then you see in early pictures where they raked, you see all these lines in the dirt, and it's just because they raked, just to get all the clumps out and all that kind of stuff. And then, when it dried, the whole field was just dusty. So again, I've got a bunch of pictures of guys just stepping on the field, running around, and there are dust clouds falling; they all look like pig pens from the Charlie Brown cartoon.

But the other one that you see from time to time is long grass, which is, you don't see it as much, but there are times where it's like, I've got pictures of placekickers trying to kick off the grass, and it's like, the grass is literally like 12 inches tall. And so it's like, how the heck did they maintain the grass? Then I looked into that. And so initially, I'd have to make sure I pronounce this correctly, but I was asking, how did they keep football fields, baseball fields, parks, and lawns trimmed back in the day? And so the one way that they did it was with a scythe, which is like the Grim Reaper, with that pole.

A sickle type. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

And so, you know, so they had people up there, you know, cutting it that way. But then, you know, by like 1830, somebody came up with a mechanical lawnmower that pretty much, you know, looks like a real, and I mean real meaning R-E-E-L, so real mower that's used today, but obviously very clunky looking. And then, you know, they also had, you know, so there were the hand-pushed versions, and then there were the horse-pulled versions of these real mowers.

But from time to time, they also reverted back to more traditional methods, which was to bring in a flock of sheep, and you'd just put the sheep out there on your football field or your baseball field and let, you know, let them at it. And then you may have some new obstacles to try to avoid while you're playing. Well, you know, and that would make the grass grow.

So, yeah, and so... Nothing like a good turd tackle, that's for sure. Yeah. One of my brothers has a place up in California where, you know, it's basically a winery where the fields were so wet, or everything was so wet because of all the rain they had.

They brought in a bunch of sheep and just let the sheep go up and down between the rows, you know, eat back the grass. But, yeah, so, I mean, so you think about that, and it was even, you know, so for sure, I've got pictures, you know, it included a picture from like 1943 of sheep grazing in the Rose Bowl, trying to keep it back. And so, even like in the 40s, especially, you know, with gas rationing because of the war, you know, we saw a return to sheep grazing on athletic fields just to, you know, to try to keep it trimmed.

But, you know, I mean, there were like New Mexico, Loyola Marymount, places like that also, you know, I've got newspaper articles anyways indicating, you know, in the late 30s, early 40s that they were trimming their grass the old-fashioned way. Hey, just to put a comment, you know, the images that you have, and we have links to them in the show notes here, folks, and on Pigskin Dispatch from the accompanying article for Tim's images. In the image of the sheep on the Rose Bowl field, I think they got the black sheep of every family in that photo because I think there are two that look like they might be lighter color; all the rest are very colored sheep.

So, a lot of black sheep in that family. Well, there was; it may have been the breed because the article mentioned the breed, which, you know, I don't know one. I don't know my sheep breeds; I apologize.

But, so it may be that that was just a function of. Well, luckily for you, we just want to know about your football. We don't need your agricultural knowledge.

I'm not really good at the agricultural side. Now, that same image, the herdsman or the farmer that's caring for these sheep, he must be a pretty popular guy because it looks like he has like a five-gallon bucket of, I'm assuming, water for these dozen or so sheep to all drink out of. So, I'm sure they're very popular guy in the water.

So, I mean, the other thing, he could have had some grain in there. Then, tossing grain into different areas would attract the sheep to mow the whole field. Oh, okay.

Gotcha. I mean, again, I'm guessing this only because I saw a YouTube video of some guy in New Zealand who created a picture of a heart in his field, let the sheep in, you know, he spread grain in the shape of a heart, let the sheep out and they all went, and then sheep formed a heart. So, it is quite an art form to get your sheep to manicure your lawn.

That's right. All right. Well, hey, I'm even more glad this week, and I have to cut the grass with the modern conveniences we have today.

I'm not out there with a bucket throwing grain on my grass with a herd of sheep. So, although we do like those days, those were the days. All right.

I had a little, much harder time in many ways. So, we appreciate those pioneers of early football who took care of the yards that we played in and helped us advance to where we are today. And Tim, you have some very interesting, fascinating pieces of football that even go beyond the game and equipment like this, you know, caring for the field, which is, you know, you have to have a field to play on.

So, it's, you know, it has to be that. And I know one point I was going to bring up, too, is a really interesting study I saw just came out within the last week or so from, I believe, the National Football League on injuries compared on natural grass fields that are played in the league versus the artificial fields. There was a higher injury rate, as this study showed in the 2022 season, where people on artificial fields were injured more often, or more injuries occurred than they did on the grass fields.

And I don't know if you saw that, but it's kind of interesting to go back to old school, possibly. Yeah, I didn't see that. And, you know, I mean, obviously, when artificial turf first came out, it gripped so well that, you know, guys just blew out their knees all the time on that.

And it was like playing on concrete, you know, I mean, I mostly played on natural, you know, I played on one or two artificial turf fields that were fairly early in the development, and it was, you know, it was horrible. But anyways, yeah, I'm actually a little bit surprised by that result, you know, just because, you know, my sense is that the artificial surfaces have come so far. But, you know, there's a certain amount of, you know, there's kind of no going back on some of it, you know, if you're in a dome stadium, you're going to play on artificial turf, right? And then it's, you know, it's one thing to be on turf, you know, it takes, it just takes a lot of money from an ongoing maintenance standpoint to have a really well done natural turf, you know, so if you're the Packers or something like that, okay, you can afford it.

A lot of other places, it's just, you know, so I mean, anyone in the NFL can afford to do it if that's the right thing, right? Yeah, I know at Akershire Stadium, the old Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, they replaced the turf, I think, two or three times during the NFL season. Of course, the Pitt Panthers are playing on that. They have high school games, usually on Thanksgiving weekend.

They have four championship games or five or six now. I think they have levels playing on that field. So it gets tore up that time of year and they, they replace it within a couple of days before the NFL game.

And that's why you see so many famous games played at Pittsburgh stadium where chunks of the field are coming up, or they had a rainy Monday night game in Miami 20 some years ago, where the punter kicked the ball, and it came down point first and stuck right in the middle of the field and some things. Well, you know, that, that actually raises a point. You know, I don't know if the study was able to control for that, but you know, how long was the turf installed? You know, at the time an injury occurred, because, you know, turf that's been in there for months is different than turf that was installed last Monday.

Right. Yeah. I think it's; they just took an aggregate of the 17 games or, I guess, eight and a half games on average on each field and looked around to see how many state injuries happened at that field by the opponents, you know, both teams playing on it.

So I think that's how they studied it. And you know, it's got some, some, you can sling some arrows at it and shoot some holes in it, but it's an interesting study. And one, I know the NFL takes player safety seriously, as they do with most items.

I am so anxious to see where that leads us. Yeah. Interesting stuff.

Tim, your tidbits are, you know, bringing up items like this constantly every single day, sometimes a couple of times a day. Why don't you share with the listeners how they too can share in on all the fun of hearing these? Yeah. So, you know, best way is just to go to my website, footballarchaeology.com, subscribe.

And that by doing that, you'll, you'll get an email every night at like seven o'clock. I may actually push that a little bit later, but anyways, we'll get an email that with, you know, with the story for that, that evening. And, you know, if you, if you don't want the emails, then just, you can follow me on Twitter.

Yeah. So great subject. We really enjoyed having you share your knowledge with us, Tim, and appreciate you.

And we will talk to you again next week. Very good, sir. Look forward to it.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

There was once a power-house football eleven from St. Louis University. It was back in 1906 and these guys were so very good on the gridiron, however a trip to the West Coast tripped them up perhaps from immortal status.

Timothy P Brown of Football Archaeology joined us to tell the saga of this forgotten team and their great run and downfall, and maybe what could have been.

[-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on St. Louis University’s Trip West
Hello, my football friends. It's Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. Welcome to another Tuesday, when we will visit with our friend Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com to discuss one of his famous tidbits. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.
Darin, seeing and hearing from you in the new year is good.
Looking forward to a great 2024. Yeah, me too. It is a new year, and we're coming out swinging tonight to talk about this great subject matter you have from 100 and almost 120 years ago with a very famous team at a very famous time in football history.
You have it titled your tidbit from July of this year, 2023, St. Louis U's ill-fated trip west. So what can you tell us about St. Louis U and their ill-fated trip? Yeah, so I think one of the things that... I'm always intrigued by stories of teams that have since dropped football or de-emphasized football. And part of what I enjoy about all kinds of history, it doesn't matter what the subject matter is, is the kind of what if things had been turned out differently? What if they'd gone left instead of right? I mean, there are so many things in history that things could have gone differently.
And so I just find that when a school drops the ball, it's like, well, what if they'd done something? What if they'd kept it? What would the world look like now? So St. Louis U, most people don't associate with football, but right after the introduction of the forward pass, they were one of the top teams in the country. They were the first team to throw a forward pass in a regular season game. And that in 1906, they went 11-0.
They had a guy named Eddie Kokums coaching them. He played at Wisconsin and ended up at St. Louis U. He was just ahead of everybody else in terms of thinking about the forward pass. He also had a guy named Bradbury Robinson, who so happened to have learned how to throw an overhand spiral while he was playing at Wisconsin.
And then he transferred down to St. Louis U. And so St. Louis U. creates this offense. And this is just one of these things, it's just like, okay, when they first introduced forward pass, how do you throw the damn ball? And what do pass patterns look like? And what does pass protection look like? It's all that had to be invented. And so, you know, he was way ahead of his time, but their fundamental route was to send four guys out, and they ran button hooks.
When the quarterback was ready to throw the ball, he would yell and hike, and everybody would turn around for the button hook, and the ball would come to one of them, right? And so, I mean, somehow, that was their core pattern, and they ran it over and over again. And, you know, they were successful. They went 11-0.
And I mean, they beat a lot of really good teams. But they were out there in St. Louis, and so, you know, all you snobby people out East like you, you know, weren't paying attention to what was happening out in the great Midwest. So anyway, so then 1907 comes around.
Despite their success, they had only about 16 players on the team. At times, due to injuries and other factors, they'd only have about 13 guys show up for practice. They couldn't even scrimmage.
The other weird thing is that almost all the players on the team were in medical school. So I'm not sure back then, you know, back then, med school and law school were sometimes undergrad and dental school was the same thing. A lot of times, they were undergrad.
I'm not sure. At that point, it probably just dealt with leeches and bloodletting. Yeah, yeah.
So, but you know, you need that. You need that alternative medicine. So, so, so anyways, I mean, it's just an unusual roster and situation, but they still were really good.
They, you know, their first five opponents, they blog what's now Missouri S&T, Southeast Missouri State, Arkansas, Creighton, and Wash U. So then they go to Wabash, who at the time was a really good team. And St. Louis was down a couple of guys, and they ended up losing 11 to 12. And then, the next two weeks, they beat out. They beat Kansas 17, nothing, then Nebraska 34, nothing.
You know, so they ended up finishing seven and one, and they put away their pads and all that stuff. And, you know, the season's over, except then they, that's kind of announced that they're going to be heading out West for a couple of games over the Christmas break. So, and, you know, at the time, no one did that.
They were the fifth team to ever cross the Rockies to play a football game. Chicago did it in 1894, and Carlisle did it twice. Then Michigan went to Pasadena to play the first Rose Bowl in 1902.
So here it's 1907, they're the fifth one to cross the mountains. So they go, they go to play Washington State. And I would just say, you know, since you're a former football official, it sounds from the newspaper reports like the officials weren't all that impartial in some of their calls for the game.
At least that was the St. Louis U perspective. But so they ended up losing the game. And then, then two, then that was Christmas Day.
On New Year's Day, they played a team called Multnomah Athletic Club, which was one of the top teams on the West Coast through World War I. They just had a lot of former college football players. They had a great stadium.
Oregon, Oregon State used to play at Multnomah Stadium well into the 1950s, maybe later than that. Oh, sounds like, you know, St. Louis, you kind of disagreed with some of the officiating that game too. And they lose 11 to six.
So here they went all that way, you know, a couple thousand miles across the country. Took them days to get there and days to get back. And they end up, you know, losing two games.
But you know, great life experience for all the players and all that stuff. So, but it's, you know, so that's just one of those things where, you know, you think about it. Right after, you know, four passes were invented or made legal, St. Louis U is one of the top teams, certainly in the Midwest, if not the country.
And then, you know, Kochems stays on to coach for one more year, and then he leaves and basically, you know, leaves football for the most part. And, you know, St. Louis U basically never achieved the same level of greatness. I think they dropped football in 1949, something like that.
So, I know I wrote this in a different tidbit, but one other, what might have been a kind of story about them was that in 1914, a new graduate from Notre Dame, a guy named Rockne, was planning to go to medical school at St. Louis U and he wanted to help coach football. And the medical people said, no, you can't do that. If you're going to be in med school, you're going to be in med school.
If you want to coach, you can coach, but you can't do both. So, Rockne ends up staying at Notre Dame, and then, you know, we know what happens there. But, you know, you just think about that.
Had Rockne gone to medical school, maybe he just becomes a physician and we never hear the guy's name again. Maybe he coaches and, you know, has similar success. I mean, you got to believe he would have had success at St. Louis U, maybe not the same level, but very similar kinds of schools at the time.
So, you know, maybe today we'd be cheering on the St. Louis U Billikens in major bowl games instead of the Fighting Irish. But, you know, the four horsemen of St. Louis U. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I lived in St. Louis for 14 years, so I'm very familiar with the city, but yeah, it ended, St. Louis really became the prominent soccer, you know, hotbed in the States for decades and decades.
Both St. Louis U and Wash U were big-time soccer programs, you know, and there just was never the same, you know, now like Lindenwood is a D1 program, but, you know, until just the last two, three years, they didn't have D1 football in a city of that size. And they don't have professional football anymore, either. Yeah, yeah.
Well, I'm not sure they ever did. Well, they were in a Super Bowl with the Rams when the Rams were there. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. You're right.
You're right. I was thinking more of the St. Louis football Cardinals. Yeah.
Yeah. So, I went to a few of those games. Yeah.
I'll bet. I'll bet. Well, hey, that's a great story.
And, you know, on a great program that I love rekindling these programs from yesterday, just like you said earlier, and, you know, bringing some remembrance to them and, you know, sharing these memories of them. So really appreciate you doing that, Tim. And you have these tidbits that are coming out, you know, every night and, you know, maybe you could share with the audience how they too can partake in these.
Yeah, it's really simple. The best thing is to go to footballarchaeology.com and subscribe. You can subscribe for free, and then you'll have access to whatever's there.
I also, you know, post everything on threads and on Twitter, both under the football archaeology name. All right. Timothy P. Brown, footballarchaeology.com. We thank you once again for sharing this great story from football of antiquity, and we will talk to you again next week.
Very good. Thank you, sir.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.