Football History

The famous Princeton Tigers two-way end was good enough to be inducted to the College Football Hall of Fame. He had five football-playing brothers, and was the nephew of Edgar Allen Poe, the famous writer.

Art Poe, a name synonymous with early football brilliance, carved a remarkable path on the gridiron. Hailing from a family of football stars, Poe's athletic prowess was evident from the start. His collegiate career at Princeton University was nothing short of spectacular. A dynamic player, he was recognized as a Walter Camp All-American in both 1898 and 1899, a testament to his exceptional skills.

Poe's impact extended beyond the college field. He was a pivotal figure in the nascent professional football scene. As a member of the Homestead Library & Athletic Club, he clinched consecutive mythical professional football championships in 1900 and 1901. His journey continued with the Pittsburgh Stars in the inaugural National Football League, where he contributed to their championship victory in 1902.

Known for his speed, agility, and strategic play, Poe's contributions to the game were immense. His legacy is etched in the annals of football history, making him a true pioneer of the sport.

Beyond his athletic achievements, Poe's story is one of courage and resilience. His untimely passing at a relatively young age cast a shadow over his brilliant career. However, his impact on football remains enduring, inspiring generations of players and fans alike.

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Football Archaeology goes in depth to some early examples of good sportsmanship by early football players, in avoiding dirty tactics of punishing injured players.

Timothy Brown shares a particular instance where fair play was out the window.

-Transcribed Conversation on Football Dirty Play with Timothy Brown

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 another Tuesday. FootballArcheology.com's Timothy P. Brown is joining us once again. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Thanks for having me once again.

I'm looking forward to chatting about old football stuff. Yeah, and we're going to ask you to keep it clean tonight. But I don't think we can possibly do that with the subject matter tonight because you recently wrote a tidbit titled Dirty Play and a Ring of Truth.

Maybe you could explain what that all means. Yeah, so, you know, it seems like I've had a number of tidbits recently where it starts in one direction and takes a turn, sometimes for the worse. Right.

And so this is one where I started by just telling a story of some examples in the old days, excuse me, of players and teams acting in a chivalrous manner. So, you know, I told a story about a 1953 Clemson quarterback, a guy named Don King, you know, told his team not to hit the Wake Forest quarterback in the knees because he'd sustained an injury. And so they complied.

And, you know, then he ends up winning a sports sportsmanship award. A similar thing happened back in 1925. Davis and Elkins go to Army.

They're playing Army. He's already got one of their quarterbacks hurt. The first-string quarterback gets dazed, probably concussed in the game.

He leaves the game. The second guy comes in. He sustained some kind of bodily injury, and he's out.

So they have to bring back this guy who was dazed and confused. Right. So the West Point trainer just approached the Davis and Elkins captain and said, hey, can you kind of take it easy on this guy? So Davis and Elkins complied.

And they basically took it easy on this quarterback for the rest of the game because they, you know, need the Army to have the guy there. But he shouldn't have been there. And just to ensure that we don't think that chivalrous things still happen in the games today.

The other night, I just, you know, happened to see a, you know, little clip from a high school game. And, you know, wide receivers going downfield get injured. And then, you know, his bad leg and, you know, one of his teammates kind of gets under his arm and helps him hop along.

A D-back from the opposing team jumps under the other arm and helps him off the field. So it's just a good kid trying to help his opponent, you know, so that's all good. Now, there are other times in football when people haven't acted that way.

And so, you know, back in 1926, Princeton and Harvard had a game, and there's just a lot of kind of stuff leading up to it. Princeton had won the last two years, so Harvard wasn't pleased with that because they thought they were better than Princeton. And Princeton was mad because it used to be, especially before the turn of the century, that Princeton and Yale finished the season with a game with one another.

But then it turned into a Harvard-Yale game that we all know ends the season in the Ivy League. But Princeton wanted it to rotate, you know, among the three teams. And Harvard was like, no, you know, we're not going to do that.

So, you know, Princeton was feeling like underappreciated and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, there's this kind of antagonistic relationship. And then so they're getting ready to play.

They're playing in Cambridge. On the morning of the game, the Harvard Lampoon, the student newspaper magazine, publishes a story about the Princeton coach dying. Now, he hadn't really died, but they still published a story about him dying, which the Princeton people didn't particularly appreciate.

So just lots of, you know, kind of ill will going in the game. And so I think the Princeton players did their best to take it out on the Harvard players. Six of the Harvard players had to leave the game with injuries.

And then Princeton wins 12-0. And, you know, it's just kind of this general ill feeling. But then, like at the end of December, early January, a former Harvard player publishes a story in some kind of social magazine or whatever it was.

But he publishes a story basically saying the Princeton players played dirty. You know, they did this and that. One piece that he used as evidence was that one of the Harvard's backs had a bloody nose and black eye.

And that area of his face or nose had a P imprinted on it. And it was because, you know, those signet rings where it's like a, you know, it's a ring that has like a letter on the ring. You know, they were claiming that a Princeton player wearing the letter P ring had punched this guy in the face and left this imprint in his face.

So, you know, apparently, you know, no one else backed this guy up. You know, none of the other people verified it. And all of Princeton's people were up in arms about it.

And they were basically saying, hey, nobody around Princeton wears a P signet ring. But there was one guy, their star player at the time, named Prendergast. And he was like, hey, my last name begins with P. So, guess where that came from? You know, and I don't think that was true.

But, you know, he was just going to keep things stirred up. So Prendergast would be better than Princeton. If anybody actually slugged this guy in the face with the P ring, it was Prendergast.

So anyway, that's kind of the gist of the story. But Harvard, yeah, Harvard and Princeton did not play football against one another for another eight years. So they definitely were not, they weren't, they weren't on, you know, nice, pleasant speaking terms at that darn Prendergast.

He's ruined football for that game for a couple of years. That's wow. That is an amazing part of football there.

Go ahead. And the funny the funny thing, too, is that I. Recently had another tidbit talking about the the executioner's helmets, you know, where they had the mask, so just a normal leather helmet. But then they'd have this mask across the front.

One of the images in that story is of Prendergast going to Princeton in the 1924 season because he had broken a nose and needed surgery in high school. And so then, you know, there were times when his nose got busted up again in college. And so he'd wear that executioner's mask.

So he knew. You know all about broken noses and that sort of thing. Wow.

That is a great story. I thought at first you were going to tell us that, you know, Mrs. Brown put a bee on your head when you didn't take out the garbage or something. But no, in my family, it would be the back of the frying pan or something.

You know, yeah, my wife's shorter than me. So her arms aren't that long. And so, you know, and plus, I'm, you know, you know, float like a butterfly.

So I could I could avoid her. Well, I see. I just think I just saw something flying across the room.

No, I'm just kidding. So, wow, that is a great story. There's, you know, really some opportunity for folks playing football, especially down in the piles.

You know, everybody that's played, we all know there's bad things that happen down there if somebody really wants to do something. And it's really hard for an official to see something that's happening down there. You have guys popping up all the time saying, hey, you know, he punched me in a place he shouldn't punch and, you know, pinch me, bite me or whatever, you know, you have all kinds of crazy things.

So it's nice to hear the the chivalrous episodes like you talked about, even in modern times, or players just. I mean, it's a brotherhood. And these guys are all trying to enjoy playing the same game.

And there should be some camaraderie to it. And it's great when that happens. But every once in a while, you get these bad apples and these scoundrels that decide to take things in a different course.

And they're interesting stories, but not fun if you're the recipient. That's for sure. Yeah.

And well, part of it, too, is, you know, you just, I think we have the impression of the Ivy League is being, you know, these nice. Nice fellows. And that definitely has not always been the case.

And they have some beautiful signature rings, too. Yes. Yes.

All right, Tim. Well, that is a great thing. That's not something you hear anywhere else.

But from you, some of these great little innovative stories that you've come across that are unique to the game of football but tell a certain history of the game and, you know, really round out our appreciation for what players have done and maybe not appreciate something that others have done. But it's all part of the game of football. And you talk about it each and every day.

You have a great little newsletter. Many different sources send it to folks every day. Maybe you could tell us about that and how people can join in.

Yeah. All you have to do is go to footballarchaeology.com. And, you know, if you are pretty much all over the place, you read an article, and you have an opportunity to subscribe. And if you subscribe, you can get an email in your inbox every night at seven o'clock or, you know, Eastern or so.

And, you know, then read it at your leisure, delete it, whatever you want to do. If you don't want the newsletter, you can follow me on Twitter, threads, or the Substack app. And those are also just, you know, search for football archaeology.

You'll find me. That's my name on each of those three apps. OK, and his name is Timothy P. Brown, not the name on the Substack apps, but he has footballarchaeology.com. Tim, we thank you for joining us.

And we will talk to you again next Tuesday.

Always appreciate the opportunity to talk football. Thanks there.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on the Missing Goal Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah. Yeah. Oh boy.

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

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

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

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

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

Very good.Thank you, sir.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

The Columbia Lions faced the Stanford Indians in the 20th edition of the Rose Bowl Game played in January of 1934.

The tough Princeton Tigers All-America football star who had a great career.

Princeton Tigers College Hall of Fame tackle of the late nineteenth-century.