Football History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay. Very good. Thanks, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Transcribed Conversation on Carlinville with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. Today is Tuesday, and on Tuesdays, we love to go back in time in football and talk to Timothy P. Brown of FootballArchaeology.com about one of his famous stories. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

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

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

-The Football Archaeology of Carlinville’s Football Fame

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey, Darin. Thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah. Great stuff. That's very fascinating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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Timothy P Brown of Football Archaeology describes the rise and demise of the Flying Wedge from the gridiron. Created by Harvard Coach Lorin Deland, the wedge at its inception was to use the mass formation to pound brutally through the opposition, particularly rival Yale, in a tight formation of humanity.

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

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Timothy P. Brown digs into the football archaeology of an amazingly long run by Yale Bulldog Wyllys Terry.

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

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The era and inception of rubber footballs and how they were perceived int he game. Football Archaeology does a nice bit of research on the subject.

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Timothy Brown's FootballArchaeology.com is a website dedicated to preserving pigskin history. digs into gridiron history to examine how football’s evolution shapes today's game. The site has a variety of articles, history of football word origins, and Daily Tidbits, which have a daily football factoid that shares some quite interesting items and aspects of the gridiron in a short read. They preserve football history in a very unique way Visit the site at Today's Tidbits.