Football History

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Timothy Brown joins Darin Hayes to spotlight the significant yet often overlooked contributions of Henry Mitchell McCracken to the safety and evolution of American football. McCracken, who became NYU's chancellor in the late 19th century, played a pivotal role in advocating for safer rules in the sport during a time when football was facing scrutiny for its dangers.

Of course, this discussion all stems from Tim's original article titled: Stadium Size, Football Droppers, and Deemphasizers: NYU .

The audio-only podcast of the discussion can be found at: Henry McCracken Contributions.

Following the tragic death of a player during a game, the NYU Chancellor galvanized university leaders to convene and develop new regulations, ultimately leading to the formation of what is now the NCAA. The discussion delves into McCracken's legacy, including his influence on the establishment of halls of fame in the United States and his efforts to reform the game. Join us as we explore these fascinating historical insights and uncover the impact of McCracken's work on modern college football.

The conversation unfolds as Darin Hayes and Timothy Brown recount the historical landscape of football in the early 1900s, shedding light on the challenges and dangers the sport posed to its players. Timothy elaborates on the culture of college athletics at that time, where university presidents and chancellors, like McCracken, wielded significant influence over the direction of sports programs. The episode paints a vivid picture of the educational values intertwined with athletics, as faculty members played a crucial role in governance, leading to a system that prioritized student safety amidst the chaotic nature of early football games. The narrative details how McCracken's response to a fatal accident during a game exemplified the urgent need for reform in college football, ultimately resulting in a collaborative effort from various universities to establish safer playing conditions. This historical reflection not only honors McCracken's contributions but also invites listeners to consider the ongoing evolution of sports governance and safety in today's athletic landscape, drawing parallels between past and present.

Takeaways

-The podcast discusses the contributions of Henry Mitchell McCracken to football safety and history.

-Timothy Brown highlights McCracken's role in establishing the first Hall of Fame in America.

-McCracken's advocacy led to significant changes in football rules after a player was killed.

-The episode emphasizes how college sports governance was once more influenced by university presidents.

-The origins of the NCAA can be traced back to McCracken's initiatives in the early 1900s.

-Listeners learn about the historical context of college football's evolution and its challenges.

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When we go to a football game or watch one on TV, there are lines on the field, and they are preset because, most of the time, the fields are artificial grass fields. Somebody has to line the field, but we have modern equipment. How did they do it in the early days of football? Well, Timothy B. Brown of football archaeology joins us to tell us how they lined the field back in the day.

Of course, this discussion all stems from Tim's original article titled: Factoid Feast VII .

The audio-only podcast of the discussion can be found at: How They Lined the Fields in Early Football.

Football archaeologist Timothy P. Brown joins the show to shed light on this forgotten aspect of the game. He's known for his captivating "factoid feasts," where he unearths little-known nuggets of football history. Today's feast features a particularly intriguing tidbit: how they lined the field back in the day.

The Solution: A Goofy-Looking Tool

Prepare to be amazed! Timothy reveals that they used a wheelbarrow-like contraption to mark the field. This contraption had a large barrel filled with lime or chalk solution and a spigot at the bottom. The solution dripped onto a grooved wheel, leaving a line on the ground as it was pushed across the field.

Imagine the Challenge!

Darin paints a vivid picture of the difficulty involved. Pushing a heavy wheelbarrow in a straight line is hard enough, let alone controlling the flow of the solution and ensuring precise markings. Images in the show notes (check them out!) provide a delightful visual of this quirky tool.

A Look at Football Archaeology

Timothy's website, footballarchaeology.com, is a treasure trove for anyone interested in the forgotten stories of the game.

He encourages listeners to subscribe for email updates on his latest articles.  

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Have you ever wondered how and why a football looks the way it does? What about the grainy texture, the color or the stripes? Our friend Author Timothy Brown has the answers.

Discover the secrets behind the ball's shape, size, and materials, and learn how technological advancements have transformed the game. Brown offers a unique perspective on the football's cultural significance and its impact on society throughout history.

Join us as Tim discusses his latest groundbreaking work, The History of the Football. In this captivating conversation.

We also have a podcast audio version of the discussion found at:
The History of the Football with Timothy Brown or you can find it on your favorite podcast provider in the Pigskin Dispatch Podcast.

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The practice of stealing signs in football has been a contentious issue for decades, a subtle game within the game that can drastically alter the outcome of a match. While the exact origins are shrouded in time, it's safe to say that as soon as teams began using signals to communicate plays, opponents sought to decipher them.

In the early days of football, sign stealing was often a matter of keen observation and deduction. Coaches and players would watch for subtle cues, such as hand gestures, formations, or even the way a quarterback looked at his receivers. As the sport evolved, so too did the methods of sign stealing. The advent of technology, particularly video cameras, opened up new avenues for teams to gain an edge.

Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology visits us in this episode to share the story of the nefarious and unethical item of the pigskin's history.

If you love the football talk on history and evolution, then you should check out the original article Tim wrote : A History of Signal Stealing in College Football.

In addition to the video above, you can also get the podcast audio version for your listening enjoyment at: The History of Stealing Signs in American Football.

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Hold onto your helmets, football fans! In a groundbreaking episode, Timothy P. Brown, the mastermind behind FootballArchaeology.com, joins host Darin Hayes to unveil a hidden chapter in American football history. Buckle up as Brown exposes the story of Anthony Harris, the first known Black college football coach at a non-HBCU institution, leading Colby College in 1903 and 1904 – years before the previously credited Matthew Bullock. This revelation throws a fascinating wrench into the established timeline and shines a long-overdue light on Harris's pioneering role in the sport.

However, the episode doesn't shy away from the challenges of unearthing African American contributions. The lack of coverage in mainstream media during this era makes uncovering these stories an uphill battle. But together, Darin and Tim celebrate the importance of recognizing these overlooked figures and ensuring their legacy is preserved for future generations.

This episode promises to be a captivating journey, rewriting narratives and reminding us that football history is richer and more diverse than previously thought.

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The Horween family has been a cornerstone in the world of football for generations. Ralph and Arnold Horween, brothers and entrepreneurs, took over a business founded by their father Isadore, the Horween Leather Company, in Chicago in 1920. Their dedication to crafting high-quality leather has led to their products becoming synonymous with the NFL.

Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology visits us in this episode to share the story of this family that has quite a story in gridiron history and the present day.

If you love the football talk on history and evolution, then you should check out the original article Tim wrote The Horween Brothers and the NFL.

You may also be interested in the podcast version of our conversation found at: The Horween Family.

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When you think you have heard it all, a football story like this is revealed! It's so strange you won't believe it, but this oddity occurred in the game a century ago when things were just a bit different.

I have heard of many strange situations that occurred during football games throughout the ages. Ill weather, lost balls, and even nonplayers and vehicles out on the field of play; however, when I read the Football Archaeology.com Tidbit titled Punting From Behind A Barbed Wire Fence.

It may just take the cake for being the strangest.

I appreciate Timothy Brown for sharing his time, knowledge, and incredible story from yesteryear.

We present this video to preserve the legacy of American football history.

-Full Transcription of Conversation with Timothy Brown on Punting Behind Barbed Wire



TBrown_PuntBehindBarbedWire_1

⏰Wed, 05/01 04:44AM · 12mins

Transcript

Darin Hayes:
We have a great day planned for you today on this episode. Timothy P. Brown of footballarchaeology.com is joining us just like he does each and every Tuesday. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Timothy Brown:
Darin, thank you. How are you doing this evening?

Darin Hayes:
I am doing great. And how about you?

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, can't complain, can't complain. Gonna get out of town in a few days and get away for a week. So that's nothing for me.

Darin Hayes:
Well, that's great because this winter time, it's almost like, uh, you know, especially us up in the colder climates, uh, a bit of a prisoner, almost like we're behind a barbed wire fence. And, uh, I had to stretch for that one to segue into our topic tonight. That's why Tim is laughing because he recently wrote a post he titled Punning from behind a barbed wire fence; Tim, that sounds like a pretty risky business there. And, uh, maybe you could explain this title.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, so this is one where there's like multiple rules involved that were current in 1907 when this event occurred but are long, you know, long gone from the game. So it's one, you know, I came across, I've done a couple of different articles from a series that ran in the 1920s called the most spectacular play I've ever seen. And they went out, and they interviewed a bunch of people about, you know, the most spectacular play they ever saw. And so this guy named Bill or CW Street mentioned a play that he in a game he had participated in. So, you know, just to kind of set up the stage a little bit. This guy CW played at Auburn for two years and then at Washburn and Lee. It was during his senior year, Washington Lee, in 1907, that this game occurred. But you know, he then went on. He was a track and wrestling official. And I mean that both in terms of, you know, help, like officiating, but also kind of managing as part of the, you know, the US Olympic teams for both as an administrator and official type, but he also was the field judge for the 1929 Rose Bowl, which is the game when Roy, you know, the "Wrong Way Riegels" play. So he was on the field for that play. So anyway, he saw some spectacular plays. And that was, you know, the wrong way. Riegels wasn't one of them, although I guess it actually wouldn't have occurred by the time the articles came up. So

Darin Hayes:
He might have changed his mind after that play, right? Yeah.

Timothy Brown:
So, so what happened with this guy was he was the captain of the W and L team, and they were playing Bucknell close game, and at one point, Bucknell drove the ball down to the three-yard line, and then they, the W and L's, defense held so the ball was turned over on downs. So back in that time, you know, if you had the ball inside your 10, it was very common that you pumped it on first out. And so he's saying, yeah, that's what we're going to do. But in this particular instance, the, you know, back then they didn't have hash marks. So if the play ended over towards the sideline or the previous play ended over towards the sideline, that's where the next play started. And then this is 1907, so they didn't have end zones yet. They had a goal line but no end line, no end zones. And so, in a lot of locations, since the ball couldn't, the only way you could score a touchdown was to run the ball across the goal line. You could catch a pass, a forward pass in 1907. But if the ball in the air or bounding went across the goal line, it was a turnover. It was basically a touchback. So, basically, you didn't need the depth in the end zone. It was like all you needed was across the end zone. And so, as a result, they could fit playing fields into pretty tight spaces. And there might be a wall just beyond the end zone in a stadium like the Polo Grounds. So, in this case, on one side of the end zone, there was a barbed wire fence a little bit behind the end zone. And so the street asks the referee, can we move the ball over to the other side of the field so that we can punt? And the referee says, I understand why you want to do that, but no, you can't. That's not within the rules. We can't just move the ball through the other side of the field. So the streets are like, okay, we're playing by the rules. So I'm going to play by the rules, too. So what he does is he, he has his punt, he tells his punter to go on the other side, go through the gate, lock the gate, and then go on the other side of the barbed wire fence and stand there to be ready to take the snap. So that's what the punter does. So he's back there. He gets a snap, and the Bucknell defenders start racing toward him, but they stop before they get to the barbed wire fence, and they can't figure out how to get to the guy. In the meantime, his people are running him down the field. And he's just kind of waiting there, ready to, he's waiting to punt the ball until his teammates get downfield. And now, the other thing about the rules of the time was in 1906; they made the, you know, what they call for a while the quarterback kick or the onside punt. In 1906, they made it so that if you punted the ball, any one of your teammates could recover the ball and advance it. You know, they had as much right as the return man. So by the time he punted it, they had, you know, 10 of his teammates downfield than just one return man. So they ended up recovering the ball, you know, W and R, you know, recover the ball. Unfortunately, they ended up with the same guy who was the punter on another occasion; he was back to punt, stepped behind the end zone, or I should say behind the goal line and was tackled for a safety. So they end up losing the game two to nothing. But it is the only known game in which a punt was made from behind a barbed wire fence. If anybody else knows of any others, let me know.

Darin Hayes:
It introduces your chance of getting your kick blocked.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, yeah, that's great cup protection. You know, I've got a nice barbed wire fence in front of you.

Darin Hayes:
Think about the pressure on the long snapper, though. He's got to make sure he clears that fence or, you know, there could be some trouble there.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, they only used one ball at the time, so if that ball had popped. Thank you.

Darin Hayes:
Well, but even now, okay. Let's say he snaps that ball at the rules at that time, and it hits the wire, the fence, and drops it straight down. That's a loose ball, right? So you're going to have these guys going in for a fumble next to a barbed wire fence and trying to recover. Ooh, boy. Holy porcupines, Batman. That sounds like a bad one.

Timothy Brown:
Kind of a prickly situation.

Darin Hayes:
Yeah, that's for sure. Well, I'll tell you what, Tim, you, uh, you, you definitely, uh, go through it, and you will find some interesting ones. That's, that's a good one. I would have never even ever thought of, uh, that being, uh, you know, but if, yeah, but there's no, uh, no end zones, there's no out of bounds. So it probably goes on forever, too.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, it's an infinite end zone or infinite goal area.

Darin Hayes:
Very, very interesting. Really makes you think on that one. Uh, yeah.

Timothy Brown:
And again, I mean, there's the, you know, just the difference in the, you had the, the on-site punt, you know, you had the, the ball over, you know, without hash marks, the balls over near the sideline. There's no, no end zone. You know, it's just a lot of different rules, you know, in place.

Darin Hayes:
It's amazing how much the game has evolved, and I think we're probably all grateful for it, except for maybe the punters. Maybe they would still want the rule to be like you just described so they could have some extra protection.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, well, I'll do a little reading on the rule book tonight see if they have any any specific mentions barbed wire fences.

Darin Hayes:
Well, I wonder, I mean, I wonder if it would have, what would have happened? It's like some of the stadiums you described where the goal line was very close to the wall of possibly the stands. Yeah. Would the punter be able to stand in the stands if the snapper could get it up to where he was and kick from an elevated position or really? Yeah, presumably. Yeah.

Timothy Brown:
Um, you know, I mean, it's just like, you know, the one, you know, fumbles out of bounds, you know, they, the ball was not dead when it went out of bounds back then. So, you know, tumbling over water buckets, over cinder tracks, all that kind of stuff. And so, you know, and it was, you know, a little bit of the reason why they kept everybody seated along the sidelines was, I mean, it was by rule, they, you know, teams were limited to like two or three or five rules varied over the years, but you can only have a certain number of people standing along the sidelines. Everybody else had to be kneeling or seated. So, you know, that's why you see in the old photographs, everybody's sitting on the bench.

Darin Hayes:
Well, as a former sideline official, I'm so jealous of those times when everybody sat on a bench. It would have been lovely. Yeah. Wow. Well, great job, Tim, uh, you know, you have such interesting little pieces like that, uh, your tidbits on football archaeology .com. Why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about how they too can partake in, uh, enjoying, uh, football archaeology's, uh, information and content?

Timothy Brown:
Yep, so you just go to footballarcheology.com. I mean, obviously, you can just go there whenever you want, but if you want to subscribe, you can subscribe for free. That gives you access to about a third of the emails I send out; you'll get and get full access to the other article or to the article; the others, you can preview the article, and then it kind of cuts off on you. Then, the paid subscription is five bucks a month, and they're 50 bucks a year. You can do a seven-day trial for free, that kind of stuff. I also post on threads and Twitter. I'm not really active on threads; I just post there and then on Twitter, you know, a couple of times a week, I'm posting something in reaction to what somebody else has said and blah, blah, blah. So, you know, fun conversations occur out there on Twitter.

Darin Hayes:
His name is Timothy Brown:. Football archeology.com is his website. Tim, we really appreciate you joining us and telling us about this very interesting piece of football history, and love to do it again next week.

Timothy Brown:
Very good. Thank you.

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Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology visited us recently to tell the story of one of his recent Tidbits about paying players at the collegiate level a century before the NIL.

In the video, Tim discusses how college football players have been getting paid under the table for many years. He mentions that in 1929, the Carnegie Foundation issued a report criticizing the underground payment system, but it was largely ignored due to the Great Depression.

This video is a fascinating look at the history of paying college football players. It is clear that this is a complex issue with a long history and that there are many different opinions on the matter.

Transcribed conversation with Timothy Brown on Paid College Players over a century ago

Hello, my football friends! Welcome again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. It is Tuesday, and we are happy to say that Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com has joined us again to talk about another of his great tidbits. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Darin, thank you. It was good to see you again, hear your voice, and have the opportunity to chat a little bit. Yeah, this is, you know, the football seasons are winding down in all leagues here.

This is this coming weekend. We have the Super Bowl coming up. You know, we're actually recording a couple of weeks ahead of time, but we know who the participants are. And, you know, it's not so good for your neck of the woods. You know, the Lions had a great season and just didn't work out their way at the end of the game of the NFC Championship.

Unfortunately, I grew up a Packers fan, and they bit us the week before, and then the Lions. So I don't know that I really care anymore about either team that's in there. Sometimes, that's what makes it fun.

If you have no vested interest in it, you just sit back and hope for good football and enjoy the athletes, some of the great things they do, and what happens. And, you know, you're not worried one way or the other if something bad happens. Yeah.

Yeah. My daughter, who grew up in Detroit
 but lives in San Francisco, kind of couldn't lose in that game. So, hopefully, she's got a continued rooting interest, but not for me.

Yeah. What are you going to do? Well, paying players—you know, these players in the NFL are getting paid quite a bit, and it sort of segues into what we're going to be talking about now. We know that college players are getting paid with the NIL contracts and everything, but you have a story in one of your tidbits from a little while back where you talk about some players getting paid in college almost a hundred years ago.

And maybe you'd like to discuss that with us today. Yeah. Well, you know, I think it, the idea of paying somebody to participate in sports, particularly at the college level, I mean, that's as old as people, you know, from the day that people said, hey, it's important for my college to be your college.

From that moment, they started finding ways to ensure that good athletes attended this school or that school. You know, and for a long time, it was an informal process. You know, there used to be a banker in town who would send, you know, pay for a kid to college.

And geez, if he happened to be a good athlete and went to Old State U, that was great. But, you know, they, you know, they're also like way back in the day, you know, top student-athletes often were like, they'd be like agents for cigar manufacturers or chewing gum manufacturer, you know, any, anything that was sold on campus. And then if they could influence people's buying behavior, you know, they got paid money, you know, for that kind of thing.

And there's a lot of that kind of stuff going on. And then, obviously, there were the easier no-show jobs that guys had. But so, I mean, there's always been kind of the under-the-table thing.

And then, in 1929, there was a big report. The Carnegie Foundation, you know, reported on college football, basically criticizing all of this underground payment, you know, system and, you know, having guys there who maybe weren't the greatest students, et cetera. And so the one, the funny thing about that, I mean, it was one of those things that kind of just ignored.

I mean, the Great Depression started shortly after they issued the report. So people kind of had, you know, bigger problems too, you know, to worry about. But there were, you know, a handful of people, professors, you know, folks directly involved in athletics who were kind of saying, we should pay these guys, you know, they should get a percentage of the gate or, you know, they should get, there was a guy at Missouri who said, you know, the players should get $2 per hour for practice.

Now, that doesn't sound like much, but it'd be the same as $36 an hour today, you know, beer money, you know, for a college athlete. And then there were a couple of student newspapers, Minnesota and UCLA, that came out saying, hey, you know, the football players in particular, they subsidize all other sports, which was true at most bigger schools at the time. And I've, you know, I've got documentation on that that I'll probably put out in another tidbit.

But so anyways, you know, and then others were just arguing like, you know, football in particular, and then later on basketball and baseball, they had, they were commercialized, you know, they were professionalized in every way other than paying the players. The coaches got big-time money, and people had to pay money to attend the games. And, you know, then they started selling video rights, and then they started selling TV rights.

So, you know, there were these pots and pots of money. So, if you look at a big-time college athletic program, that is a pro program. You know, it's run by professionals.

In some ways, it's run for professionals, right? And the only thing that wasn't professional about it was that the athletes didn't get paid. They got a scholarship, you know, at bigger schools, and then eventually they'd get some spending money and, you know, dah, dah, dah. But nothing like what their actual market, you know, power was.

And so now that this NIL is out there, you know, all of a sudden, guys are, you know, starting to make some pretty good money. Some guys are better off staying in college an extra year than signing some, you know, low-level rookie contracts. Now, then their pro contract, that clock starts, you know, doesn't start clicking or, you know, ticking for another year.

But, you know, somebody tells me I can make whatever, a million bucks through NIL, you know, versus, you know, whatever, you know, 800,000 or whatever the current rookie contract is worth, you know, you got to think about. So, it's just really, um, it's been a long time coming, right? And like myself, I don't necessarily like some of the things that are going to, the impact it will have on the game. But that's just selfishness, you know, whereas the kids deserve the money, you know, just like artists or, you know, musicians, or a kid who invents, you know, writes a piece of software or whatever, you know, TikTok sort of influencer, whatever, you know.

Anyway, it's one of those funny things. It's that conflict that has always existed, but now it's more or less out in the open.

So I think that's good. Yeah. Cause, uh, I mean, if it wasn't for the student-athletes, people wouldn't be paying to go watch an empty football field or basketball court or whatever event they're going to.

So yeah, those kids deserve it, and they work hard. And, uh, you know, I was kind of surprised though. You know, I knew when the NIL was coming out that, uh, you know, players were going to be getting paid, but I had no idea there was going to be as lucrative for, for some of these folks as it is in the, uh, I was astounded the LSU gymnast.

Uh, and I forget what her name is. She's on a couple of commercials now and is a social influencer. She's making millions, uh, just by her likeness and image.

So it's amazing. Yeah. And, you know, some people will get that money based on, frankly, what they look like, right?

Uh, others, you know, their personality, just their, you know, obviously she had to be smart enough to, I mean, she's a very attractive young lady. Still, you know, she figured out the game and, uh, was doing some, you know, you know, she, she's, you know, I mean, I've never watched herself, but I assume she's got to have a presence and delivery, whatever it is. Right. Um, she was so smart enough to take advantage of that and the situation she was in.

So yeah, more power to her. Yeah. He has a couple of extra bucks left over after buying the school books each semester.

That's for sure. Yeah. She didn't even have to sell her school books in the old days.

Great. Well, that's, I mean, that's interesting that it's been around that long that, uh, you know, the debate's been long for a hundred years now. So that's, uh, it's incredible.

That's why it's such a great read. And maybe you could share with the listeners how they, too, could partake in your tidbits. Yeah.

You can subscribe on Substack or visit footballarchaeology.com whenever you want. You can also follow me on Twitter, so whatever fits your fancy.

Well, Tim, we really appreciate you coming here and sharing another one of these great stories of football and aspects of football of, of old that, uh, you know, really have big meaning in today's college football world. And, uh, we appreciate you, and, uh, folks, make sure you check out FootballArchaeology.com. We have the links in the show notes to this tidbit, and it takes you into Tim's realm of FootballArchaeology.com, which you talked about. And Tim, we would love to talk to you again next week about another aspect of football.

Very good. Look forward to chatting again.

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The modern touchback rule in American football, where a ball fumbled out of the end zone results in possession for the receiving team at the 20-yard line, wasn't always the way it was. Its history reveals an interesting journey shaped by strategic considerations, safety concerns, and the ever-evolving nature of the game.

Timothy Brown of FootballArchaeology.com joins us to discuss this interesting but rare football event and its evolution in history.

Early Days and the Muffed Punt: In the early years of American football (late 19th century), recovering a fumble in the end zone, even if accidentally, awarded the recovering team a touchdown. This strategy, known as the "muffed punt," involved intentionally fumbling the ball just before crossing the goal line to score. It was a risky maneuver but potentially offered an advantage in scoring position.

Safety First: Introducing the Safety: Recognizing the dangers of this practice, a new rule was introduced in 1882, awarding the opposing team two points (later changed to one) for recovering a fumble in the end zone, effectively discouraging the "muffed punt" and prioritizing player safety.

Strategic Shifts and the Touchdown: However, the new rule also created a strategic conundrum. Teams facing fourth-and-long situations near their own end zone could intentionally fumble the ball out of bounds for a safety, essentially sacrificing two points to avoid a potential turnover and touchdown by the opponent. This led to the introduction of the "touchback" rule.

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In the leather-helmeted days of yore, football jerseys were a canvas of clean lines and bold colors, proudly displaying a team's name or city across the chest. This is the untold story of how logos, once relegated to the shadows, muscled their way onto the gridiron, forever changing the face of the beautiful game. We'll delve into the fierce competition between sportswear giants, the cultural shift that embraced branding, and the trailblazing teams who dared to be different. Buckle up, football fans, as we explore the fascinating origin story of the logos that existed on jerseys before players' numbers did.

Timothy P Brown takes us on his research of football jerseys with embarrassment and who did it first. From Furman to Lafayette and points in between, we learn about uniform decor transformation.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown Jerseys with Emblems

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin. He's at pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

Welcome to Tuesday and a research journey to footballarchaeology.com and Timothy P. Brown. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Darren, thank you.

Looking forward to chatting, as always. It should be. This is, I think, actually a pretty fun one. Not that others aren't.

But, you know, this one's just particularly fun. Yeah, this is this is a neat one because we get to talk about uniform adornment. Your tidbit back in the middle of May was titled Football Jerseys with Emblems.

So this is a fascinating spectacle of football that we love colors and seeing teams with great designs on their uniforms. So this may be the start of it. Yeah.

You know, well, the weird thing is I was looking at a. Yeah, I was running through some social media that I happened to see a guy wearing a jersey from the 90s, and it may have been an arena team; it could have been, you know, whatever, some off league. But anyway, they had a big dog on the jersey, and the number was smaller. But anyway, I hadn't seen anything like that for quite some time.

So this one is about, like, you know, if you think about it. Um. You know, hockey, especially, you know, they've got jerseys on their sweaters, right? They're not jerseys.

They've got emblems on the sweaters, the red wings. You know, I live in the Detroit area. They got the wheel and the wing.

Right. And everybody else has some kind of a, even if it's just a wordmark or the Blackhawks, whomever, you know, they've got they got a big emblem. And even baseball has some.

Basketball has a pretty good number of emblems. You know, a lot of times it's just, you know, the wordmark or something like that. But it's not unusual.

Like San Francisco's, you know, Golden State has had, you know, their the Golden Gate Bridge and things like that on their jerseys. But football doesn't typically have not had that. So, you know, I was trying to figure out, OK, when they had them and, you know, kind of why and, you know, why don't they anymore, those kinds of things? And so, you know, football had.

So, you know, in the beginning, a lot of times football teams wore jerseys with the like the main letter, like why, if you were playing for Yale or an H, if you played for Harvard or they'd have smaller, you know, the smaller combination of letters like Slippery Rock Normal School might have S.R. and S. You know, so I mean, there's if you look at old time pictures, you see even on like the canvas jackets and the canvas vest, you see those kinds of initials. But oftentimes, they were just plain. And even when, you know, the first numbers were worn on the backs of jerseys in 1905.

And it took a long time, took a couple of decades, really, for teams to start wearing numbers on the front of their jerseys. So in the meantime, you end up having, you know, you had the onset in mid-teens. You had the onset of, you know, stickum cloth or friction strips.

I mean, there are different names for it. But, you know, if you think about, you know, almost any picture of red grains, you see, you know, vertical stripes on his jersey. And he probably has stripes on the inside of his arms.

And that was kind of treated leather that, you know, the belief was that it held running backs, in particular, you know, hold on to the ball. And when those first came out, a lot of times, you're just big ovals or even squares on the front of the jerseys. But they, you know, they had a functional use, but then people kind of got fancy with them, and they started creating designs, and they started putting them on the linemen, too, who sometimes carried the ball.

But, you know, for the most part, did not. And became quite a laundering nightmare, I'm sure, after the game, trying to clean up. Yeah, I don't know how the heck they did it sometimes, you know.

Probably didn't wash them is probably what they did. Yeah. Well, in fact, then they didn't, you know, I mean, hardly anybody wore white.

But here and there, you know, there were teams that did. But how they got that stuff clean, I don't know. But so then, you know, they kind of started having taken some artistic license.

And so often it was like teams that were like their main letter, their name, their school started with what I'll just call a straight a straight letter, meaning a K and an L, a Y. So it's just a series of straight lines. And then they'd incorporate that letter into the friction strip pattern, you know, and so there are some of them that are actually pretty cool looking. But, they still weren't like emblems in the way that's like hockey, you know, a sweater might have.

But then the earliest one I found was Furman in 1925 had a bullseye on there. You know, I think it had three rings in it. So folks, you have to see go to the show notes and go to the link of Tim's story on this on the tidbit.

And you'll see this great image of the Furman team from 1925 that he's describing. You'll see exactly what he talks about. These uniforms are really great.

I'm looking at it right now. It's looks like a certain red department store would be very pleased with these jerseys that make a commercial out of this. Although it was purple and white.

So. Oh, OK. And actually, somehow, they got ahold of one of those things.

So their their archives has one of those original jerseys. You know, really cool looking. So now why Furman had a target on their jerseys? I don't know, but.

Maybe it will help the quarterback with the forward pass downfield. Well, all the linemen had it, too. The next one I found was Bucknell, which is actually kind of interesting. It was like Bucknell in 1930.

They've got they've got a small number up kind of on the chest on the front of their jersey and then down basically on the belly. There are two Bucknell is the bison. And so there are two buffalos or bisons kind of charging at each other.

You know, kind of across the belly. And so, you know, they've got both the emblem and the number. And then, kind of the weirdest one, I think, is probably 1932 Lafayette.

So, it's the same general neighborhood as Bucknell. It's, you know, there are goofballs from Pennsylvania. And so, you know, they're named after the Marquis de Lafayette.

And so they have this kind of looks like the outline of George Washington on a court, right? You know that profile. But it's it's an image, or it's a profile of the Marquis, and it's sitting there on the jersey. It's like it's fine enough.

You know, there are little inset lines where his nose or his ears are, whatever they are. And there's no way anybody in the stands can see that stuff. You know, even in a small stadium.

So it's it's kind of it's so finely done that it kind of just didn't make any sense, frankly. But anyways, it's just this great image. And it's like, who the heck decided to put that baby on the jersey? Yeah, you have two different images.

You have like a full team picture of the Lafayette team. You know, all the members are sitting in bleachers. It's kind of far away.

And you can you can see it's maybe somebody's head looks almost like, you know, the front of a dime, you know, that kind of image. But then you have a picture of five players a little bit closer, and you can see, you know, the marquee there. So it's very, very detailed for an emblem on the front of a jersey.

Yeah. Yeah. A hundred years ago.

Yeah. You know, you know, I mean, presumably, it's a black-and-white image. So I assume it's all just a white or a gray or something, you know, logo.

So you're like the Blackhawks. You know, there's multiple colors. And so at least it helps, you know, kind of differentiate the features in a face.

But anyway, this is one of those things that, you know, I mean, football at that time, you know, football didn't require numbers on the jerseys on the front of the jerseys until 1937. And it was like in 41, where they started numbering by position. You know, guards are wearing this number, and tackles are wearing that.

But, you know, so I mean, these preceded those rules. Right. So it's one of those like, OK, well, why didn't football have more emblems? You know, they could, they could have.

Right. Right. And other sports did.

But football, for whatever reason, didn't go the emblem route. And, you know, ultimately, the space got taken over by numbers. Well, perhaps it was this 1932 Lafayette jersey that just did them in.

We've got to stop this. We've got to stop the madness. That's a reasonable assumption to make.

However, is it 1932? Isn't it that same era where you have claims to the ugliest uniforms in football history? Yes. The 30s, 30s are the 30s in general. And kind of the longer you got it, the further you got into the decade, the worse it got.

So so maybe Lafayette was not so bad compared to their their peers at the time. Yeah, I'd have to see the back of their pants. Make a judgment because in the 30s, you saw those stripes up the back of the pants that are absolutely hideous.

Of course, the poor guy's head is trapped in between two friction strips. You know, if those are walls, he's not going to have a very good view of anything looking off that jersey. Well, very interesting, Tim.

This is something I've never really thought about with the emblems being on hockey and, you know, so prevalent and why they aren't in football. I never really thought of it. But you really pointed out something else, the obvious that probably many of us overlook and gave us a history on it.

And we really appreciate that. And you do this a lot. You have these little oddities that, you know, we we probably should know and just don't think about.

But you do it on a daily basis. And it's really fascinating. I think the listeners would love to enjoy some of these and your tidbits each and every day.

So please share with us how we can share in learning this. Sure. Real simple.

Go out to my website, FootballArcheology.com. Any story that's out there gives you an opportunity to subscribe at the end. And if you haven't been there before, I think it kind of forces you to at least say yes or no to subscribing. But anyway, if you subscribe, you'll get an email every day at seven o'clock Eastern that has that day's story.

Typically, a one or two-minute read with a couple of pictures. Alternatively, you can follow me on Twitter at Football Archeology. And, you know, then it becomes more hit or miss because of the way Twitter is working nowadays.

Who sees what is a total mystery? All right. Well, Tim, we thank you very much for sharing your time and knowledge and information with us on a daily basis.

And we thank you for joining us each Tuesday to talk about some of these. And we hope to talk to you again next Tuesday. Yeah, I'll see you a week from now.

Thanks.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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