Football History

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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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For decades, player numbers on football helmets were as iconic as the sport itself. However, their use has steadily declined in recent years. Let's delve into the history of this practice and the few remaining teams that cling to it.

Football Archaeology's Timothy Brown joins us in telling the history of the headgear emblem and its importance in football history. Tim's original Tidbit article with great images can be found at The Rise and Fall of Helmet Numbers.

You Can also find the podcast version of the discussion

In the early days of football, jerseys did not have numbers on them. Numbers were introduced to help fans and media identify players on the field. In the 1950s, with the invention of television, conferences required teams to put numbers on jerseys or helmets to better identify viewers. Since then, helmet numbers have become less important because TV screens have increased, and logos have become more popular.

From Humble Beginnings to Widespread Adoptio

While seemingly a simple design element, helmet numbers in American football play a surprisingly multifaceted role. From aiding player identification to fostering team unity and even impacting strategy, these numerals hold significance beyond mere decoration.

Helmet numbers' most basic function is clearly identifying players on the field. With multiple players wearing similar uniforms, these numbers allow coaches, referees, and spectators to distinguish between teammates and opponents. This is crucial for officiating calls, play recognition, and overall game flow.

Love the helmet designs and evolution wait till you check out the College Football helmet history of schools.

The early days of football helmets offered little protection, let alone space for numbers. As helmets evolved in the 1930s and 40s, teams experimented with various methods of putting numbers on the outside. By the 1950s, displaying player numbers on helmets' backs became common. It provided better visibility for referees and fans, aiding in player identification.

The Rise and Fall of a Tradition

Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, player numbers on helmets remained a staple. However, several factors contributed to their decline.

In conclusion, helmet numbers in American football transcend mere decoration. They serve vital functions in player identification, fostering team spirit, and even influencing strategic decisions. As the game continues to evolve, the role of helmet numbers might expand further, offering new avenues for player expression and strategic innovation.

Here is the transcription of our conversation on helmet numbers:

Darin Hayes
Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal to positive football history, and welcome to Tuesday. It's footballarchaeology.com's Timothy P. Brown day, and Tim has another one of his great tidbits. He was going to reveal some interesting history that maybe we don't remember or just have been forgotten. Tim, Welcome back to The Pigpen.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, thanks, Darin. This is a story about when somebody's number was up, right?

Darin Hayes
And somebody's number is up indeed. And up at the highest point, it can be worn, I would guess, because you titled this article a few not too long ago, The Rise and Fall of the Helmet Numbers, which is an interesting piece of history. So yeah, would you tell us a little bit about that story?

Timothy Brown
Yeah. So we've talked about this, you know, in the past about the elements of football that were there for the fan, as opposed to the players on the field or the coaches. And so the numbers that are on the backs and then later on fronts of jerseys were there for the fans, not because the players or the coaches wanted them, they were opposed to them in many cases. Still, they were for fans in the stands to figure out who is who and be able to attract, you know, who was Red Grange or whomever, right? So, similar changes were made when they were for the fans in the stands. Later, when the TV came along, they, you know, made one of the changes to use white jerseys for the road team in football, and then the home team would wear dark jerseys. Now, that wasn't so much for the players in the stand or the fans and the stands because they could tell a red jersey from a blue jersey. But they couldn't tell the difference on black and white television and small screens of the day. So that was the rationale for going to the road white and home dark jerseys. The other thing that happened at about that same time was that the NFL passed the Road Jersey rule in 1954; the NCAA didn't adopt it until 1983, after everybody did it. Really, yeah, that's just one of those, you know, just like they didn't, they didn't require face masks till 1993 or something like that. It was just one of those things everybody did, so they didn't need a rule until they finally put it in. But back in the mid-50s, from 53 to 54, the National Photographers Association represented photographers, and presumably, they were involved with TV cameramen and you folks like that. They requested schools and then conferences. They wanted them to put more numbers on uniforms to make it easier to identify who was who. So, you know, anybody who's actually watching this on YouTube, my background has a team from a 1910 era playing, and nobody's wearing jerseys or no one's wearing numbers, so it's hard to tell who's who. But even in the early 50s, you know, depending on how somebody is standing or getting tackled, you might not see the front or back of their jerseys well enough to see their numbers. And so they said, can you put more numbers on the jerseys and so or at least on uniforms? So in 1950, in 1955, Georgia Tech was the first team I identified with TV numbers on their uniform. What they did was they put numbers on the shoulder pads. On both shoulder pads, they've got numbers. A week later, West Virginia opened its season, and the team had numbers on its helmets. And so other teams put numbers on sleeves. But, you know, basically, what happened is, almost every conference required teams to put numbers, ideally on their helmets, but they would grandfather you, if you have had numbers on your shoulder pads or your sleeves, then you wouldn't have to put them on, on your helmet. And so from, you know, say 56 is when the conferences started implementing those rules from 56 till like the mid-sixties, if you look at photographs from those years, almost everybody has numbers, the side of their helmets, college teams and some of the proteins too, you, know that the old, uh, San Diego Chargers, AFL at the time, but they've got numbers and the lightning bolt on their helmets. So that, you know, that kind of thing was, was not an, you know, was fairly common.

Darin Hayes
It was shocking with that lightning bolt.

Timothy Brown
Ah, yes. Yes. That was pretty good. Only two dads could appreciate that joke. Yes, so I got a charge out of it. But so anyways, everybody starts putting these numbers on and but at this, you know, in the late 40s, you know, he had the Los Angeles Rams, you know, they painted the horns on their helmets, and so there was a slow shift to logos as you know rather than numbers and the helmets and so if you look at you, look college yearbooks or you know whatever during the 1960s, you start seeing more and more teams putting logos on their helmets. Another thing that happened in that area was that Wisconsin did it; I don't know what Vanderbilt did, but there are a couple of others. But in the 1960 time frame, several teams had logos, or they had numbers on the sides of their helmets, and then they would have the letter of the school, like Wisconsin W, Vanderbilt, had a V, seat on the front of the helmet, which was dumb looking, you know, it's a terrible look. You know? I mean, some people think it is cool, but I just think, yeah, kind of pig ugly. So, for a long time, it was like, why did they put these things on the front of their helmet? Well, because they had numbers on the sides. Right? Anyway, by the '60s, more and more teams were switching over to logos. And so a few, Alabama, put the numbers on the year before Bear got there. But then they've kept them all along. So for them, that's kind of a, you see that color, and you see the numbers on the side of the helmet, it's like, well, that's Bama,

Darin Hayes
right?

Timothy Brown
So it shouldn't be identifiable because they're more or less, you know, at least one of the few that does it, then it's tied to them. So anyway, it was kind of an interesting deal. Yeah.

Darin Hayes
Go ahead. If you had another point. Yeah,

Timothy Brown
I was just going to say, you know, that it wasn't logos, but I also think TV screens got bigger, so fans at home could see numbers better on slightly bigger screens. And so they just kind of like, we just don't need that anymore.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, now we can count nose hairs to identify the players.

Timothy Brown
Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, have you ever thought about this? And I don't know why I think about this, but you know, especially in what seems like the 1970s, A lot of the college and pros teams had probably an inch and a half or one-inch high number on the back of their helmets. If they had a stripe down the middle, it'd be a number you; the number one digit would be on each side of the stripe. The only thing I can think of is maybe to identify the player if their helmets are on a sideline. Hey, I'm 22. I'll grab my helmet because it doesn't help anything for TV or during the game or anything like that. But that's the only thing I can think of. Do you have any other thoughts on that?

Timothy Brown
Well, sometimes there are shots from, and if there's a pile or even like in a huddle situation, you would see the numbers at the back of their helmet. So, yeah, it's not uncommon. You know the Giants, you wouldn't have the number on the front of their helmets. But it is the same situation as you described on either side of the middle or the center stripe. But, and I meant to say this early on, but originally, there were numbers, like in the 30s, see this fairly often, see numbers on people's helmets, on the back, but they don't correspond to their jersey number. So, they appear to just have been like an inventory number that the equipment manager would paint down there so that he'd make sure that you got 27 back from, you know, whoever wore that helmet. But then it also, I'm sure, part of the rationale is that it helps people identify their helmets, but I mean, I always knew which helmet was mine. And I think everybody else did. There's just something about whatever the scars were or your face mask. You know you just,

Darin Hayes
You kind of recognize your nasty mouthpiece stuck in it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I don't want to pick up his helmet. I want that. Yeah. Very, very interesting. Again, you know another little aspect of football that we sometimes overlook, and we see Alabama play multiple times yearly. It's, you know, they're a popular draw to have on our televisions, but you never really think about, you know, why those numbers are on,. They did it, and they're cool because it is cool watching TV, and most of the time we had that sideline view And to know who number 17 is, you know, he's like quarterback especially the Alabama I think what they were like swapping quarterbacks a couple of years ago like one series would be one quarterback I think when Jalen hurts was there they did that, ya know and Uh, uh, Tua got hurt. They were bringing them in and out, you know, from each other. So, at least you knew who was taking the snap. Yeah.

Timothy Brown
And Bryant, when he was coaching, he was one of the guys; there weren't many teams that would do this, but if they played, say, Mississippi State, because their helmets at the time were they also had a maroon helmet. But when they played Mississippi State, Alabama would wear white helmets with the numbers on the side because he wanted the differentiation, especially for, you know, pass receivers. So I mean the original reason for painting helmets was to be able to identify I pass the receivers downfield. I mean, that happened in 1906, but. So, you know, back in the day, you'd see helmets were painted like the back of the helmet would be one color, the front of the helmet would be another. And it would only be the eligible receivers who had that. So anyway, there's some history behind Alabama's helmets, even if they look kind of plain. I mean, they've done, you know, they have done a little bit of their own thing.

Darin Hayes
They look quite lively compared to Penn State's helmets. But they're iconic—both helmets are iconic—and you can't picture that team wearing something else, you with any colors or logos on it. So yeah, very interesting.

Timothy Brown
I'm going to challenge Penn State. I'm going to tell them I'll donate half a billion dollars to them if they put logos on their helmets, and we'll see what they say.

Darin Hayes
Oh, I'm sure you'd put your football archaeology .com emblem on there if you want to. You donated that much to him, I am sure.

Timothy Brown
But I don't think you have to worry.

Darin Hayes
about that.

Timothy Brown
It just is it's a pittance.

Darin Hayes
Very interesting, Tim. I appreciate you sharing these little pieces of football history, these little nuggets, or tidbits, as you call them. And you have these on your website. You have almost a thousand of them, I believe you said. Maybe you could tell the listeners how they can share and take in some of this football history.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, just go to the website, football archaeology.com, and or Google it, and you'll find you find it. You can subscribe. You just submit your email. You subscribe for free. That gives you access to about a third of the content. Paid the subscription is five bucks a month or 50 bucks a year, and then that gives you access to everything that I publish, and I'll send you a copy of, you know, One of my books, and you get access to all the car archives and all that kind of stuff So, you're not just kind to the that's the deal. Whenever I publish a new story, I publish it or post it on threads and Twitter. So, if that works for you, then follow me on those.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, folks, it's a great deal. Like Tim said, if you subscribe, you even get a copy of one of his books, which is an excellent read to get some more information. So I highly recommend it, and I recommend you check with us each Tuesday because we get the benefit of having this gentleman join us to talk about some interesting football history. So Tim, we thank you for that, and we will talk to you again next Tuesday.

Timothy Brown
I thank you, sir. I look forward to it

-Frequently Asked Questions

-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.

-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?.

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Imagine getting all of your equipment at the beginning of the long football season. Shoulder pads, pants and pads, and of course a helmet. You look and the head piece looks a bit funny... it has no chinstrap. This is how it was in one era of football, and FootballArchaeology.com's Timothy Brown explains.

From Tim's original TidBit article: Football Helmets Without Chin Straps .

Timothy Brown, who runs the website footballarchaeology.org. The two discuss how early football helmets did not have chin straps. Instead, they had laces in the back to tighten around the noggin. These devices were not very effective in keeping the helmet on the player's head.

A company called Goldsmith, which was a major sporting goods manufacturer at the time, tried to fix this problem by creating a helmet with an adjustable back. However, this design did not work well and was soon abandoned.

In the 1970s, helmets with inflatable bladders were introduced. These helmets were more effective in conforming to the player's head, but they were still not as safe as today's helmets with chin straps.

The video concludes by mentioning that Timothy Brown's website, footballarchaeology.com, has more information about the history of football equipment.

-Full Transcript of the Episode on Helmets Without Chinstraps

Darin Hayes:
Welcome to Tuesday. Timothy P. Brown of FootballArchaeology.com is here to tell us a little bit about one of his recent tidbits. Uh, Tim, welcome back to the pig pen.

Timothy Brown:
Darin, thank you. Oh, it was a pleasure to be here and join you as we talk about old stuff, old football stuff.

Darin Hayes:
Yeah, most definitely, you had a recent tidbit that really caught my eye when it came out. I actually reread it a few days ago because it's just so fascinating. It's called the football helmet without chin straps, And it's, you know, something kind of peculiar that when we think of the football helmet, the chin straps are almost like an automatic part Of it in our day and age, and so it's very interesting what you wrote about, and I'd love to hear about it here in the podcast.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah. Well, so, you know, it's one of those funny things. Yeah, sometimes I've wondered, you know, how the name came about, like chin strap? I mean, now, chin straps are covering the chin, right? And then they connect up to the helmet with the two points on either side, but back, you know, that's really a post-1940 kind of look. Before that, that headgear, the wrestling-type headgear, and then, after that, you know, what we think of as leather helmets. For a long time, the strap kind of went from the ears and then looped under the jaw, not over the chin. Right? So, but I think they, I think, I think chin straps originated, I believe, on military helmets, and you know, so a lot of times they had them in military hats. So a lot of times they had those little straps, like kind of on the chin, a little bit below the mouth, that kind of thing. That's probably where that where the term came from. But anyway, so, you know, they had those original straps that were kind of elastic or cloth, they weren't, and they could tighten them. But, you know, they certainly weren't as good about, you know, keeping the helmet on the head as today's, you know, two or four-point, you know, chin straps do. Plus, the helmets are just tighter. So, you know, if you've got a leather helmet, you know, it can only conform to the head so much, right? I mean, if it's a little bit bigger, you've got it, you know, just nobody's had it shaped the same way, or no two people's are shaped the same way. So, you know, there's probably some little extra space here, little extra space there, in any given leather helmet. And so, you know, they used to come off. And so, so Goldsmith was, which was, you know, one of the original manufacturers of baseballs. They started back in 1875, and they were a big sporting goods manufacturer, at least till 1940. That's the last catalog I have of theirs. So, I'm not sure exactly how much longer they lasted. But so Goldsmith was trying to fix this problem. How do we keep helmets on? Because these little chin straps don't always work. So what they did was they got rid of the chin strap, which seems kind of dumb. They could have kept him, but they tried to make the size of the helmet adjustable. So they did that by putting it together like a drawstring system at the back of the helmet. And if you think about it, like, you know, we've all seen movies of like a Victorian woman who's getting her corset, you know, adjusted where they're pulling those straps and they're, you know, making her stomach, you know, look or make it look like she's got an 18-inch waist, you know, that kind of thing. So I mean, they basically had a system like that, or at least functionally, that was what it was supposed to do supposed to tighten the base of the helmet around the head. And so, but, you know, the fact of the matter is, it didn't work very well.

Darin Hayes:
You probably needed help getting your helmet on and off every time, I would assume.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, you know, I hadn't even thought about that. Yeah, it could be that. Yeah, you had to, you know, so it's what's funny that you mentioned that it's like, you know, back at that time, players, the front of their football pants, also had those like leather patches, the thighs and well, probably typically twice on the thighs on each thigh. They basically had drawstrings to tighten the thigh or tighten the pants so that they didn't move all around, and then they'd get protected by the thigh pads or the pants. So, you know, they didn't have really good elastic back then. So it's a matter of, you know, pulling laces of one form or another to try to get things to fit. So, you know, somehow, you know, they tried to do that with the helmet. But, you know, it was they were gone from the catalogs in about a year or two. So it tells me the thing just didn't work. The concept made sense. And in fact, you know, in the 70s, when people started, like, I think it was, I believe it was right now that did it first, but you know, they had the bladder helmets, where you pump air into it, and it conforms to your head, whatever the shape of it may be, you know, so they were trying to do that same thing. They just didn't have the means to do it at the time. And so, you know, good idea, bad execution. And so then that just disappeared. But I, you know, I still haven't figured out why you would get rid of the chin strap. So, even if you have this other cool thing going on, why get rid of the chin strap? Because I've never read anything about people being bothered by it, you know, like the nose guards. Yeah, that was big, you know, everybody, nobody liked wearing the nose guard because they had difficulty breathing and that kind of stuff. But chin strap, you know,

Darin Hayes:
Yeah, I mean, it's a natural place to secure because you sort of got that hook shape under your chin. You know, it's a good anchor point to tie it down to your head and get a little tension on there. That's that's weird. Thank you.

Timothy Brown:
So sometimes, you know, some of the stories, I mean, again, I like the stories where, you know, as football evolved, there were all these dead-end paths, right? Just like in, you know, animal species, right? And, you know, so for some of them, the thinking behind the path made sense; they just didn't have the tools, technology, or the right materials to make it happen at the time.

Darin Hayes:
Yeah, you, uh, very, very interesting story, but just you describing the back of that helmet and the core whole corset idea, it took me back to some time playing like a junior high ball, you know, we got sort of leftover pants and one year I had drawstring pants for football where you had to tie them up. Like you tie your shoe. What a pain in the ass that was every, every day for practice for game day. It just, especially when you're like, you know, 11, 12 years old, you know, you don't want to take your time to snap pants even, let alone, you know, sit on time and take them up and, and if you didn't tighten them up, then you had, you know, your, your jock and everything else was, you know, flopping, falling all over the place. And it was just a bad, bad design. Whoever designed those pants. I didn't enjoy those.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, well, and again, it's one of those things that, depending on your age, you may not have as much experience with. But, you know, back in the day, there were a lot of people on the football field with, you know, white athletic tape wrapped around their thighs or around their knees to keep things in place. Right. And so I, you know, I've spotted that kind of thing going on back to the 20s and 30s. So people, you know, even back then, they were tapping the same problem.

Darin Hayes:
Oh, I didn't. I never thought about that. Yeah, I guess I guess you wouldn't be able to do it, too. Then I'm always sitting, sort of thinking like athletic tape and duct tape. You know, the fabric tape is more of a modern invention, but I guess they would have had that back then.

Timothy Brown:
And they had, if you look at the old catalogs, I can't tell you it was the exact same kind of tape, but they had athletic tape and illustrations like Walter Camp, the football guides, they had illustrations of how to tape an ankle, that kind of stuff going back pretty far.

Darin Hayes:
So, yeah, very interesting. Thank God that they have the chin straps, but even with chin straps, and I don't know about you, but when I played early on, I don't even think I saw a four-point chin strap until maybe I was in high school or something, I think it was sort of a, you know, the late seventies type innovation, I think, or at least became popular at the levels I played at then. But you see so many people with the four-point head strap chin straps, and they still come, their helmets still come flying off, especially the NFL level and big-time big-time college; it's unbelievable that those can come off. Cause once you have those helmets on, if they're done rubbery, I mean, it's hard to unsnap them when you do want to take it off, let alone have it come flying off in the middle of the game.

Timothy Brown:
I hate to tell you this, but some of those guys are stronger than you and your buddies were.

Darin Hayes:
I realize I'm still a

Timothy Brown:
has a little bit more force. Yes.

Darin Hayes:
Still, that's a lot of stuff to pop a helmet on us. It's amazing, Tim. That is a great story and a great piece of football history that we, you know, seldom get to appreciate something like that and what the sort of forefathers of football had to go through to do that, and you talk a lot about this kind of items on your website football archaeology calm and want you to tell people a little bit about it and how they can enjoy footballarchaeology.com

Timothy Brown:
So it's footballarchaeology.com. It's a sub-stack website. So, if you're familiar with sub-stack, you can find me there. I also post on Twitter and on threads, but the site itself is a subscription site. If you subscribe for free, you get access now to about a third of the stuff, and with paid subscriptions, which are basically five bucks a month or $50 a year, you have full access to everything, including the archives. So, if that's what you're into, then subscribe away.

Darin Hayes:
Well, excellent job as always, Tim, and if folks, make sure you take advantage of what Tim's saying because there is really a plethora of information on football history. We get to talk a little bit about it, you know, each week, but Tim has so much more in there. I think, what did you say? Do you have over a thousand articles in there right now?

Timothy Brown:
Not quite a thousand, but it's getting close.

Darin Hayes:
Yeah, wow. That's uh, you know, four digits there, guys. That's, uh, that's some good stuff to look at football history from different angles. So Tim, we really appreciate you coming on, and we would love to talk to you about more great football history next week. Thank you

Timothy Brown:
Pretty good; look forward to it. Thanks, Darin.

-Frequently Asked Questions

-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?.

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

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

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

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

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

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Good to see you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

-Football Jersey Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

---

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

-Transcription of Walter Steffen with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to another date with Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com, where he's going to share one of his recent tidbits on some of the facets of football from yesteryear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very good. Thank you, sir.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very good. Thank you, sir.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

Intentional Grounding is not something you see every game, especially in the NFL, where once a QB leaves the pocket, the foul becomes non-existent. The histo... — www.youtube.com

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Intentional Grounding is not something you see every game, especially in the NFL, where once a QB leaves the pocket, the foul becomes non-existent. The history of the foul is almost as old as the forward pas itself, and our Guest Timothy Brown has written about this football no-no in a recent Tibit titled: How Intentional Grounding Came to Pass How Intentional Grounding Came to Pass

[b]What is Intentional Grounding?

Intentional grounding is a penalty called against the offense when a passer throws a forward pass that meets these two criteria:

-Facing Imminent Loss of Yardage: The passer is facing pressure from the defense and is likely to lose significant yardage if he sacks the ball (takes a knee) or throws it away.

-No Realistic Chance of Completion: The pass is thrown towards an area of the field where there are no eligible receivers in the vicinity, or the receiver has little chance of catching the ball.

-Why is the Rule in Place?

The intentional grounding rule protects quarterbacks from unnecessary hits. Without this rule, quarterbacks under pressure might be more likely to force throws into tight coverage, risking interceptions and injuries.

-Exceptions:

There are a few exceptions to the intentional grounding rule:

-Spike: A quarterback can legally throw the ball directly into the ground to stop the clock (spike the ball) if he begins the throwing motion immediately after receiving the snap. Note this must be a hand to hand snap, as shotgun would make this be intentional grounding.

-Batted Ball: If a defender tips the ball at the line of scrimmage, it's not considered intentional grounding even if there's no receiver in the vicinity.

-NFL rules allow a QB to escape the pocket and void intentional grounding rules.

-Penalty:

The penalty for intentional grounding is a loss of yardage, typically 15 yards from where the passer released the pass. If the pass is intentionally grounding in the end zone, it results in a safety scoring two points for the defense.

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The huddle, a ubiquitous feature of modern football, serves a crucial purpose: concealing play calls from the opposing team. But its origin story is far from today's high-tech headsets and complex plays. It's a tale of innovation born from necessity, showcasing the ingenuity of American football players in the early days.

Historian Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology and his recent post Gather 'Round, Boys: A History of Huddling.

Who invented the concept? When was the first huddle and what was the purpose? These answers and more are converted in the lively discussion with Tim.

Here is the Transcript of our conversation on the origin and history of the huddle

Darin Hayes
Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history, and welcome to another date with footballarcheology.com's Timothy P. Brown. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Timothy Brown
Hey, Darin, I look forward to chatting about huddling today.

Darin Hayes
Tim, you had a title out a little over a year ago called Gather Round Boys. One of your tidbits mentions a history of huddling. But we'd really like to hear the history of this application in football.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, you know, sometimes you look back, and I hadn't looked at this tidbit for a while. And I realized I liked this; it was one of my favorite tidbits. Part of it is that I like the stories where you figure out how something developed. And its function today is not what it served when it first came about. And so huddling is a classic example of that. The other is just that it was one of those tidbits where, while we can't get anybody to see the images that were in the tidbit or that are in the tidbit, I would encourage people to go out and take a look at it. Because, you know, it's just one where I found some great images of the different types of puddles. So, so huddling, you know, there's the first huddling that people have been able to identify was, you know, Gallaudet College in Washington, DC. It's a, you know, college for the people, you know, hearing, hearing impairments. And so, you know, they actually, they used to go up, you know, this is back in the time, the four teams huddled, they would come up to the line of scrimmage, and the quarterback or a captain, somebody on the team, would yell out signals. So, you know, you read all the time in the old newspapers about signals. And it was just, kind of like Audibles, but essentially, you know, what teams did is have a sequential list of numbers for all their plays. And, you know, whereas like, I know, you know, used to be like, if it ended in an even number, it was a play to the right, or if it was odd, it was a play to the left. And, you know, sometimes the first number told you, you know, a 42 meant that it was going to go to the left half back or the right half back or whatever, you know, different kinds of systems made sense. But early on, it was either just a random string of words or a sequence of numbers. So, if you were a player, you had to know what you did on an 83 because that's all you heard. Now, they would hide those numbers in the signaling'd like to do a string of four numbers. And one of them was a code saying the next number is the one that is the play. So anyway, that's kind of the way it worked. A couple of teams here and there huddled, but pretty much nobody huddled until Illinois, and Bob Zuppke changed that in 1921. And they began huddling. But back then, they didn't initially huddle. I mean, part of the purpose was, you know, Zuppke would claim part of it was to get everybody to settle down and be able to listen to the play. It was typically a quarterback then who would call the play. But it was mostly the advantage of huddling was, that was a period when, you know, you had the Minnesota shift, you had the Heisman shift, he had the Notre Dame shift. So teams would line up at the line, you know, one played in, they line up on the line of scrimmage. But often, they would line up in a, say, pre-lineup, like a traditional team. And then shift, there'd be a moment where they'd shift to unbalanced right or unbalanced left, whatever it was. And then they, you know, there wasn't. While the rule said everybody had to pause before starting the play, there was no length of time that they had to pause. So basically, teams would shift in, and boom, the ball would be snapped, and you'd catch the defense, you know, off guard. So Huddle, the Huddle did the same thing, they would call the play in the Huddle, you know, so let me go back, a team that was shifting would line up, call their play, and then at some point, they'd shift, and then execute the play. What huddling did was that they would call it play in the Huddle. And then everybody would quickly run the line of scrimmage, get lined up, and boom, the ball was snapped. So it had kind of the same advantage as that pre-snap shift. But it happened even faster, right? And you know, the defense couldn't react, you know, They couldn't shift anywhere near as quickly as the offense could line up. So that's when Huddling came about in 1921, and teams started applying it. A lot of people said we shouldn't have it; it delays the game, this, that, but ultimately, it proved effective. And so they started using it. And in about 26 or so, the implementer rule said you had to pause for at least one full second after the shift or after coming out of the Huddle. So then that kind of calmed things down a bit. But then, to me, one of the fun things and where these images come into play is that business that I could figure out. There were three or four different styles of huddling. So there were the first Huddles, almost all of what people called the closed, circular, ring, or oval Huddle. So that was where everybody formed the ring. Sometimes, the quarterback is kneeling down, kind of inside the ring. And the lineman tended to be in the front, closest to the, facing away from, but closest to the line of scrimmage; the ends were at either end of this little ring. And then the backs were on the other side facing towards the line. And so that was normal for a long time. That was the classic Huddle. Then people said, well, if we're going to do all this Huddling, we should devise a better way to Huddle. And so, as far as I can tell, Bucknell got it started in 33, but people like USC used it in World War II and da -da -da. And it was called either a V or a triangle Huddle. And so the way that worked was if you think of a V or a triangle, there's kind of like the fat end or the open end of a fat end of a triangle or open end of a V., And so what they do is it had the quarterback at the open end along with one other back. And then the rest of the folks would be in kind of in a V shape, typically facing toward the line of scrimmage with the quarterback on the back facing away from the line of scrimmage. And they could call the play. Most of the team could see the defense and what they were doing. And so that was kind of a cool way to do it. Then, the next one that came along, the late 40s, is the best I could tell. There's a guy named Tom Nugent who was a coach at VMI. Later, he became Lee Corso's coach in Miami. And so he had what was called either the open classroom or typewriter Huddle. And so that was one where, and it's very, teams still use this one, commonly today, quarterback faces away from the line of scrimmage. Sometimes, they turn it around, but he's facing away from the line of scrimmage. And then initially, they'd have the lineman facing the quarterback bent over, and then the backs and ends were facing towards the line of scrimmage standing up, right? That's where almost everybody stands now, but that's probably the most common Huddle today.

Darin Hayes
I see a lot of teams resurging. They're doing that, but the quarterback is standing behind the linemen who are facing the defense, which is kind of interesting—talking in the ear holes or something, I guess.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, in some way, it's always made more sense to have the quarterback facing the defense. He's the one who's calling the place, or he can potentially spot something. But, again, this all is based on the assumption that the quarterback is calling the place, as opposed to a coach on the sideline calling the place. And so all these huddling things were happening when quarterbacks called the place. And, you know, then those rules went away in the early 60s. So, coaching from the sideline, that whole thing disappeared in the early 60s. And so all of a sudden, some people like, you know, Sam, I believe it's white, or white, white, I don't even know how to pronounce his last name, white, white. So, you know, Bengals coach in the 80s. He's the guy who pioneered the no-huddle offense. It's just like, why do we have them huddle anymore? We'll just put them somewhere in the lawn of scrimmage and signal in the general formations that they can get the right spot, and then they can watch us watch our signal, the baseball-style signals from the sideline. And then they've used numbers, you know, all kinds of coaches assistance on the wrists and, you know, the different signage that teams hold up. So you got all that stuff going on, in terms of just ways to signal and plays, but it's a big difference from the days of quarterbacks calling the plays versus the coaches calling the place. So now, just one other thing that I just wanted to add that I mentioned in the tidbit, but I think this is going to make some of them are coaches listening to the podcast, some of them are going to be angered by what I'm about to say or just.

Darin Hayes
Wait a second. Is the coach getting angry?

Timothy Brown
Yeah.

Darin Hayes
This is the first I've heard of this.

Timothy Brown
Well, well, okay. And so one of the things that they used to get angry about, they used to spend all kinds of stupid practice time perfecting, was the Huddle. You know, coaches would go nuts about you having to stand up the right way or you have to snap out of the Huddle. I know, you know, at least in my high school conference, I remember there was a team that when they left the Huddle, the linemen so that they would huddle so like the correct tackle was on the left side of the Huddle and then he would lead people out and as the right card would be next to him. And then so they had this like chain thing where they came out in formation, and it was just a wasted damn time. And so coaches used to spend unnecessary time trying to get a nice neat huddle. It was like making sure your socks are pulled up or make, you know, whatever, you know, it's just like either you can either you make the play, or you don't, either you follow the play call, or you don't execute your assignment, or you don't, I don't care what you look like. Thankfully, like my high school coach was a guy who was, in many ways, a crusty old dude. But he was; he didn't care what color you were, what your background was, what you wore; he just either ran fast, you didn't jump far, or you didn't. And you either made the tackle, or you didn't. So he didn't, you know, concern himself much with what I consider the stupid stuff that many coaches hang on to.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, we, I had a coach; I think it must've been grade school. He was very anal. We were the old, you know, the quarterback would, he, after you get done calling a plate, say, you know, ready. And we'd all go break and have to clap, you know, and break the Huddle that way. And I think, which I think a lot of teams still do. And, uh, if we didn't all clap or he couldn't hear us, like if you're in practice, he stands behind the Huddle and doesn't hear you say break. Oh my God, you, it was an ass-chewing coming from probably some laps being run. So they're anal.

Timothy Brown
I mean, I get, you know, being anal, but that's just being anal about the wrong thing as far as I'm concerned, but

Darin Hayes
Especially when you're in the fourth quarter in a game in August, when it's like 85 degrees, and the last thing you want to do is be yelling, break, and clap, and you wish to, you know, try to get through the rest of this game. Cause you're, you're sweating bullets, and you know, you're tired.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, well, again, at least any negative comments about this will come to you, not because it's on your podcast, not because it's on my site.

Darin Hayes
That's true. So, you know, I've got a couple of interesting comments from some guests that I've had over the years, some claims, you know, you're talking, you know, 1921 with the, you know, this being formalized by Zupke, which is like a few years before Red Green Shop played with Illinois, interesting enough. But we have an author, Jennifer Taylor Hall, who wrote a book on Amos Alonzo's Stag, and she has some claims in her book that give credit to Stag possibly being one of the innovators of the Huddle, using it here and there, not as a formal, you know, every play type of thing. When I just heard recently we had an author, Sam Hatcher, who wrote the book Iceman's First Trophy; it was about the Cumberland Georgia Tech debacle, the 22 and 22 to nothing game, where the Cumberland players didn't want to go up to the line any faster than they had to, so they were sort of hanging back and, you know, catching their breath, licking their wounds, whatever you want to call it, before going up. So he gave some nods to that; I just wanted to mention some of those things, but, as I said, they were not formalized huddles like you're talking about that happened in the 20s.

Timothy Brown
You know, so this is like almost anything else. Amos Lanza Sttag was an absolute coaching pioneer and stud who invented many things. He also gets credit for about 75 things that he should have done. Right? I've done enough research on this stuff, and I'm confident that Subkey is the first one who used it regularly. I know there was a guy named Hargis. I think I have it. Well, anyway, he was a coach at Oregon State. He was a guy from Emporia or one of those schools in Kansas. He ended up at Oregon State in 1919. And, the evidence is he used a huddle in at least one game. There's something unique about about that. So yeah, there were some people who periodically or once or whatever used it, but in terms of using a systematic game after game, using play after play. As far as I know, no one has any evidence of anybody other than Zuppke being the first to do that. So if somebody else has more information, get a hold of me on football archaeology comm, and I will be happy to add a postscript.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, I wasn't saying they were arguing with what you're saying. I was just, cause the, the Huddle has had a bit of history, whether, you know, I, I don't have it confirmed or not, but I'm just saying they, they made mention of it in their writing. So it's just,

Timothy Brown
And yeah, there are all kinds of things like that, like who the first face mask was. What was the first face mask? Okay, define face mask, right? What is a face mask? What's the difference between the old nose guards, some of which became pretty huge, and a face mask, you know, or like, so what's a huddle? What does it mean to huddle? Right, so depending on how you define that, you might go, you know, in a different direction. I'm using huddling the way we use it today.

Darin Hayes
Call it calling the play. You have a gathering to call it the play. Here's what, yeah, okay. Well, very, very good, enjoyable as always, Tim. We appreciate it. No, you have a lot of fascinating tidbits and pieces of information that are Built on what we know of as football today and some of the elements of it in foot-on football archaeology. You could share with the listeners how they can find your site and what to expect.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, go to footballarchaeology .com. It's a Substack site or newsletter. You can go there any time you want. But also, you can subscribe. You'll get an email every time that I open or that I create a new story. There's a paid version. There's an unpaid version. You can also follow me on Twitter, threads, or the Substack app. And if you're somebody like this, you can follow them on the Substack app. And if you want to follow but have yet to get the emails, well, you'll get it that way by a Substack. So, whatever suits your fancy works for you.

Darin Hayes
All right, well, that's very good. As always, this is a fascinating topic, and we really appreciate you coming on here and sharing with us. We'd love to talk to you again next week.

Timothy Brown
Very good. I look forward to seeing you.

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The brand of football played North of the border is closer to the original football formation than our American game. Rugby's very roots are still evident in the game, even in some of the scoring, such as the "single" or "rouge."

Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology joins us to explain the history and scoring of the Rouge and the two-point conversions of North American football. This discussion is based on Tim's post from over a year ago titled The Rouge and the Two Point Conversion.

A podcast version of our conversation can be found at Rouge and Two-Point Conversion History with Tim Brown

A Brief History of Canada's Unique Scoring Play

The Canadian Football League (CFL) is known for its exciting, fast-paced brand of football, featuring more expansive fields, three downs, and a unique scoring system. One element that sets the CFL apart is the "rouge," a single point awarded under specific circumstances. Here's a look at the history of this fascinating scoring play.

The exact origin of the Rouge remains a mystery. Theories suggest that in the early days of Canadian football (derived from rugby in the mid-1800s), a red flag might have been used to signal the awarding of a single point. Unfortunately, concrete evidence for this practice is scarce.

While the red flag may be a matter of speculation, the official definition of the Rouge in the CFL rulebook is clear. It is awarded when:

-The offensive team advances the ball into the opponent's end zone, either through a punt, a missed field goal attempt, or a kickoff that goes out of bounds in the end zone (without being returned by the receiving team).

-The receiving team does not attempt to recover the ball in the end zone.

The Rouge adds a strategic layer to the CFL game. Teams often employ intentional punts or "coffin corner" kicks to force a rouge if they believe a touchdown is unlikely. This can create exciting situations where the receiving team must weigh the risk of attempting a potentially game-changing return against the guaranteed single point awarded by a rouge.

Full Transcription of conversation with Timothy Brown

Darin Hayes
We have a great episode for you tonight. It's Tuesday and we have Timothy P. Brown of footballarcheology .com joining us to talk about another one of his tidbits on football history. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Timothy Brown
Hey Darin, look forward to chatting once again about the Rouge or the single.

Darin Hayes
Rouge or a single! We have some Canadian football terms coming at us that many of us Americans are not as familiar with as the Rouge is in a single, and maybe you know some of that explanation will come in here with your article that you wrote a little over a year ago I believe Rouge and two-point conversion was the title of it and boy we'd love to hear your tale.

Timothy Brown
Yeah. So, uh, following up on what you just said, I would encourage people to watch Canadian football. Um, I mean, I think it's a really fun brand of football, very talented athletes. And I give in arguments with some Canadian folks online from time to time; they are not as good as the NFL players. That's all there is to it. But they're supremely talented, you know, athletes, they're really, they're really good. And it's just a fun, open game. It has played in an atmosphere that, to me, feels more like a college atmosphere than a pro atmosphere than an NFL atmosphere, which means I like it. So

Darin Hayes
It's fun, and you get to see a lot more. There are a lot of Americans at play; I think they're allowed to have, like, one -one-third of their team or something.

Timothy Brown
They have, kind of.

Darin Hayes
Go for it, but I know just from my area, you know, we had a couple of, uh, I think, uh, Trevor Harris is still quarterback, he, he quarterbacked at Edinburgh or my Alma mater, which was a few miles from here and Jovan Johnson is originally from Erie. I officiated when he played, and he was a cornerback for multiple teams up there and had a successful Canadian career. So that's a great game; it's wide-open, with three downs and a lot of passing. So it's, it's fun.

Timothy Brown
Well, so what's interesting is that you mentioned the Americans playing there, and it's the fact that I wrote this tidbit in reaction to a mistake made by an American player playing in Canada. So he's relatively, you know, a rookie, and relatively, you know, his early season game may have even been a preseason game. But so, you know, in Canadian football, when the ball, when a live ball goes into your end zone, that you know, the end zone or the end zone that you are defending, you have to get that ball out of there. Or else, the opposing team scores a point, which is kind of similar to safety. But Canadian football doesn't have a touchback. You know, they have safeties. However, what we would consider a touchback is the Rouge or the single; they get one point instead of two. And so it's kind of a, now, there are other rule changes that help that, you know, they've got the five-yard circle around somebody catching a punt. They also still have the return kick, which you don't see that often. But American football had the return kick until the mid-60s; at least colleges did. The return kick is any time a team gets possession of a ball; it could be from a fumble, it could be an intercepted pass, but most often, it came on a punt return. If you caught the punt, you could turn around and immediately kick the ball back to the team that punted it because it was all just a field possession kind of thing. And it was all a remnant of rugby. And so American football got rid of it because people stopped using it. But, you know, Canadian football hung on to it. So anyways, one way to get the ball out of the end zone is to boot, you know, pump it out. So anyways, so, again, the Rouge or single is scored when a live ball goes into the end zone, on a punt kickoff, field goal attempt, extra play attempt, and you know, you're responsible for getting it out of the end zone. If it goes into the end zone, it rolls out of the sideline, then the Rouge is automatic, or the single is automatic. But so it's really, I mean if you think about it at the core, it's a way to reward a team for gaining favorable field position. I mean, that's really what it's about.

Darin Hayes
Now, just to make this clear, this does not apply to a fumble recovery or an interception in the end zone, correct? Just the kicking game?

Timothy Brown
Uh, no, it's it's possible. I'm showing my ignorance, but no, I think anytime the ball enters the end zone.

Darin Hayes
OK, all right.

Timothy Brown
So yeah, so it's possible, and I could be wrong about that, but you know, that's.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, I'm not sure either.

Timothy Brown
As I've watched that, you know, sometimes somebody asked me a question like that about Canada. It's like, I'm not sure. I got to look it up. But so, so then let's switch to two-point conversion, which is why I'm trying to make a connection here that, like, you could add the Rouge to American football. And Americans would say, No, you can't add the Rouge. That's silly. Do you know why we would add the Rouge? We don't need it. But, you know, back in 1959, Fritz Kreisler was on, you know, he was a coach, and then he was AD at Michigan for years. He had been on the rules committee, you know, for at least 15 years by that time. He had been pushing for American football or for college football to add a two-point conversion because he thought the extra-point kick was just boring. He thought playing football was the most boring thing. So he was trying to end, you know, there were too many tie games back then he had he had it. So, you know, he thought it made sense to add the two-point conversion. Now, the two-point conversion actually originated in American football with six-man football. Because what? It was kind of the opposite. So, the two-point conversion is supposed to be a reward for doing it the hard way, right? So, supposedly, running or passing the ball into the end zone is harder than kicking. And so, in six-man football, it was the opposite. If you kicked it, you got two points. If you ran or passed it, you got one point because that was supposed to be harder. You know, you just had fewer players, less skilled players, you know, you had to have somebody who could snap the ball, somebody who could hold it, and somebody who could kick it. So I guess that's three things you need. So anyway, Chrysler finally convinced everybody to add the two-point conversion in 1958. And here's the crazy thing. This is how much football has changed, at least the kicking side of things. So, if you want, here's a quiz for you. In 1958, what percentage of kicked conversions were good? Or, you know, we're. Yeah, I'll just leave it at that.

Darin Hayes
So, so kicked conversion percentage, successful kicks in a college game in 58. I don't know. I'd say 50%.

Timothy Brown
Well, that's a pretty good guess, 48.6. So, what was the two-point conversion percentage?

Darin Hayes
Uh, I'm going to say maybe 25%.

Timothy Brown
51 .8. Really? Yeah, so teams were able to convert the two points at a higher rate than the kicked extra point.

Darin Hayes
Now, were they going from the three-yard line back then or from the two-yard line?

Timothy Brown
I'm not sure. I think it was the three.

Darin Hayes
Three, OK.

Timothy Brown
But what it really points to is how bad kicking was. I mean, I think in the late 50s, there were times, like in the entirety of college football, when there were less than 100 field goals made, at least among what we'd consider divisional on-team sound. I mean, mostly, they just didn't attempt to kick field goals very often because to kick a field goal, you needed a snapper, you needed a holder, and you needed a kicker. And all of them had to be on the field. This is before a lot of open substitution. So they had to all be on the field when you scored, with limited exceptions. And there were times when teams would substitute. But so teams just sucked at the extra point conversions. And at field goals, so they didn't try them very often. So anyway, it's just one of those things that now with specialist long snappers, and typically, it's the punter that is your holder nowadays. And you've got specialist kickers who are also soccer-style kickers, which very few were in 1958. The game is just the kicking game in particular. It's just changed so dramatically since then. So I don't know; it's just part of the reason I think the two-point conversion is great. In part, the Rouge is great because it forces coaches to make decisions. There's a strategic element to it. It's like pinch-hitting in baseball. There's an element of coaches having to make a choice. Then, the players have to be able to execute it. And so if you get the American rookie, he doesn't understand; he's got to get all out of the end zone. Then, the best lead coaching plan sometimes just doesn't work out.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, it's interesting that you say, you know, the specialist of the long snapper. I had a conversation; I had the honor of talking to Craig Colquitt. He was a punter for the Steelers in the late seventies and won a couple of Super Bowls with them. His two sons have both recently won Super Bowls in the NFL. And he was telling me we were talking, and he was, you know, he being the punter, he was first the holder for Roy Gerella and Matt Barr during those Steelers teams we played. And I asked him, I said, well, who's your long snapper then? And Mike Webster, you know, the Hall of Fame center who he was the long snapper and the center. And we forget, you know, that's not that long ago, you know, 40 years ago, that those guys were staying on the field and even doing special teams snapping the ball, whereas today, that's unheard of. I don't think there's any starting center that is the long snapper. And that's just odd how that's changed.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, well, I mean, and so it's even so when, you know, when I was in grad school, I had a chance to coach a couple of different colleges. And, and we didn't, you know, this is like, the early to mid-80s, we didn't have long snappers, you know, it wasn't an offensive tackle, or, you know, whoever it was, you know, sometimes you had a fullback who had learned to snap in high school. And so he was a snapper. It wasn't like, you know, you didn't have extra guys do that. Yeah. And so, you know, it's just one of those things.

Darin Hayes
But you would think today, I mean, there's a lot more shotgun and pistol formations where they're, they're long snapping on regular scrimmage plays. So these centers are used to putting everything back there.

Timothy Brown
It's a whole different thing. Tossing on a short snap on a shotgun versus a long snap. Long snap, both for a place kick or for punts especially. That's a whole different animal.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's a funny thing.

Timothy Brown
It's really a specialized technique, so I'm glad these guys make money doing it.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's for sure. They're making a lot of money doing it.

Timothy Brown
Yeah. Give me the NFL minimum salary any time you want. I'll take it.

Darin Hayes
Right? Yeah, I don't believe.

Timothy Brown
a

Darin Hayes
They don't let middle-aged men go into a fella and snappy specialist anymore. Tom Brady was pretty much that.

Timothy Brown
and NFL history.

Darin Hayes
right. Go back to what was the guy who wrote paper lions when he went back. He was a little younger than us, I think, when he did it. But George, that's a George pumpkin. Tim, you know, fascinating stuff, a very enjoyable, very interesting. And, you know, thank you for that explanation and give us a little look at Canadian football but also talking about the history of our game, which is always fascinating. And you do a lot of this in your tidbits and some of your other posts on your website. And if you can share with the listeners how they can take a look at your stuff and maybe, you know, subscribe to it and become a regular reader. We appreciate that.

Timothy Brown
As you know, my site is footballarchaeology.com. It's a Substack site. And so you can just go there and subscribe. If you subscribe, there are free and paid versions. You'll get an email every time I send out a new story. Alternatively, you can follow me on Substack app on threads or on Twitter. So on Twitter, I, you know, I post, you know, or respond to other people who are talking football. So there's some benefit to that, at least if you think I have anything to say. But, you know, I don't, yeah, that's it. I don't; everything I post is about football.

Darin Hayes
OK, well Tim, we really appreciate you coming on here and sharing this information and sharing the knowledge and preserving football history and we'd love to talk to you again next week.

Timothy Brown
All right. Very good. Look forward to it. Thanks.

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Join us as we delve into the fascinating tradition of handing out game balls in Gridiron football. We'll explore its origins, how it's evolved over time, and why it's become such a coveted symbol of victory. From legendary quarterbacks to surprise heroes, this video will uncover the stories behind the pigskin. So, buckle up and get ready to learn the history behind the iconic game ball!

Football Archaeology.com's Timothy Brown explains as he tells us about one of his recent Tidbits titled: A History of Game Balls

Here is a full transcript of the conversation with Tim Brown

Darin Hayes
It is Tuesday and football archaeology is on my mind. And we have the founder of that great website, Timothy P. Brown with us. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Timothy Brown
Hey, Darin, this should be an awarding podcast to participate in.

Darin Hayes
An awarding podcast? You're, segueing into our subject nicely, I think. And we're going to find out a little bit more of that. Your title of your tidbit that you had just a few months ago, or maybe a few weeks ago, is a history of game balls and a pretty broad topic. But it sounds like you have some direction for us on that.

Timothy Brown
Yeah. Well, so I took a very narrow view in this case of game, game balls, you know, more in terms of the awarding of the game ball, you know, the, the game ball being, you know, trophy value, you know, kind of a game ball. But, you know, I kind of started that article talking about, you know, for an NFL game, at least nowadays, there are 36 balls prepared to be part of the game. So 12 submitted from each team. And then I think each team also submits six kicking balls. Right. And so, or no, no, I'm sorry. The kicking balls come directly from Wilson because the league, you know, too many people are manipulating the kicking balls. And so they, they get those directly from the league. The teams do get a chance to like massage them and whatever beforehand. And if Tom Brady's playing, then four of them have to be at eight pounds. That's right. Well, so, you know, the inflate gate thing is a whole other story. Um, but so, but the game ball, one of the, one of the coolest things about, I published that article on March 29th. And since then, I have uncovered a whole other slew of information that tells me that I was wrong, or at least, you know, that I didn't find as early information as I thought I had. So at the time, I was saying, look, you know, that game balls, you know, that whole awarding of game balls at the time that I wrote it, as far as I could trace it back to was like 1882. No, 1886. When, you know, just, it was mentioned in an article about a Princeton commencement, you know, ceremony. And they were mentioning that the game ball from the game that they had played when they had beaten Yale was on the, like, the rostrum or whatever, you know, for the commencement. So it kind of tells you how important, you know, what the football game was to those guys. But so, you know, through, because of another path of research that I'm doing, I was trying to, trying to dig into, you know, what all is, you know, what all is going on, or, you know, kind of the background of game balls. And, and, and part of it was that, you know, for, for a long time, like from when American football began, and, you know, to my liking, it began in 1876 with the IFA, you know, the funding of the IFA, when, when American football first got started, they only used one ball per game. You know, that was it, you know, rain, shine, snow, sleet, whatever, they played with one ball. And those balls weren't anywhere near as, you know, the leather wasn't as well protected, etc, as, as they are now. So, you know, these balls get water logged. And in the days of drop kicking, you know, you drop it on the ground, and thing was barely bounced off, you know, so, but then as a forward pass came in, you know, into favor, then in 1917, they allowed the referee to decide on a wet day, if he would allow a second ball to be used for the second half. And then eventually, you know, things spread. But you know, so there was this whole thing of, you know, you played with one ball. And so then, this whole tradition developed around awarding or presenting the game ball to the victor. So, you know, back in the day, the home team provided the ball. And then, if they lost, you know, the right thing to do was to award the ball to the visiting victorious team, for them to then go home, go back and paint the score on it, or whatever, put in the trophy case, whatever they were going to do with it. And so, so that was the tradition, you know, for some time. And So then, you know, since then, I found out a couple of new things. So one was that I, you know, recently acquired a copy of a book called The Gilbert Story, which is a story of the Gilbert Firm, which is one of the two main oblors and rugby ball makers in Rugby England, where the primary provider of rugby football, you know, rugby balls for like the World Cup and, you know, those kinds of things. So anyways, I got a, you know, copy of their ball, and it goes back through the history. And they talk about at the rugby school, there was a tradition of having two balls available for each game, and they got switched at half. But then I got ahold of Tony Collins, who, you know, has been on this podcast. And if anybody hasn't heard that one, that is you know, a fabulous podcast to listen to, because of Tony. But in any event, and he, you know, he basically confirmed that, you know, that that rugby never really had the tradition of multiple game balls. So it was a rugby school thing, but it didn't spread to rugby more generally. You know, they didn't really have a one ball or two balls, they didn't really have a standard. So somehow in the Americas, this one ball tradition came about. And then it turns out that there was an earlier awarding of a game ball came about when, you know, I think most people are aware that Harvard played McGill in 1874 in a rugby match. And that is really what led to Harvard playing rugby, and which is what led to American football developing from rugby. Well, in 1875, maybe the second and 1876, there was an all Canada team that played three games against Harvard. And in one of those games, all Canada, they lost all three, all Canada lost all three to Harvard. In at least one of those games, they awarded the ball to Harvard. So that then becomes at least best as I can tell, so far, the first awarding of a game ball in at least the football tradition. But the fun thing about that is that, you know, there just weren't a lot of rugby balls paying around the US, because people weren't playing it. But you know, they were starting to make that transition. So, you know, the IFA meets in November 1876, and they agree to play rugby instead of, you know, whatever soccer and other games they're playing. And, and so the, the weekend after that meeting, Princeton was the home. team for a game against Yale, but they didn't have a rugby ball, and yet they were supposed to play under rugby rules. So somewhere in that whole process, Harvard gave Princeton this ball that all Canada had given them, and then Princeton loses, so they give the ball to Yale, and that ball now sits in a trophy case at Yale in their gymnasium. So, you know, it's just kind of cool that it's literally probably the first game played under the IFA rules, IFA rugby rules. So in my mind, it's the first real football game, and yet that ball is still around sitting in a trophy case at Yale, because it was the game ball. You know, so I just think it's just kind of a cool... you know, kind of the way this whole story ends up that the game ball tradition preceded American football, you know, because the Canadians are the ones that, you know, gave it to the, you know, started it as far as we're concerned. And, and that and yet that first ball is still around sitting in a trophy case at Yale. I just think that's, for me, there's something magical about that. You know, now that you say that you make something a tour of, I took a veil probably about 10 years ago, makes some sense because I got the had the opportunity to with my wife's cousin was assistant coach at Yale.

Darin Hayes
And I got to got to tour the Yale Bowl and the locker rooms and just see all the tradition and, you know, the Walter camp, sort of, I guess not really, it's a monument, I guess, it's what looks more like a facade to the White House from the White House. But I got to see that. But we also got to go through the gymnasium you're talking about with all the the halls of trophy. And it's a very great place. And I there's one ball that really stood out that just didn't look like a football at all. And very tattered old, you can tell. And I wish now I wish I would have took a photograph of it because that's probably that ball that you're talking about. Yeah, so I mean, let me describe the ball to you.

Timothy Brown
I've not seen it myself, but you know, I've images of it. So it's it is a classic melon ball. I mean, it is almost round. And there's a big silver plaque embedded into the ball now, with, you know, what basically tells the story of, hey, this is awarded by the all Canada team, we gave, you know, it went from Harvard to Princeton, Princeton, Yale, and now it sits here. So it's there's, I think, I think I put the link in, you know, I've added a postscript to the story on the website. And I think I think I have a link to it. Cause I found it on a site called, is it College Antiques? But anyways, there's a, another guy kind of lays, went through this whole thing, which is where I kind of picked up on this story. And then I found other stuff on it. But anyways, I think it's just a cool, yeah, a cool story. And to my knowledge, the oldest, the oldest existing ball in, in American football. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's an awesome story. And I didn't realize, you know, it went back that far of exchanging that game ball. Now, wasn't there sort of a, in that era and all the way up into the, maybe early 20th century, where teams didn't have but one ball? Cause I can, I could recollect there's a story, I think of the big game, Stanford and Cal, like a 1901 or 1902 game, where they forgot to bring that one ball to the game. The home team, the visiting team didn't even bring a game ball. It was the only, the home team had that one game ball. Yeah, you know, and I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember the story. And I think you're right about, you know, Cal Stanford. And so it was one of those things where like they they sent people into town to go get one, you know, and they couldn't find one. And the same thing happened with when McGill visited Harvard in 1874. They didn't bring a rugby ball. I guess they thought, you know, Harvard would have one, but they didn't. Harvard just had a round ball, so they played. They played the first game under Boston rules, which is somewhat rugby ish, because you could carry the ball. And then they played the second game under rugby rules, but they used a round ball. So. Yeah, and there's a whole other thread that I'm working on about. There was a thing called the American ball, which best as I can tell, is actually developed by Charles Goodyear. He probably built created the first one because he created vulcanized rubber. It was like a canvas ball that was kind of covered with vulcanized rubber can canvas ball that was inflated. I don't think it had a separate bladder. But so a lot of the round balls that people used in America in the 1860s and 70s were these American balls. So it may be even that the Harvard Princeton or the Harvard McGill game, they could have played with an American ball or and then also even like the Princeton Rutgers game or games in 1869. Those were played with a round ball. It could have been an American ball. And that's that's what everybody called the American ball. As compared to an association or soccer ball or a rugby ball. No, no, that that ball that Charles Goodyear invented. Was it the color of a black, you know, I've seen descriptions of it being red and then and also black. So could I sit there and I know I have an old book on Walter camp and it starts off as him as a boy playing, you know, he had a black rubber ball that he just kicked around the yard and, you know, kicked over his mother's clothes line into the clothes and everything. And that's how he, you know, trained to get become a football player eventually. And I wonder if maybe that was one of those Charles Goodyear balls, because that would have been right around the time frame. I think his rubber was in the late 1830s. So probably, I think 40s and 50s is probably the ball. His stuff, maybe a little bit later than that. But anyways, yeah, I think so. Basically, if it was leather covered, it is probably an association sort of ball. But even their balls were like, you know, it wasn't real. you know, they didn't agree on a certain ball until 1872. So, you know, things are kind of, you know, it's kind of whatever you could get your hands on, frankly, you know, back in the day. And they had all kinds of different sizes, you know, I mean, rugby, American in and association balls all came in like multiple sizes in like three inch increments. And so like, size number five had a 27 inch circumference. And so if you think about one of the most popular balls in American football has been that the J5V or and proceeding that was a J5. Well, that J was the model, the Spalding model was a J. And before that it was a lily white rugby ball from England called a J. And the number five was the 27 inch circumference. So that J5 name goes all the way back to the beginning. Okay. So as you said, the number five, I was going to ask you if it will respond to the J5. So I'm glad you cleared that up. Yeah, yeah. So the letter was the model. And the number was the size because they were selling size two, size three, size four, five, and six. So like a 33 inch, 30 and 33 inch balls were, you know, whatever. And I know they don't do footballs anymore size and I was like junior and whatever pro and whatever, you know, an FHS, but soccer balls still have their sizes on them. I know you have like my daughter when she was playing, used a four. And then I think the pros in high school and colleges are number five. So well, so it's the same. It's the same sequence. And, you know, there's still junior footballs because, you know, my kids played with them, but I don't remember it being, you know, a number based system for identifying them.

Darin Hayes
I think they just called it a junior, but, you know, whatever. Yeah, maybe they still use a numbering system. And I have a junior ball right here and I don't see a number on it I have a Wilson TD and I don't see a number on it. So it's just the Wilson TD Junior Yeah, so I mean, it's just one of those cool cool things about the old balls that you know Here's something that carried out from literally from the beginning that we see every day and never think about Oh, I they call it a J5. Well, that's why you know, yeah fascinating Great stuff The Tim you have great stuff like this, you know a lot on your website and your posts And maybe you could introduce the listeners who haven't heard or read your before How they can you take part in what you're writing?

Timothy Brown
yeah, so best thing to do is just go to Football Archaeology.com and You know find the site just subscribe you can subscribe for free You can there's a paid version as well. You can also follow me on Twitter And on threads and on the substack app. So, you know, you can find me on any of those four methods or just Go out and search the site whenever you want to

Darin Hayes
Great stuff as always we really appreciate it and it's really enlightening About the the ball, you know and some of the history of it and we really thank you for that and Love to talk to you again next week about some more great football history

Timothy Brown
Very good. Look forward to it. Thanks