Timothy P Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Transcribed Conversation of When Football Started with Timothy Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

-Transcription of Bootleged Footballs with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends, this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history, and welcome to the portal that we're going to go back in time and look at some great football archaeology, some great old stuff that our friend Timothy P. Brown of FootballArchaeology.com is going to share with us from one of his recent tidbits. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

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

-Transcription of Football Field Grass Cuts with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history, and welcome to another evening where we get to discuss some football archaeology with the founder of that website, Timothy P. Brown. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sickle type. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

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

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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The tradition of wearing the varsity letter, a letterman jacket, or a varsity sweater is one that, in many places, still carries on to this modern day. It is so common in Americana we may take it for granted, but this badge of honor has a long and storied tradition. Our friend Timothy P Brown digs through the archives to find out where and why this exchange started and by whom in this weekly visit by the Football Archaeologist.

This piece originated with an article Tidbit that Tim wrote titled: Honoring Letter Sweaters and Jackets.

-Transcribed Tribute to Sweaters and Letterman Jackets 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 we are at that mark of the week.

It's Tuesday. It's footballarchaeology.com day. And we have the author and the creator of footballarchaeology.com, Timothy P. Brown, here to talk about another great tidbit he had coming from January. And Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Good to see you again and chat and looking forward to, you can't see, but I'm wearing a sweater and a jacket with my, you know, with my letter, letter sweater, and letter jacket from back in the day.

I've got those on right now and am wearing them proudly because I used to throw the ball over the mountain, if you weren't aware of that before. Okay, Uncle Rico. I'll get you that Napoleon Dynamite reference there.

But Tim, that's a good segue into your tidbit we're going to talk about today and it's titled Sweaters and Jackets. So this is a lot to do with the attire of the, of people playing football back in the day. So we're interested to hear what you have to say.

Yeah. You know, so I think some of the most fascinating things about football are the equipment and the gear. And part of what's fun about it is just that, in many cases, there are images that exist.

These are images of games or the team pictures that were posed in some photographer's office. And one of the things I really enjoy are, are the old catalogs. You know, one of the things I collect are old sporting catalogs.

And so you see those peppered, you know, maybe once a week, once every two weeks, I've got something in my tidbits that includes an image from a catalog. So, so, you know, I think most people are aware that the, you know, if you're a fan of football history, that football, that in the early days, players often wore fairly heavy sweater, you know, pretty significant, you know, big, big yarn, big threads, big yarn, heavy sweater. And oftentimes, it had the school letter on the front.

So if you were, you had a big Y in front, if you were Harvard, you had a H in front. And, you know, so whatever else, you know, whatever other letters that are out there. So that's very common.

And so one of the traditions that began, and this is, you know, 18, late 1880s, early 1890s was, you know, back then, if you look at most teams schedules, like Harvard and Yale, they kind of like, similar to what happens now, but they kind of filled their early schedule by playing what they would have thought of as minor opponents. And then they kind of saved their best game and their best plays and their best players for the big games at the end of the season. So if you were on the team and you played, and if you played for Harvard, you played against Yale, or you played against Princeton, and at the end of the year, got to keep the sweater that you wore in the game, which had the big H on the front of it.

And so that became a tradition. So, you know, I mean, I'm old enough to remember the days when there were no, you know, you couldn't go to the local mall and buy athletic gear. And there was no internet either.

So, you know, you couldn't, you couldn't. So athletic gear and team gear simply were not available. And so if you were able to get your hands on team-issued clothing from a college team, whether you played on the damn thing or not, that was pretty cool stuff, you know, because, you know, you could strut your stuff, you were, you had this pretty neat team gear walking around.

And people who knew that you had this, that you had gotten that gear. So it was the same thing with these guys. You know, they walked around campus, and everybody knew that if you wore this particular sweater, you would have played in one of the games. And in fact, early on, a lot of the team, a lot of the colleges would, if the, if the Y was a certain shape, or had certain flushes for football, the basketball team, or the crew team, or who, whatever else, especially the teams that considered minor sports, they didn't get to wear exactly the same Y or the same H, they had to wear some, they got something else, or these smaller letters.

And so, you know, it was just this whole thing. The football guys got to wear the football sweaters, so anyway, that all worked fine for, you know, maybe a decade or two.

And then it got, and then it became a thing where, obviously, football gear started changing. But also, you know, it's like nobody wanted to, you know, you couldn't wear the big heavy wool sweater all year round. So they started wearing, they started modifying the letter sweaters to become something that you might wear at an appropriate, you know, appropriately in some kind of social occasion.

So it was lighter, it was cotton, it had pockets, it had buttons, it was a cardigan, whatever, right? So it was just that they started making these sweaters be more into a true award in a separate piece of gear or apparel than the actual piece that you'd worn on the field. And then, you know, they also started doing charms and blankets and all kinds of stuff.

But, you know, basically, by the 1920s, they moved to a lot of the sweaters that had an emblem. So, if you were the Tigers, you might have a patch near one of the pockets. There was a type that had the head of a tiger. If you were the Lions or whatever, you know, whatever team you were, the Trojans, you had some kind of patch in addition to, you know, the letter sweater or the letters.

And then they also, it was in that kind of time period where they also had numerals, you know, so like by 1905, I think it was Harvard that had the first numerals. But that was if you were if you played as a freshman, you were on the freshman team, and you were on the night, you know, the team that was going to graduate in 1908, then you got, you could get a sweater and wear just your numerals on the sweater, right? No letter yet, just the numerals, which I think everybody, you know, is familiar with from the high school days. But so anyways, that kind of stuff just went on.

And then eventually, in the 1930s, we got to the point where, really, I don't think for any particular reason, but then the sporting manufacturers who were very happy to sell as many damn sweaters as they could, they started selling jackets as well. So they designed these jackets. And the early ones didn't really look like the, you know, kind of leather-sleeved.

And I don't even know what wool, I guess was, you know, the, you know, kind of the, I don't know, you know, well, the traditional leather jacket, right? Right. I think it's wool on the mid part and the midsection. Yeah, yeah.

And so, so anyways, I mean, they started selling those in the, well, they started marketing them in the early 30s. And then they became popular. And for a while, they were satin.

And, you know, so anyways, it's just one of those things where the jackets basically kind of replace a sweater. Now, when I was in high school, there were still guys who would, who had, you know, we had this thing called the Cardinal Club. So it was like the Letterman Society or whatever.

And so there were still guys who would buy the Letterman sweaters and wear them periodically. But it was pretty very much, you know, I don't think of it in my classroom, but there were, you know, some of the older guys who did. So, I mean, it was just one of those things that faded out.

But almost everybody wore a leather jacket, you know. And then it became a thing where, you know, the marching band has them. And, you know, it's become this much more democratic sort of thing instead of being this elite award only for the football players.

And everybody else has something less than that. Now, it's become much more of a widespread award, which I just, I just find, you know, whatever, I find that kind of interesting. Yeah, that makes me think of a story I heard with Amos Alonzo Stagg, the great coach at the University of Chicago.

And he would give out the blanket as you talked about earlier, that had, I guess, a C on it for Chicago to the seniors that played in whatever the big game was. One of the things that he would tell them, and I guess he practiced this, was if somebody would go professional, which he was dead set against professional football. If one of his former players would go and play professional football, he would ask them for the blanket back. That was sort of their punishment.

And, you know, I was reading it somewhere, there are people that like dreaded it, didn't want to lose their damn blanket, because it was just such a discrediting, dishonorable thing to do to coach Stagg that they wouldn't play pro football and, you know, first probably made more money at being a banker or something than playing football back then anyway. But it's amazing how those live on their own. So I think he established blank, and in most schools, there are still schools that award blankets today.

And that was a separate kind of an award because anybody, any fool, could win a letter for one season. The blanket was for somebody who earned three letters, or, you know, he had won the award three or four times. And yeah, so I mean, he started that in like 1902 or something.

I've got the program from the 1911 Order of the Sea ceremony at UChicago. So that was, I think, the eighth one at the time. So it's, yeah, I mean, it's funny. There are just as many things as a guy like Stagg came up with and innovated on the field.

He also did some things off the field like, you know, blankets and the first Letterman Society, which effectively was what the Order of the Sea was. Hmm. Fascinating stuff.

It's a great part of the game that that's off the field. But it's, you know, very interesting, indeed, to look at. And very, have you seen any of these like old sweaters, like in anybody's collections or anything that some of these from 100 years ago, or like this 1910 when you get pictured? So, you know, there are some folks that I, you know, our friends correspond with, and we train information.

And yeah, so some have those old items. And it's, I mean, they are very rare. They're different, especially since it's one thing to have an old sweater and not to make fun of an Otterbein or somebody like that.

But, you know, there are lots of small liberal arts schools all over the country, so that's cool. And a lot of people would love to have an old sweater like that in their collection. But if you have a Harvard or Yale or somebody like that, you know, that's a big-time deal.

Those are thousands of dollars for items like that. You know, so easy. So it just depends on the condition and, you know, provenance, all those kinds of things.

So it's, they can be very, very valuable. Hmm. I bet they are.

Especially if you keep them away from the moss for over a century, that's a, that's always a good thing too. To keep the value. I only have them in pictures.

I do not. The closest thing I've ever come to is like going to the pro football hall of fame and seeing, you know, the 1920s, you know, like Red Grange or somebody from the Canton Bulldogs, sweaters there, you know, so that you're talking 10, 20 years earlier and what you're talking about. So, I can't even imagine that.

So, hey, great, great stuff as always, Tim. You know, the listeners would probably love to enjoy these tidbits every day as well. Maybe you could give them some information to share the tidbits with them as well.

Yeah, sure. So the best way to, to get the tidbit every day is to follow me on or subscribe to my, to footballarchaeology.com. If you do, you'll get a tidbit at seven o'clock East every day by email. So it'll have the contents of the, of the, the story there.

So, you know, send out two to three times a month, send out kind of longer form articles as well as each week I send out a link to this, to our podcast. And then, you know, alternatively, you can follow me on, on Twitter. Football Archaeology is my, is my name or at F-O-F Strife.

So either way, whatever works for you. But if you subscribe, at least you know that you're going to get it and you can pile them up, read them on the weekend when you, when you've got more time. Good, good deal.

Multiple ways to get the tidbits and hopefully everybody will take advantage of that and read Tim's work each and every day. Cause it's very interesting stuff. And the pictures are just out of this world.

Some of these images, like the one from this catalog from 1910 that we talked about today with the sweaters pictured in it, are pictures worth a thousand words and definitely are, in these cases, with the tidbits. So Tim, thank you very much for joining us, and we will talk to you again next week. Thank you, sir.

And we'll look forward to next Tuesday.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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The history of early sideline and press box communication is taken to task by the research prowess of Timothy P Brown and the Football Archaeology resources.

The Football Archaeologist digs deep into the research and history of a couple of features of a stadium outside of the boundaries of the playing field.

The following discussion is based on Tim's original Tidbit titled: Press Boxes and Sideline Communication.

-Transcribed on Press Box History 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 edition where we get to visit Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com talking about one of his recent tidbits. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Darin, it's good to see you again and hear your sultry voice. Sultry? Well, you know. Hey, you talk to me like that, fella, you're gonna have to buy me a drink.

Yeah, unfortunately, we've never been in the same room with one another. And so, you know, someday that will happen and I will buy you a drink. Most definitely, I'll buy you one back too.

So we might not be seeing each other for very long. It'd be blurry, but we'll have some fun, that's for sure. But we will communicate.

And that's sort of the topic of tonight's episode, where you wrote a tidbit not too long ago about press boxes and some communication with the sideline from yesteryear. This is very interesting stuff, and there is some great football history that we can't wait to hear. Yeah, so this one, you know, well, as you said, is about press boxes and, you know, kind of the physical structure of the press boxes.

And then, you know, how did people on the sideline communicate with press boxes, either the coaches that ultimately made their way up there or the folks in the press? And so, you know, not to shamelessly plug my book, Hut, Hut, Hike, but you know, that book is about the origins of football terminology, you know, when they first showed up in the popular press and kind of why they came about. And so, the, you know, virtually every stadium in the world has box seats, right? And those were box seats and press boxes; those were terms that originally came from the theater world, where, you know, people paid premium prices to be closer to the stage.

And then in the case of the press, you know, they wanted whoever were the movie critics of the day, but instead, they were doing, you know, live shows, and they would come and watch the show. And so they'd get a favorable spot to do so. And so then that carried over to the football world and the baseball world.

So, you know, when stadiums ended up needing to find a place to put these, the members of the press, and, you know, early on, you know, most of these stadiums were pretty informal, you know, slapped together, you know, wooden bleachers and yada, yada. So, you know, the press boxes were pretty much of this, you know, similar ilk. So, you know, there are images, you know, so, you know, those who were listening, you know, if you get a chance to get out there and, you know, take a look at some of the images from the article, but the, you know, some of them were as simple as just a table along the sidelines where these guys sat and, you know, watch the game and made, you know, took their notes.

That image that you have on there almost reminds me of a basketball game, how, you know, your right side court or sideline and, you know, field view and, you know, guys sitting there writing stats down and newspaper articles. So that's kind of a cool picture. Yeah.

And a lot of times, you know, there were other tables along the sideline like that, but oftentimes they had like the official timer, you know, so depending on the stadium, they could sometimes offload some of the timing from the, you know, the headlinesman to, you know, to somebody on the sideline, but in any event. So then they started kind of, or like, you know, in the same periods, they started putting these press boxes up at the top of the stands, but like, you know, they're not like the fancy air-conditioned and heated press boxes of today with all kinds of internet connections. I mean, a lot of them were, you know, basically open air, you know, they might've had a roof.

Some of the images that are in there show a press box or the roof, and others do not, but a lot of them are open-air. Some are basically just like, you know, just look like, you know, they're up on scaffolding, you know. So they were pretty primitive affairs, and depending on how big the game was and, you know, what the local press corps was like, you know, it could be a half a dozen guys, or it could be, you know, whatever, 20, 30, 40.

And then, you know, once you get into the concrete stadiums, you know, starting in the, especially in the twenties, you know, then you start getting a little bit more formality around the press box, but the other challenge all along. So no matter what the, you know, no matter what the era, one of the challenges, not just for the press, but for fans in general, was just trying to figure out what the heck is going on down on the field. And so what they would do is, for a long time, there were guys who used semaphore flags or, you know, just different kinds of signals.

They communicate one way or the other to the people in the press box, like to one guy in the press box and say, Hey, here's, you know, number 22 ran the ball, or this was a touchdown, or this was a touchback or safety because those were very difficult to differentiate back in the day. And so, and you know, these are the days without player numbers and referee signals. And actually, a lot of the reason for the referee signals was to, you know, when that originated to communicate to the press.

Um, so anyways, you know, but, you know, people also were smart enough to figure, Hey, we had these things called telephones, and Penn had at least some form of telecom, telephone communication with the press box back in the 1890s. But a lot of them, you know, didn't, didn't have that. I think there was much more of the twenties and thirties era when that really started happening.

Um, so there are images there too, uh, in the article of, you know, coaches, and typically, it's just one coach on the sideline. Who's got a phone or headset? And he's talking to somebody who's observing things up, you know, up high.

Um, you know, and that's back when you didn't have an offensive and defensive coordinator yet, you know, the head coach and maybe a defensive coach, but you know, the guys who were playing offense were playing defense too. So, you know, you didn't need the specialization. So one guy talking to the spotter up high, you know, was enough.

Um, so anyway, it's just kind of interesting stuff, and you can kind of see the progression, the technology, you know, gets better and better. And, um, you know, and now it's like, you know, everybody's got their headsets. You don't even need the cords and all that kind of stuff.

So it's, uh, things are, things are different than they used to be. Well, I mean, some of it is now, like you said, sort of stayed as tradition. I know as an official, we were, you know, that's who we are signaling to.

We are to face the press box and signal the press box for, you know, now it's basically the official scorekeepers and PA announcer, not so much the press, but signaling to that. Then, the home crowd is usually on that side, and they get to see the signals. And, of course, the visitors get upset.

Maybe they can't see them as clearly, but that's how you do it traditionally. And, you know, as far as the evolution of the press box, I think I've, I've told the audiences before, and I apologize if I have, but a couple of years ago, I got to go to Tom Benson stadium outside the pro football hall of fame during the enshrinements. And I was part of the media.

I got to sit up in a press box, and I couldn't believe I'd been in a lot of high school press boxes and college press boxes. This thing has marble tables with, you know, like you said, internet connections, USB ports, and ethernet cables. And, you know, somebody asking if you need anything, you know, I was expecting to see like pencils and paper, but no, everybody had a laptop computer, and there's a little buffet set up.

And, you know, at least the NFL takes good care of you at the Hall of Fame weekend anyway, but the press box was very impressive. I wanted to live there, you know, it was nice. Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, it just, everything's changed.

And it's, you know, it's funny to even, you know, like the difference between, say, D3 level amenities and D1 or the NFL, just it's, it's night and day. I mean, the D3 people are going to do their best, and they're going to do some nice things with the limited money that they have to spend. And, you know, just ten times better than what we had, you know, back in the day, but, you know, it's crazy.

There's still out there, some of the less fortunate high schools. I know I went to one, I had to do a valuation of some officials that were doing it. So I sat up in the press box and it was one of those ones made out of plywood and you had to open up the plywood door and the guy sat down a can of, of wasp spray next to me.

He goes every once in a while; you may have to hit this thing. I'm looking; there's a wasp nest up in the corner. I'm like, Oh boy, this is going to be fun.

And it was a hot box, of course, too. So, it was a good time, but between that and Tom Benson Stadium, there was a little bit of difference. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that's okay. But Tim, that is another beauty that you came up with.

It's a very interesting go back in the 1890s, you know, thinking about them using a, you know, telephone communication at a football game at Penn, you know, that's, that's, that blows my mind. And, uh, you know, most people never saw them in their houses at that point in time. I don't think in 18, I was right around the turn of the century when they got to become more popular, but that you have interesting things like this every day in your tidbits and, uh, you know, football related, and it's just great to do it.

And a lot of it ties into history like today's did a little bit with the telecommunications and, uh, you know, people love to hear that stuff and read that stuff. Why don't you share with them where they too can enjoy this? Yeah. So, you know, the easiest thing is just to subscribe to my, uh, subscribe on, you know, footballarcheaology.com. It's free to subscribe.

You'll get an email every day with whatever that day's story is. And, uh, you know, kind of read them at your leisure or read them the moment they come out and then, uh, or don't read them. Um, whatever is your preference.

Uh, you can also, you know, follow me on Twitter, threads, and the Substack app. So, uh, any of those will work. So whatever suits your fancy.

All right. Well, Tim, excellent job. Once again, footballarcheology.com is the website.

Timothy Brown is his name, and we will talk to you again next week on Tuesday. Hey, thank you. We'll see you soon, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

---

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?.

---

Timothy P Brown posted a recent article describing an exciting award that some of our Nation's military training facilities once vied for on the football field. Tim joins us to bring this exciting subject in gridiron lore to light in this podcast episode as we continue our journey to preserve history.

This conversation is based on Tim's original Tidbit titled: Battling For The President's Cup.

-Transcription of the Presidents Cup games 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 once again, we have a visit from our friend Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com. And he's got another subject from one of his tidbits that he wrote recently.

That's going to talk about something that you find rather interesting, as I did when I read it. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Darin, glad to be back.Look forward to chatting again and enjoying the winter weather, as we talk football. Your tidbits are extremely interesting. And this one tonight you had titled Battling for the President's Cup.

And it was just recently on January 26th. I wonder if you could you could talk a little bit and tell us what the President's Cup was. Yeah, so I mean, it's one of those things that was that is now kind of forgotten, right? Most people have never heard of the President's Cup, but it was kind of a big deal in the state.

And so but like most things, there's kind of a background in order to in order to talk about the real subject. Right. And so, you know, I think the main point and you know, my my first book was about football played by military teams during World War One.

So, you know, I've always kind of followed football played in military settings. And I think it's one of those things that is is really underappreciated in terms of the development of football as a game. And so the military, just by nature of their mission, you know, they they took the game overseas before anybody else did.

So, as an example, the first game played in Europe was played by two battleships that were part of the Great White Fleet. They played in East France in 1909. Yada, yada.

And so, you know, the military, you know, if you think about it, who's in the military? Well, a lot of times, it's a bunch of young men who are physically fit and physically able, and a lot of them need to blow off steam. One of the traditional ways that they have done this is through athletics. You know, the Navy was always big on boxing because you could do that on a ship at sea.

But they were also big on playing football. And so. So, sports was both a recreation and a way to maintain fitness in the military.

You know, kind of as far back as people played sports for recreation. And then it really got a push in World War One. You know, in all the training camps during World War One, there were a lot of all kinds of sports being played. The YMCA played a big role, both in camps in the States and over in Europe.

One of the things that the YMCA did was provide athletic equipment, and they set up basketball courts, football fields, etc. So athletics was a big thing. And so one of the things that kind of came out of the World War One experience was that there it was really the first time, other than a couple of the pro leagues in Ohio or Pennsylvania, is really the first time where there were all-star teams put together of men who had graduated from college in the past five, six years who were all in the service together at one camp or another.

And these camps had 50,000 people at 26,000 people. I mean, these were massive. You know, massive groups of young men.

And the biggest college in the in the country at the time was Penn, which had 7,500 students. So all of a sudden you had lots and lots of young men playing football. They formed these camp teams and they were very successful.

They got lots of news coverage. Lots of people attended their games. They played colleges.

They beat the college, you know, the better teams beat the colleges. So, you know, they were playing as good a football as there was in the country, you know, during World War Two or World War One. Sorry.

So but even, you know, so then once the once the war ends, basically guys all, you know, they go back to civilian life. But there remained a core of of people playing or remaining in the military. And then they continued playing football.

And one of the things that they did was, you know, the Navy had done this back, you know, from 1905 on. But they would have these tournaments where all the destroyers or all the battleships or all the cruisers who were stationed at a particular port would have a tournament for a football for football teams. And they determine who is the champion.

And then they, you know, the Norfolk would play the champion of New York and Philadelphia or whatever. In the end, you know, they ended up. They ended up forming these teams where it was like, OK, we're going to get the best Navy team and the best Army team or the best Marine team.

And we're going to see they're going to play one another and see who's best. So for like 1920 on on the East Coast, they played a game like that. And kind of year after year, as Quantico Marines won because they just they emphasized it enough and they had some really talented players.

But in 1924 and 1925, Calvin Coolidge decided to present the President's Cup to the winner of the active duty football tournament on the East Coast. Right. So it was just, you know, it's one of those things where the president and the cabinet, you know, multiple cabinet secretaries, the general staff, the admiralty, those people would be at the games.

Allies would be at the games. They would and it became a big social event in Washington, D.C. or Baltimore. You know, they played in a couple of different locations.

You know, they have these military balls after the games. And it kind of, you know, I mean, it never got to the same level as the Army Navy academy games, but it probably wasn't too far behind that in terms of the stature because it was like, yeah, he's college kids, but these are the active duty guys. Right.

These are the real soldiers and sailors. So it's just it was kind of a neat thing where these guys ended up playing. And, you know, unfortunately, shortly after, the Coolidge presented this cup, and the Army decided to kind of deemphasize these all-star teams, and then the Navy did, too.

And so then the Marines were left to play the Coast Guard. And eventually it all moved. The East Coast kind of fell apart and the emphasis on these military all star teams moved to the West Coast, where what's now Pendleton in San Diego and, you know, versus the West Coast fleet and the and the Corps that handled the Western Army Corps.

But so it's just one of these things that's kind of lost in time. I mean, nobody knows about this stuff anymore, but it was a big deal. It was in all the newspapers.

And, you know, I mean, another, I think, really kind of fun fact is just that of the fact that I think it was 1921 and 2016 coached by this guy who had played at West Point. And then he coached St. Mary's College in Texas. And his name was Dwight Eisenhower.

Right. So here's a guy who, you know, became president. You know, he led the Allied effort in Europe in World War II and became president.

But he was coaching one of these teams, you know, back in the back in the 20s. And, you know, at one point, he was stationed in Panama. And the guy who was the head coach, who has a whole separate story that I've written about, you know, just incredible story that guy had.

But anyway, you know, he requested, hey, bring Ike back here because I needed to help coach my team. So he transferred Ike from Panama back to the States so that he could help coach this all-star football team. You know, it's just like crazy things that happen to guys because of football.

So anyway, it's just one of these things that I think people know very little about this President's Cup anymore. On the West Coast, they played what they called the Armistice Day game. And they tried to buy the President's Cup there.

It didn't work out. They just kept on playing the Armistice Day game. But so anyways, you know, in both locations, it was a big event, big social event, military balls, big newspaper coverage, and very good football.

Right now, you know, a lot of these guys, you know, initially, there are a lot of guys who played at West Point or Army, and then they made it only for enlisted men. But still, a lot of good athletes, just a lot of young men at these bases. And, you know, they had their pick of 10, 20, 30,000 young men who could play football.

So they put together some pretty good teams. Well, yeah, maybe I asked you this when we were talking about the Rose Bowl games. We were talking about those military teams from that era, from World War I. But did those camp teams ever play like the main Army team or the main, you know, the Naval Academy team or West Point team? So, yes.

But so in 1918, Great Lakes played the Naval Academy. They'd come out east. So they played four or five, big 10 teams, and either tied or beaten them.

Then they went out east and played Rutgers, who had Paul Robeson at the time. And they just cleaned their clocks. They won like, you know, whatever it was, 43 to six or something.

They just blew Rutgers away. And the next week, they go to Annapolis. And Annapolis was winning six to nothing late in the fourth quarter with the ball on the one-and-a-half-yard line.

And a guy named Ingram, who became famous as coach later on, he was, I believe his quarterback, maybe his fullback. But anyways, he fumbles the ball, pops in the air into the hands of a Great Lakes player who grabs the ball, runs 100 yards. Well, he tries to run 100 yards in the other direction.

And one of the Naval Academy players comes off the bench and tackles him. And so then, you know, all hell breaks loose. And so anyways, the Academy superintendent comes out on the field and says, you're giving orders to referees because the rules didn't have, you know, didn't clarify what the situation should be here or the conditions.

And the Academy superintendent says you are giving that touchdown to Great Lakes. You know, our guy cheated. That was it, right? The referee said, OK, fine.

And so then Great Lakes won the game. And in the locker room afterward, they get the invitation to the 1919 Rose Bowl. So, you know, the Army and Navy played some of those, and you know, played some of the camp teams, but it was pretty limited.

And so, for sure, I know the Great Lakes game. I'm not, you know, I'd have to look at their records, you know, for 17 and 18 to check on that. But I think that's, you know, that may have been the only game like that.

Yeah. I wasn't sure if they would or not because it's, you know, basically what the Naval Academies are going to be officers. And, you know, they're playing the regulars, and the guys are going to be the grunts, you know, playing them.

I didn't know if maybe they didn't want to cross those streams or not, but it's interesting. Yeah. So, you know, well, during World War I, you know, the different camps applied different rules.

Most of them allowed both officers and enlistment to play on the same teams. That was kind of unusual. The Navy and Marines were especially that way, but the Army was a little bit more, you know, keep them separated.

But anyway, you know, so, you know, 1918, they had the Spanish flu. And so a lot of what went on that season was to play any opponent you could find. Because things got so screwed up with the Spanish flu, and the, was SATC upended most of the schedule.

So it was kind of bizarre; it was probably the worst, the most bizarre season, even worse than the COVID season that we all went through recently. Wow. Yeah.

I mean, just in terms of strange schedules and craziness, 1918 was worse. So. Well, Tim is always, that's great stuff.

Now, why don't you tell everybody how they can get a hold and read your tidbits that you come out with every day? Yeah. So, you know, the site is footballarchaeology.com and the two ways to get access to it, if you're interested in looking at it daily, one is just to subscribe. You can bookmark it, obviously, if you want.

If you subscribe, you'll get an email sent to you with the article's contents every night at seven o'clock Eastern. Or you can follow me on Twitter. And again, you know, football archaeology there as well.

So either way, my preference is that you subscribe on the site because then make sure that you get whether you read it or not. At least I know you've received it. That's right.

All right. Well, great stuff, as always. And Tim, we really appreciate you.

And folks, make sure you visit footballarchaeology.com and do as Tim suggests, subscribe, and get that daily tidbit. It's really a great read each and every day. And you stay in football all year long.

And it's a really, really excellent way to do that. So, Tim, thanks a lot for joining us and sharing that story. And we'll talk to you again next week.

Hey Darin, I look forward to seeing you next Tuesday. Thanks.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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Time to have our friend Tim Brown join us today for some football archaeology on one of the great Heisman winners of the 1930s and his special season and special stature coming up in just a moment. Hello, my football friends.

-Transcription of Davey Obrien and Standing Tall with Timothy Brown

This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And as we try to do every Tuesday, we like to go on a little archaeological expedition. We go to the man on the website Football Archaeology, Timothy Brown. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey there. Thank you. Appreciate you having me again.
Looking forward to digging into a few things tonight. Digging is right. We were, you know, interested.

We were talking about this before we came on about one of your tidbits. You know, some of these, they're all stimulating, but some really catch my eye, and I'd love to hear a little bit more about them. This one came from later in October, and it's called Standing Call for the Heisman on October 23rd on FootballArchaeology.com. I was hoping maybe you could say a few words about that subject matter.

Yeah, you know, happy to. So, the Standing Call is, you know, basically about a guy named Davy O'Brien, who was a Heisman Trophy winner in 1938. But he was 5'7".
And, you know, so we all know, we all went to high school or grade school or whatever with some guy who was too short, but he was a heck of an athlete. And, you know, just the guy was a stud. But eventually, he kind of met his limits athletically, you know, in terms of competing against, you know, bigger players.

Even in high school, a lot of guys that size can get away with things. And here and there, we've got an NBA or an NFL player who does it. But back then, it was a little bit more common, you know.

And so, Davy O'Brien was, you know, like I said, 5'7", grew up in Dallas. And he succeeded Sammy Baugh as the quarterback or the center of the Dutch Meyers TPU spread office. So, you know, I mean, we like to think the spread is this brand new, shiny thing that all these smart, you know, modern people created.
But back in the 30s, in the late 30s, Dutch Meyers was running an offense that had two basic formations. One was had a single back, the double wing and two double split ends. You know, so just think about that.

A single back, double wings, and two split ends, right? So that looks like a lot of people's spreads nowadays. He also ran, he didn't call it this, but he ran an empty formation with trips on one side, you know, and split on the other. So, and he ran the ball, it's a lot.

So, I mean, run it especially out of the one-back formation. So, I mean, it's just the idea that these guys, TCU, were doing things well before anybody else in terms of just bringing modern spread horizontal concepts to football. So, you get this guy, Davey O'Brien, who takes over for Sammy Ball, who's got it, and, you know, it's back in single platoon football.

So, O'Brien played both ways. He wasn't just this little, you know, a dinky quarterback that, you know, just ran out and was protected against being tackled hard and stuff like that. You know, he was a player, he's a blocking back, he punted, you know, he was their primary punter.
And so, I'm going to say this next thing with a little bit of caution. As a senior, he set the passing yardage in a season record, NCAA record. He also set the combined rushing and passing by an individual in a season.

Now, that was a 1938 season, and the NCAA only started tracking statistics in 1937. So, you know, it wasn't, yeah, okay, you know, but nevertheless, I mean, the point really is that what he was doing so far ahead of almost anybody else, right? And so, and just one little side note to the statistics thing. The statistics weren't, you know, it was like the NCAA did this.

It was a separate guy named Herman Homer who created this entity called the American Football Statistical Bureau, and then in 22 years, they sold it to the NCAA. And so, all of the football records of the NCAA were actually, for the first 22 years, compiled by a separate company. You know, so his company started in 37.
And so, if you look at any NCAA record, they start in 1937, you know, from this guy's records. Anyways, Davey O'Brien was a stud. So, he finishes his senior year, winning a national championship.

He's the Maxwell and Heisman Trophy winner. He then gets drafted by the NFL; the Giants take him number four in the 39 draft. He leads the NFL in passing yardage as a rookie, though they only won one game, and comes back as a second-year player.

Again, has a great season. They only win one game. And then he says, I'm done.

And he quits pro football and becomes an FBI agent. And he does that for about 10 years and goes into various business adventures, you know. So, it's just kind of an interesting thing.

You know, there are very few NFL players who leave today to become FBI agents, right? Especially when you just led the league in passing. But, you know, different times, different places. Different pay scales.
Yeah, different pay scale, you know. Well, here's another thing about it. To that point, he was the fourth Heisman Trophy winner, but he was the first one to sign with the NFL.

The first three didn't even bother. Oh, that's right. Yeah.
You know, they were coming from the University of Chicago and two guys from Yale, and they were like, hey, I don't need this NFL thing. I've got better, you know, business opportunities. And so, you know, none of the first, you know, neither none, whatever of the first three played in the NFL.

Yeah, you really have to go back and really admire people that play professional football, especially those first, like, five or six decades, because they really did it for the love of the game and the love of the competition. They weren't getting rich by doing it. Most, you know, I think almost all of them had to have a regular job in the offseason and things like that.
And it's just an amazing thing to think about where today, you know, that's their whole life. And, you know, they're, they're set for life after playing a couple of years. And yeah, I would say, you know, they made significant money compared to the average worker, right? And for some of them, it was just like today.

I mean, I get into arguments. I got into a recent argument or spat with some CFL fans about the talent levels between the NFL and CFL. And, you know, the CFL has tremendous players. I mean, they're gifted athletes, but they're, in my mind, just not anywhere near NFL caliber.
I mean, yeah, some of them are bottom-end NFL players, and that's fine. But, the point is that even in the CFL, they can make more money playing as a 24, 25-year-old young man in the CFL compared to getting out of school and whatever, becoming an underwriter or, you know, whatever it is you do when you leave school, right? Now, if they were chemical engineering majors or something, yeah, they can make more money doing that. But, you know, not many of those are playing football.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's a pretty good parallel.
You know, I didn't think that maybe not even the CFL, but maybe some of these, these other leagues that are coming up, you know, like the XFL and the spring league and now, now the USFL, some of those, you know, those guys aren't making much at all compared to their peers in the bigger leagues, you know, like the NFL and the CFL, but they're doing enough to make a living and get by. And you know, hopeful their hope is to advance into the NFL. And I'm sure that's probably the goal.
And I think that's it. It's the hope it's keeping the hope alive. Right.

And then there are kids who are probably more like D3 sort of kids, but you know, there are a decent number of American kids now heading over to Europe and playing. And, but it's more of a cultural experience, and they're not making big money. I mean, literally, they're making, I know one kid who played in the NF or in Europe last year, making like 800, a thousand bucks a game, but he got into an NFL camp this year, you know, and got cut, but you know, he made a camp.

And so, you know but, but I think for guys like that, it's more like, yeah, you got a chance to play in Austria or live in Finland for six months or something, you know, it's, it's a life experience rather than money, money grab, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely an interesting lifestyle.
And when you can do the thing you love and travel, Hey, why, why not do it when you're a young person? Any day, any day. Right. Good for them.

Good for them. I mean, I don't care what level you're playing, playing, if you're still taking a shot at it, have at it, you know? Absolutely. Yeah.

So good for you. Yeah. Love to hear that.

All right. Well, Tim, why don't we take this opportunity right now to, you know, just like this was a tidbit on Davey O'Brien, you have some very interesting things coming out each and every day, sometimes multiples in a day. And why don't you share with folks how they can get on your list to get this information? Yeah.

So, you know, my site is footballarchaeology.com. You can go on there and subscribe. And what that means is you'll get an email at seven o'clock every day. And then, some other days, you'll get more than one, but basically, you'll get at least a daily email that provides some information.

And if, if not there, then you can I mean, you can always visit the site just, you know, randomly, but you can also follow me on Twitter at football archaeology. And so whichever, however you consume information, however you prefer to view it, have at it. I'm more than happy to have people check it out.

All right. Well, Tim Brown, football archaeology. Thank you once again for joining us this week and talking about some more great football history and some of these great things from the past that may be overlooked, but we're glad that you're researching them and bringing them to our attention.

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


Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

---

Timothy P. Brown joins us on the discussion to explain why we read of the coaching exploits of Walter Camp in California.

This conversation is based on Tim's original Tidbit titled: Walter Camp's California Adventures.

-Transcribed Chat Walter Camp Going to California 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 we are in Tuesday mode again.

Starting off this new year right, we have Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology joining us to talk about another exciting tidbit that he's had come out recently. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Hey, Darren.

Thank you. Thank you. I hope you had a great holiday.

I certainly did and planning to enjoy them some more. Yeah, it's, you know, football season is still going on here. Just got done with the bowl games and now we're getting ready for playoffs in the professional level.

So, we have some great football history to talk about all month long and all year long. And we're glad that you're here to be a part of it. A great subject that we're going to talk about tonight, Tim, that comes from one of your October tidbits.

A little bit on the founder and father of modern football, Walter Camp, sounds like a very interesting topic. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously, anytime you can pull Walter Camp into a conversation, you're probably on pretty solid ground.

But, you know, I think that the thing that I enjoyed about this particular, that particular tidbit is really just kind of, you know, if you just step back and think about what the world was like and what California was like back in the 1890s when he, you know, he had been coaching, advising, you know, with Yale. And then kind of stepped away a bit, still did a lot of the executive management stuff for, you know, for the Yale Athletic Association. But, you know, he had a company to run, and the New Haven Clock Company was his family company, so he's doing all that.

But he still, you know, kind of got the call from people out at Stanford. They wanted him to come on out and teach him a thing or two about football, you know. And it's just, you know, you kind of have to step back then because I think the Intercontinental Railroad was, you know, not that old by the time, you know, by, say, 1892.

So, here's this guy in Connecticut traveling all the way across the country and, you know, brought his wife along, but still, you know, he's, at that time, it had to be a week-long trip, you know, on the railroad just to cross the country. If it's anything I know from a lot of the Rose Bowl teams that were going out there from the East Coast, like New York City, when Columbia went, it was a six-day trip. So, I assume that's got to be pretty close to what Camp was traveling.

Yeah. And I'm more, you know, I'm maybe more knowledgeable about some of the Midwestern teams, but they were, you know, four and five-day trips, you know, and this is in the 20s, you know, or in the late teens, you know, that time period. So, you know, I mean, he was out there early on because people were still sailing, you know, from the East Coast to the West Coast.

And that was, and that's no Panama Canal. That's right. So, they're going a long way.

But anyway, so he goes out there, and there had been a series of other, you know, recent graduates. So, somebody, you know, who was just a year or two out of school, who had gone out to the West Coast to help, you know, teach football and help them, you know, kind of get up to speed. And so, you know, despite all that distance, one of the things that strike me is just how often, I mean, I know, you know, I did an article on shoulder pads recently, and, you know, they showed up at Yale in like, whatever it was, 1888 or something, that kind of time frame.

And sure enough, like a year later, the guys at Cal and Stanford are wearing them, you know. So, pretty much everything transferred, but, you know, it required some messengers. And so, he becomes a messenger.

And he went out there in 1892, and then in 93 and 95 as well, you know, sometimes arriving, you know, after the Yale season was over. But in California, they played a lot later. You know, they didn't necessarily play in September.

You know, they'd take a game if they got one. So, a lot of times, they played a little bit later, so he could be there for, you know, most of the season. But the other thing, really, that's striking, I just think, is that, you know, there just weren't that many teams to play.

You know, part of the point about the article is they end up playing like, you know, two pretty famous teams in the Bay Area. One was the San Francisco Olympic Club. They, you know, like a lot of these athletic clubs, they had, you know, pretty strong teams.

Reliance Athletic Club was the other one. But, like, they played, those guys, like, one of the years, Cal played one of them two times; the other one, it was a reverse for Stanford. And there just weren't that many other teams.

You know, I mean, you could go down to LA, which was a trip, and Stanford did that over the holidays once or twice. And you could go to the Northwest to play somebody in Portland. But otherwise, you know, I mean, really, even in the 20s, the West Coast, the teams that we think of as the top teams on the West Coast now, they were still playing like, you know, the USS Pennsylvania and, you know, battleships moored in port.

You know, they'd have their teams, and so they play them in their early in the season. They play Chemiwa and Sherman, which are both, you know, Native American schools. Even like Arizona, you know, I mean, those schools were pretty dinky.

There just weren't many people living in Arizona, you know, back then. So pretty dinky schools, and, you know, they would play like the Occidentals of the world and, you know, that kind of thing. And then, you know, I think we talked about it before, but USC didn't become a big deal until the 20s, you know.

So anyways, you know, he's going out there, and basically, there are two schools of any note on the West Coast, Cal and Stanford. They're rivals, and, you know, they kind of try to knock each other off in the big game. But, you know, it's just kind of an interesting story how knowledge of football disseminated from these guys who had just played in the previous years with, you know, Stanford, or not Stanford, but, you know, Harvard, Yale, Princeton.

And then you get Walter Camp, of all people, to head out there and, you know, try to show him a few things. And, you know, he seems to have been reasonably successful, you know. And anyway, it just, I don't know, it's just, it's like a time capsule for me.

It's just a strange period. There must have been some kind of a pipeline going from the East, like the Yales and Harvards, out to California. I remember there's a story somewhere that I read about Leland being the coach at Harvard.

And he was; I think he was bringing in the wedge designed for kickoff or something. He was going to spring it on Yale as a surprise. They were practicing in secret and everything.

He also said something to somebody who had traveled out to California. This person went out there and casually talked about it at some restaurant. And somebody from Yale overheard them, telegraphed back to Camp, and said, hey, this is what they're planning to do.

And, of course, Camp had the answer for doing it. And so Harvard was the one in surprise. The trap that wasn't set on Yale was set on Harvard.

So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I recall the story. I hadn't, you know, thought about it in that context, but yeah, it's a perfect fit. You know, it's really, I mean, just amazing the, you know, just the difference in time.

And yet, you know, they're still, they're playing this game that, you know, we still play today, you know, just a little bit different conditions, but, you know, like UCLA, you know, was a normal school, you know, back in the 1890s. So, you know, they really didn't really become big time until the thirties, maybe even, you know, maybe even the forties, but, you know, when they had the, you know, like Robinson and some of those guys in the late thirties, you know, they were certainly. Yeah.

It's just surprising how fast it spread. Cause I know we've talked about it a few times where, when a university of Chicago started taking shape with Amos Alonzo Stagg coming from the East, you know, that was the far West. And, you know, we got to go all the way to Chicago to play these teams, you know, another, what, 1500 miles to the West coast from there, or maybe it's 2000 miles, I'm not sure, distance.

And, you know, just a few years later, they're starting to become power. So very interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you know, there was, whenever anybody wrote, you know, really till probably World War I, you know, most time, they're saying, well, the football out West that meant Midwest, you know, and otherwise they didn't sort of far, the far West or the Pacific coast or something like that. But West, you know, I mean, the big 10 was the Western Conference.

So, you know, that kind of gives you a sense. And even like those silly boys from Michigan, they still, you know, sing about being the champions of the West. Right.

Right. That's it. It's in their song, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So, wow. So I was here most of the time, but nevertheless.

Hey, it's all good. It's all good. Yeah.

So, hey, well, we appreciate you. You're bringing this as another great, a little bit of a football history. And we just love hearing these tidbits and reading about them each and every day.

And once you share with the listeners where they too can learn about your tidbits each and every day. Yeah. So, you know, there's two ways.

The best way is to just find footballarchaeology.com and subscribe. It's free to subscribe. There are paid versions.

Most of that helps me buy stuff that I show, you know, either books or postcards or whatever it may be. So help support Tim's habits. Yes.

Please support my habits. And then, you know, I also, at the current time, I'm still tweeting out that stuff every day. And it's, you know, that's become such a mess there that I'm not sure how much longer I'll do it, but we'll see.

You know, as long as I'm getting some reaction from people on Twitter, then I'll do it, I guess. But anyways, best way and to make sure you don't miss anything, join or subscribe, and then you'll get an email every day. Every time I tweet or post anything, you get an email about it and read them if you want, delete them if you want.

Yep. They're always good reading and they don't take very long to do. Usually 20 seconds to a minute probably.

And I usually find myself engrossed in whatever image you have included in it. And that's what I spend most of my time looking at because I know that's sort of where you usually center your ideas from finding an image. That's what we're talking about, these habits that Tim's buying.

He's buying, you know, postcards and books and old programs and finding photographs and just finding little hidden gems in there that I would overlook, and probably most people would, but Tim finds them and brings up some great football attributes, a football history to it. So, we really appreciate that. Well, it's fun.

It's fun, but yeah, join up if you're interested. Otherwise, keep listening to these as well. So.

Yeah. Tim's taken Where's Waldo to a whole new level, looking for the football history in this photograph. So, Tim, thanks a lot for joining us, and we'll talk to you again next week.

Hey, very good. Thank you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.