Football History

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Timothy P Brown takes his Football Archaeology to a whole new level as he examines an innovation of Amos Alonzo Stagg.

A wind sprint is a short, intense burst of running at maximum speed, typically lasting between 20 and 60 meters (around 65 to 200 feet). It's a training exercise used by athletes in various sports, particularly those that require short bursts of speed like track and field runners, football players, and basketball players.

The exact origin of wind sprints is difficult to pinpoint, as running drills have been used for centuries to improve athletic performance.

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The 1905 Chicago versus Michigan football game, played on Thanksgiving Day at Marshall Field in Chicago, holds a significant place in college football history. Dubbed the "First Greatest Game of the Century," this clash between two powerhouse programs captivated audiences and reshaped the landscape of the sport.

Two Unstoppable Teams Collide:

The stage was set for an epic showdown. The undefeated Chicago Maroons, led by the legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg, boasted a dominant defense and a well-oiled offensive system. Facing them were the "Point-a-Minute" Michigan Wolverines, coached by Fielding Yost and riding a 56-game unbeaten streak.

A Defensive Struggle:

The game did not disappoint. Both defenses rose to the occasion, showcasing their talent and intensity. The Maroons, known for their "Monsters of the Midway" defensive line, effectively shut down Michigan's vaunted running game. In turn, Michigan's defense, led by Walter Eckersall, held Chicago's offense to limited scoring opportunities.

A Late-Game Twist:

As the game entered the final minutes, it remained a scoreless tie. However, with just over two minutes remaining, Chicago capitalized on a crucial turnover. Quarterback Walter Eckersall orchestrated a last-minute drive, culminating in a 2-yard touchdown run by halfback Ned Snow.

A Shocking Outcome:

Chicago's late-game heroics secured a stunning 2-0 victory, ending Michigan's 56-game unbeaten streak and handing Yost his first defeat as Michigan's head coach. The result sent shockwaves through the college football world and marked the end of the "Point-a-Minute" era.

In the annals of college football history, few pranks have captured the public's imagination quite like the Great Rose Bowl Hoax of 1961. This audacious caper, orchestrated by a group of mischievous Caltech students, forever altered the face of the Rose Bowl and cemented its place as a legendary moment in sports history.

A Masterfully Planned Deception:
The brainchild of a group of Caltech undergraduates known as the "Fiendish Fourteen," the hoax was a meticulous operation executed with military precision. The students, led by the charismatic Dick Feynman, created hundreds of index cards bearing Caltech's name and strategically inserted them into the card stunts prepared by the University of Washington cheerleaders. Their goal? To infiltrate the Rose Bowl halftime show and replace the University of Washington's script with their own, declaring Caltech the victor against a fictitious opponent, MIT.

The Hoax Unfolds:
As planned, during the halftime show, the unsuspecting Washington cheerleaders began displaying Caltech's name instead of their own. Initially met with confusion, the crowd soon erupted in laughter and astonishment as the prank unfolded. The national television broadcast captured the bewildered faces of the Washington cheerleaders and the jubilant faces of the Caltech students, forever etching the moment in sports history.

Impact and Legacy:
The Great Rose Bowl Hoax was hailed as a stroke of genius, showcasing the ingenuity and humor of the Caltech students. It became a national sensation, sparking discussions about sportsmanship, tradition, and the power of a well-executed prank. Though some deemed it disrespectful, the hoax ultimately enhanced the allure of the Rose Bowl, adding a layer of intrigue and humor to its legacy.

More than just a prank:
While primarily remembered for its comedic value, the Great Rose Bowl Hoax also highlighted the intellectual prowess and resourcefulness of Caltech students. It served as a testament to their ability to think outside the box and execute complex plans with meticulous detail.

There is more n the story at the link below.

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Test your knowledge of the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers before they meet in Super Bowl LVIII.

These five questions span generations of these teams' each respective history.

The football fields on which modern games are played have undergone many transformations over the years. The field has been morphed almost as many times as the rules of the game have been changed.

Our guest, Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology, has admired and brought to our attention the work of a historian who has really captured the evolution of the American Football Field.

James Gilbert has put together an impressive research study on the evolution of the American football field over the years of rules revisions and modifications since 1876, complete with graphics. Enjoy this Substack post that he put out recently.

-Transcribed Conversation on Football Field Evolution with Timothy Brown and James Gilbert

Hello, my football friends. This is Darren Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And wow, we have a great episode coming on tonight.

We have Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology joining us, and we're going to be talking about the football field and some evolutionary changes that have happened to it over the years. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Darren, good to see you again, as always.

Thanks for having me. Never want to take it for granted that you're going to let me come onto your show. The invitation is always there, my friend, and I'm never going to take it for granted that you join us each week because it's quite a treat for myself and the listeners.

We get to learn about something new with football or be reminded of something maybe that's been long forgotten. And I think that's kind of typical of what we have tonight. You know, something that we see every single game that we watch, and it's so obvious that we probably take it for granted.

That's the football field itself. You know, without it, there's not much of a game going on. And you came across a friend of yours that you guys wrote a piece together a few years ago on the evolution of the football field, and it's really quite interesting.

And maybe you could talk about that a little bit tonight. Yeah, so this is, you know, the friend that you're mentioning is James Gilbert. And, you know, kind of longtime readers or somebody who's gone back through the archives might remember that back in November 2021, he and I co-authored a story about the University of North Carolina team from 1893.

They were the first Southern team to go to the North and play a game because they played Lehigh towards the end of the season in Manhattan. So, you know, he and I kind of worked together on that. And I forget, even now, how he and I first connected.

But, you know, he's in the kind of old football and just general sports, you know, arcane information, you know, like me. And I had, you know, like in my How Football Became Football, I documented at least the major sequences of how the field and markings changed. You know, goalpost locations, all that kind of stuff.

So, I mean, I took it to a certain level. And, but now, James recently launched a Substack newsletter or blog called James's Newsletter. And one of his first articles is an article about the evolution of college football field.

So basically, he's what he did, and he's been doing this for quite some time. He's been creating, you know, graphics, images of the football field and all the markings at each point in time. So, going back to 1876.

And then, you know, each time that it changed, either the dimensions or the markings, location, this or that on the field, he basically created all these graphics to show this information. And then what he's done now is mirror it in a Substack article. So he's got kind of the description of what was happening, you know, why it changed what was happening, the game led to the change, and then just the detailed description of the change.

And, like, when I did mine, I stopped at 1960, but he carried on to really to the present. So all the different changes that, you know, we sometimes don't think about the things like the size of the coach's box, the size of the team, team's box, how far off the sideline to get back, you know, they get back coach has to get back, you know, all that kind of stuff. You know, he just he's outlined, outlined, he put in detail all this information.

So this is one of these where, you know, normally we talk about my tidbits or an article, but this, I just wanted to make sure there's some attention brought to him and the effort he's gone through. Because it's just, you know, it's a great resource. And I don't know anybody who has documented how the field has, has changed over, you know, 147 years of football history, like he has, you know, so it's just a really neat effort.

He's done a couple of other things as well. Yeah, that's. I know exactly what you're talking about. I did a piece similar to you, where I covered the football field probably two or three years ago. Actually, it was an adaptation of an article I wrote back in 2003.

And I had my son, you know, throw some graphics up there. And but James's article, you know, I had the grid field in the early 1900s, but I had it going, you know, goal line to goal line, which it did. But I had forgotten about the aspect of the back in, and I believe it was 1903.

And we were just talking about it. I ran across an article the other day in newspapers.com, where they went from a 25-yard line to a 25-yard line with the grid. And then it was the normal stripes, you know, outside the 25s or to the goal line. Anyway, so just the detail, he's doing that.

And I can tell you from officiating, you know, the 27 years I officiated at the high school level, there was a field change every single year, you know, as you said, the coaches box changing by the yard or, you know, the teams were allowed to the 20s. And it was a 25s or boundary lines or a hash mark is now, you know, instead of three inches, it's four inches wide or whatever, you know, so I can imagine what the collegiate field has been doing over those years. It's probably every year; there's something small.

So, this is really a Galathian chore that James is doing, and it's much appreciated. We'll have a link here in the show notes, folks, to James's site and Pigskin dispatch.

So you can appreciate his work. You know, that's really going to take a lot of effort on his part. And that's appreciated.

Yeah, you know, the thing about it is like there's so, you know, there's a bunch of times when, um, yeah, there's, well, you and I go on a particular site that sometimes they post a pic, you know, these unidentified, you know, people can't figure out where's this, you know, who's this team in this picture? You know, there's a game in a stadium. Where is this? Who's playing? What's the period? So, a lot of times, you can tell certain things just based on the uniforms or the formations, and you have a pretty good sense of what's going on. But there are other times where, you know, if depending on the angle of the shot, you can see the field markings, and that tells you a tremendous amount.

In some cases, like 1903, it tells you exactly what year the game was played. You know, if you have the right kind of angle or the right kind of shot. So, so anyway, so just anybody who enjoys doing that kind of thing, or sometimes finds themselves looking back at an old photo and trying to figure out, well, when, when was this thing from, you know, his site will be really a great reference, you know because it just collects all that kind of information in one place.

You know, the other, the other thing that, another thing that he does that is interesting is, and he, some of his posts on it, on the, on his newsletter reflect this, where he's a, he's a North Carolina, you know, UNC graduate and fan. One of the things he's done is go back and try to figure out where every North Carolina football game was played. And I don't mean that at a very casual level; I mean out of detail.

And so, you know, like, you can go back, and there are all kinds of sites where there's a site called jhowell.net that I use all the time to find the old scores and where games were played and that kind of stuff. And so it might say the game was played in Milwaukee or New Haven or wherever it was, but it doesn't necessarily tell you the exit or the field. Well, a lot of the old football, you know, especially going further back, you know, in the 1800s, you know, maybe up till 1920, sometimes these games were just played in some local park, you know, and they slapped up temporary stands or the games were played in a minor league baseball park that got torn down 80 years ago.

And now there's, you know, an expressway is sitting on top of it or, you know, a shopping mall or whatever it is. There are all kinds of these past stadiums that just are no longer there. And in a bunch of cases, kind of people have lost track of where they are.

So he goes in, and I don't really understand all the resources that he uses, but I know he uses like these old, there's a bunch of online through like Library of Congress, there's these online insurance maps that used to document, you know, the streets and major cities and all that kind of stuff and which buildings were where. And so I think he uses those kinds of things and all kinds of stuff from, you know, the newspapers telling you, well, it's at the intersection of 42nd and Western or wherever. And so then he finds where this game or where this field was and then plots the field atop, you know, what it looks like today, like in Google Maps.

So it's just really kind of fun. And then he's created some databases that, you know, dig into other information. You know, it's very UNC-specific.

So, I don't necessarily care about UNC, but I really appreciate his digging into it. It's just, you know, just getting the details of a particular topic. But just think about all the fields that it covers, you know, everybody that UNC traveled to play over the years, where their stadium is, you know, you're going to know where Duke played their games when they were, you know, Trinity College or whatever, you know, at the time. So that's some really interesting stuff.

I'll have to add that to my bookmarks and check that out because, you know, you have like the uniform sites, you know, the gridiron uniform database, and you have the helmets, you know, sites that you can go to and see where helmets are from here. Now that having a resource to look at fields of an era and where football stadiums were, you know, that's pretty cool too. So that's why I'm sure a lot of people will be interested in having that information too.

So good job, James. Yeah, no, it's just kind of fun stuff. And, you know, just the, you know, again, as I said, I don't know the method that he uses to get there, but, unfortunately, he couldn't join us tonight.

Otherwise, you know, he wouldn't would have done so. But so anyway, it's just interesting stuff. And, you know, if you're enough of a geek, like you and I are, you know, you can really, you just, you know, it's like you see somebody who's got an interest in this sport or this aspect of the sport, and they dig into it, or they collect, you know, certain things.

It's just one of those things. There's nothing I had thought of, but I just have a really deep devotion to the particular aspect of the game. Yeah. Well, let's use a little bit of James's information.

Okay. Now, you just recently saw this and appreciated it. What's something that jumped out at you that either you didn't realize, or maybe you forgot, and it brought a different light on what James did in his fieldwork?

Yeah. You know, I think the, I don't know that for me it's, it's any one thing. I know he just did it, just did an article.

I think maybe it was today or the other day where, you know, he's pointing out that North Carolina is going to play a game in Charlotte. You know, I think they're playing at the Panther stadium. And so he's, the articles about, Hey, they played, you know, it's the eighth most frequent city that they played, you know, but for them, it's kind of like, you know, they played, they played at a lot of intermediate cities, you know? So, I mean, teams used to do that all the time.

I've got an article that's my Saturday tidbit is about this, where, you know, teams traveling, you know, we've got this big thing about the West coast athletes are going to be traveling to get to the Big 10 schools and all that kind of stuff, you know, with the conference modifications. But back in the day, when people traveled by train, they spent a lot of time on the train, too. And so a lot of times, they find these cities halfway between one another, and both teams would meet there and be a bigger city, especially if they were kind of rural schools.

So they played in all kinds of locations, you know? And so, but in North Carolina in particular, it just seems like they played a lot. They played in a lot of places, you know, a lot of different intermediate towns. And maybe it's just the geography of, you know, where they were in the transportation network at the time. But yeah, it's just kind of interesting, all the different places that they played.

Oh, very cool. All right. Well, why don't you go ahead and if you have James's information, if you want to call it out now, so people can do it.

But again, you know, if you're driving or something, you can go to the show notes and get the link there. But Tim, go ahead and let us know where we can find James. Yeah.

As I said, he's on Substack, which is just a platform. You can find him at jameslegilbert.substack.com. And I checked beforehand, just Googled James Lee Gilbert Substack. And, you know, it's one of the first things that comes up.

Then you'll have the link, you know, the actual link in the show notes. But James Lee Gilbert, Substack, should get you there. All right.

And folks, the graphics are really splendid. You're going to be really pleased, I think, when you see these graphics, especially of the football field evolution that we started talking about. I got to go and check out all these coordinates of where the fields were. I have to go. I appreciate that here when we get done.

So I can't wait to do that. You just added another thing to my to-do list tonight. So, thanks, James.

So far, he doesn't have a lot of those on this site. But you know, he's done a bunch of them in the past. So, I hope you know that he recycles them and republishes them on Substack.

Well, Tim, wow, that is great stuff. Thanks for bringing this to our attention so we can appreciate his work and your work.

Why don't you tell us how folks can get your daily news? Yep, just go to footballarchaeology.com, and you can subscribe. You'll get an email every night at seven o'clock Eastern with today's article. Otherwise, you can follow me on Twitter, Threads, or the Substack app. All right, Timothy P. Brown, footballarchaeology.com. We thank you once again for joining us, and we will talk to you again next week.

Very good. Thanks.

-Frequently Asked Questions About an American Football Field:

-How long is a football field? A football field from goal line to goal line is 100 yards long with two ten yard deep end zones. Want to know more about the evolution of the playing field, you are in the right place as we covered it here:Field Size Evolution.

-How wide is a football field? Most levels of American football play on a field that is 53.3 yards wide.

-What are the hash marks for? The hash marks are used for a few different things during a game, but most importantly they are the inbounds spot for the ball to rest fo the next play adjacent to where it became dead on the previous play outside of the hash marks or out of bounds. Here is a great piece explaining the has marks and their history and evolution: The Fumble Fiasco Out-of-Bounds Oddities in Early Football.

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Ever wondered why quarterbacks wear the number 12 and running backs rock the digit 28? Today's episode dives into the fascinating origin story of American football jersey numbers. We'll travel back in time, uncovering the surprising reasons these numbers were first stitched onto jerseys, and how they evolved into the iconic system we know today. Get ready for a journey through gridiron history, filled with unexpected twists, forgotten rules, and the stories of the legendary players who cemented the tradition of numbered jerseys in the game we love. So, buckle up, grab your favorite jersey (with its number!), and join us as we unveil the fascinating tale behind football jersey numbers!

The early beginnings and origins of the uniform numbers on players are explored in this Football Archaeology feature.

-Transcribed Conversation on Player Number Origins 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 Tuesday. You know what it is. It's footballarchaeology.com day. And Timothy P. Brown of footballarchaeology.com is here to talk about another interesting tidbit he's had out recently. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Darin, how are you? Good to see you. I hope I've got your number tonight.

Well, you got my number. I don't know what the origin of that number is, but I think we're going to find out some of the origins of some player numbers. You had a recent tidbit on that very subject.

And it's something, you know, again, we've talked about this before in other episodes that we've talked about. Some things that we just don't appreciate all the time. You know, what the player number does on the jersey, you know, it's it's identifies the player.

It's almost like their name, you know, for a lot of places. For example, when you see the number 12 out there on a New England jersey, you're probably thinking of Tom Brady. First thing, you know, just but we associate that number with the player.

But it goes back into some things that are beyond that even. And I'd sure like to know the origins of these player numbers. Yeah.

So so some of this this one, you know, I've written about the origins of player numbers a bunch of times in the past. And but I was trying. Well, I was I did an article recently about the the hidden ball trick that the Carlisle executed against Harvard in 1903.

And just in doing that research, reading an article, there was a comment made. And so just to kind of reset the stage on that, you know, what happened is that the. Carlisle.

So, you know, brown patches on the front of their jerseys that match the color of the ball. And so that they could, you know, have their back, who didn't get the ball or whomever else kind of hunched over, act like they're carrying the ball. And, you know, the defense would be confused.

So and so, then they did that. But then they also, in that game, you know, they basically executed this play where there was a. On the kickoff, they were receiving a second-half kickoff, but anyway, they're receiving the kickoff. The Carlisle players go back to form a wedge, and the guy who gets the ball or, you know, who caught the ball.

You know, he kind of gathers the wedge in that web and stuffs the ball in the back under the shirt in the back of one of his teammates who had this elastic band at the bottom of his jersey. So the ball would stay there, you know, under the shirt. And so then they then they boom, they all scatter in different directions.

And this guy who's a was a guard or a tackle who doesn't look like a guy who you would give the ball to starts running upfield, acting like he's going to block, you know, for one of his teammates. And so because he's acting like he's blocking, all the Harvard guys are avoiding him. And he just takes off, runs down the field, and scores a touchdown.

So, you know, that's kind of everybody, you know, I'd been aware of that story and all that kind of thing. And he probably looked like Quasimodo running down the field, too. That's right.

The guy had no idea what to do. But there was a comment made in one of the articles about the game where the guy said, you know, the reporter said it would be great if all the players had numbers; we would have known who this guy was as he was running down the field. And so I thought, OK, I'd never come across that before.

And this is a 1903 game. So it's just got me to go back one more time to look at, OK, when, when did, as I had previously come across Amos Alonzo Stagg calling for numbers in 1901. So, two years before this Harvard-Carlisle game, I just figured, OK, I'll go again.

Can I find anybody else mentioning player numbers? And so then I ended up finding a 1904 reference. And I'm sorry, an 1894 reference from the Harvard-Yale game where some guy along the sidelines must have been some influential alum who said that you know, the players should be numbered. His comment was that the average observer finds as many differences in individuals as in a flock of blackbirds.

So, the first time I heard that reference. But, you know, but the point was that you know, you couldn't tell players apart half the time back then because they didn't have numbers. You know, they, they all kind of, the nature of the game, everybody bunched together.

It's hard to tell who was who, you know, who got the ball, who advanced it, who made the tackle. So, you know, people then, you know, people like Stagg started promoting using numbers. But the challenge and the pushback that they got was people saying, you know, there were basically three main challenges.

One was that they said if you number the players, which they'd started to do in baseball, and I think at first, it actually occurred in rugby in New Zealand. But if you number the players, then that promotes individualism. Football is a team sport.

And so we don't want to promote individuals. So it's this idealistic argument. There was also, from a coaching standpoint, a lot of coaches said, I don't want to number my players because that makes it easier for scouts or for the opposing player to identify who was who.

And to quickly figure out, OK, this is Smith's best running back. You have to watch out for Smith, and you have to make sure you know where Smith is lining up in the playoffs. Now, that all seems kind of dumb. I mean, I get it, but especially from the opposing player's standpoint, no one was wearing numbers on the front of their jerseys; it was only on their backs.

So the opposing players couldn't see them when they lined up anyways, you know, so, so that, you know, but that was, you know, that was the main challenge. And then there was also, you know, people also would say, well, football is for these college players, it's a college sport, you know, there's none of this pro stuff yet or very little of it. And so it's not for the fans.

We don't want to change the game, we don't want to do things in the game to make fans happy; everything should be to make the players happy. Now, you know, as money increasingly got involved in things, and the fans were paying for the players, there are professional marketers of the gridiron just running off the podcast right now.

But, you know, that was a very common sentiment. So anyways, so then it. You know that, as far as I've been able to research, the earliest game in which players have war numbers, and it was a picture in the newspaper, and I published the picture a bunch of times, was a 1905 Iowa State at Drake game on Thanksgiving Day, and both teams were numbers and then, you know, over the next four or five years pit.

As far as I know, Pitt was the second team. They like to claim they were the first because they ignore the night, the Iowa State v. Drake game. Wichita State in 1908. Pitt was the first team in 1909. As far as I can tell, they were the first team to wear them for all games because a lot of times, the team would say I'll wear them, but only if the opponent wears the pit was like no, we're wearing them.

Part of their motivation was that they loved selling scorecards. So there's money involved, right?

Right. And then, in 1909, Michigan and Marquette formed, and then the same year, Cincinnati was too late for them, so those were, as far as I know, the whatever six or seven earliest examples of teams and/or games were. You know, players were numbers.

Yeah, you've done a great job of telling us that, and as you said, you've had a bunch of other fascinating posts on the numbers and some of their intricacies. We'll try to throw some of those links into the pigskin dispatch for this episode. So people can go back and enjoy some of that work with the alphanumerical and all the other crazy Roman numeral numbers. Yeah, four-digit numbers, and we'll put some of those up to so people can enjoy because there's a lot to do with the numbers on jerseys, and it's a lot of fun, so we appreciate that you're doing that and doing the research on it.

You do research on some aspects of football, like every day. It's what you have: plucking things out of the air all over the place and taking us on a wild ride. Sometimes, you have themes like these numbers, but they usually spare my part. Where can people enjoy your tidbits each day? Just go to football archaeology calm.

You can subscribe there. If you subscribe, you'll get an email every night at seven o'clock Eastern with that, you know, that day's episode, and you know there are people who read them five minutes after I publish them, there are other people who, you know, I can just tell by, you know, certain patterns that I can see in the data. Some people like storm up, and they read them on the weekend, so at least you know you have them. If you get the email, you have them. Otherwise, you can follow me on Twitter, Threads, or the subject platform.

All right, Timothy Brown of footballarchaeology.com we thank you very much, sir, for joining us here and we will talk to you again next Tuesday. Very good. Thanks as always.

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

-Football Jersey Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

-Whose college football jersey was the first to be retured? Red Grange's Number 77 Ilinois Illini jersey was the first college uni to be shelved in 1925. There were a couple more about the same time and we chatted with a college football expert historian help divulge College Football and its First Retired Jerseys.

-Who are some of the most famous NFL players at each jersey number? From Red Grange's jersey number 77 to Tom Brady's iconic number 12, a slew of NFL players made their digits proud. Want to know more? You are in the right place as we covered all 100 jersey numbers and the best to wear each:About Football By Numbers.

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Ever seen a penalty flag thrown and wondered, "Wait, why'd they move the ball THAT far?" Well, friends, get ready to dive into the strange world of "half-the-distance" penalties in American football!

These penalties, often triggered by infractions inside a team's own territory, can result in some truly eye-opening yardage assessments. Today, we'll be tackling some of the longest half-the-distance penalties in NFL history. We'll be dissecting the plays, the penalties, and the impact they had on the game. Were they backbreakers for the offending team? Did they create crazy scoring opportunities for the defense?

So, buckle up, football fans! Let's get ready to analyze some of the most unusual and potentially game-changing penalties the NFL has ever seen!

Let's listen to some of the most extended half-the-distance penalties in Football History by Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on the Longest Half-Distance Penalties

Hello, my football friends; this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. We also have another great episode where we get to talk to Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com. Talk about one of his most recent tidbits. Some of those unique aspects of football history.

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Thank you, Darin. I Look forward to talking about the penalty situation in football.

Yeah, this is a very fascinating tidbit you had back in late May. It was titled football's longest half the distance penalty. Now we're we're sitting there, you know, in our modern times, we think of a half a distance penalty.

You know, somebody gets penalized and gets the penalty, gets walked back towards their own goal line. And usually, maybe they're at the nine-yard line, and it's, you know, a holding call, and they got to walk back to the four and a half or whatever. That's what we're doing.

But you're talking about something entirely different here as far as yardage. It's not a four-and-a-half-yard walk-off. These are some of the massive jaunts for the teams to travel.

So please do tell. You know, I mean, so early football didn't necessarily have distance penalties as we think of them today. Typically, the penalty for the fouls that were called was the loss of the ball.

You know, it was a turnover. But then they, you know, kind of recognized those were too severe. So then they started, you know, especially after the field got marked with yard lines, and they started doing distance penalties.

And so in 1889, there were they created that was the first half the distance penalties, and that was for, you know, intentionally tackling below the knees because you couldn't tackle below the knees, then budding, tripping and throttling, which was choking. And so that penalty was 25 yards or half the distance. And then, you know, later on, they started doing some things where it was.

Like in 1908, they kind of bundled all the unsportsmanship penalties together, and they made it if you committed an unsportsmanlike penalty, then you were disqualified and your team was penalized half the distance. And that that stayed in place till like 1947. And then then they limited the half distance to to 15 yards.

Right. So you couldn't be more than it was, whichever was 15 yards or half the distance, but Max was 15 yards. And so that's, you know, like you said in the open, it was, we think of a half a distance, half the distance penalty is applying when you're inside your own 30.

Right. If you're at the 45, either either 45, it doesn't matter. It's just whatever the normal penalty is.

And, you know, we cap them at 15 yards nowadays, but 25-yard penalties used to be pretty common. So, you know, before we kept them, there was the opportunity in a half-the-distance world for some really long penalties. And now, I mean.

I'm kind of limited by the way I can search in these newspaper databases, so I'm searching for keywords and strings of words. So I can't say that I found the longest. It's what I found that was the longest that I found, but it's still pretty long.

So the longest one that I came across was in a 1901 game Northwestern against Minnesota. Northwestern was in the red zone. They were on Minnesota's eight yard line.

A Northwestern player jumped off the side and slugged a Minnesota player. So they called the penalty. So they were on the eight.

This was in the days of the 110-yard field. So that meant that you know, 110 minus eight was 104 or no, I'm sorry, 102. And so they walked off a 51-yard penalty against Northwestern, which took the ball, as it turned out, it took the ball all the way back to Northwestern's 51-yard line.

Right. And then, in 1906, I found Vanderbilt got nailed for a 32-yard penalty in the same year Penn State got hit with a 30-yard penalty. And then, at that point, I stopped looking.

You know, I mean, I found a couple of instances, and then, in 1912, they reduced the length of the field to 100 yards. So there's no way you were going to have a 50 another 51 yard penalty. So anyway, it's possible that there was a 52, 53, or 54-yard penalty at some point out there.

I didn't find it. But if somebody else wants to go look at it and let me know if you find it. But, you know, it's still it's just kind of, you know, really fun.

And that that these existed. And then, but even after the field was reduced, you know, the thirty-three Pittsburgh Pirates running back was heading into the head, headed towards the end zone. Stiff arms the opponent but stiff arms him in the face.

And he gets called for an unsportsmanlike penalty at the two-yard line. So, there is a forty-nine-yard penalty as they walk off half the distance. Right.

So that's likely the longest or at least ties for the longest. So in the hundred yard NFL officials have been against the Steelers even before they were the Steelers back in the Pirates days in the first year. Yeah.

Thirty-three. I'm not going to play your game there with the officials who do not understand your Steelers. But the other thing that's just kind of funny is, OK, so now this half-the-distance thing is capped, you know, at 15 yards.

But you mentioned your favorite Steelers and now I grew up a Packer fan, but I've lived in Detroit long enough that there is a certain amount of lioness that has become part of my body. So I can appreciate, given the Lions history, that in 2015, a cornerback to the Lions incurred a 66 yard pass interference penalty. Because, you know, in the NFL, pass interference is a spot foul, right? Right.

So 66 yards downfield, he committed a little P.I. And so it was the Packers, which was OK by my standards. So, you know, 66 yards on a penalty. Yeah, those are astounding facts.

I did an article last year. I did some of the NFL's longest fourth and yardage to go penalties. It was it was fascinating.

I mean, we had a fourth and twenty nine that was converted by Ray Rice in 2012. The Oakland Raiders had a third and forty eight against Kansas City that I think they end up getting first down back in 2013. But in 1971, the Patriots had fourth and sixty three against the Cowboys.

And the biggest one, though, was my Steelers had fourth and seventy four against the Raiders in 1970. And they punted and the punt only traveled fifty five yards. So they were still 20 yards behind the sticks after the fun.

There were no half-the-distance penalties. I was going through that earlier to see if I could find something in there that helps your story, but that's just part of the thing. Like before, like in college football, you really don't have much in the way of there are no consistent statistics until thirty-six or thirty-eight, which it is.

But even then, it was just a subset of all the major colleges. So so, you know, the things so looking for like the longest half the distance penalty, there's no source. You know, there's no database that has that.

You know, you can only search for it using like newspaper databases and, you know, those kinds of things. But the other thing that it brings up and I wanted to ask you about it as a former official. Is, you know, one of the one of the problems football had over the years was.

The lengthier the penalty, the more reluctant officials often were to call the penalty. Because, you know, they you know, they didn't want to be the ones deciding the game. I mean, they would if need be.

But on things like, you know, a lot of the early clipping calls, they weren't, and they didn't want to call clipping. You know, it's kind of just the nature of the game. People accepted it.

So things like that, you know, that. So, that was one of the reasons they got rid of those 25-yard penalties. You know, it just was too much of they felt like it put too much power in the hands of an official who often were overworked back then, especially, you know, they you had three or four men, four-man crews trying to figure out what, you know, watching everybody on the field.

You know, it just wasn't possible. Yeah, I think it's a lot of human nature. I mean, most people, and I will put most before that, don't want to inflict the ultimate sentence upon their fellow man.

So, I mean, it's just human nature. You don't want to do it. I mean, one of the things I guess we could compare in modern times is somebody getting a little loose with their arms against another player.

It's taking a swing at them. And, you know, in high school football, even a swing and a miss is an automatic ejection. And most states have it where you will not play the next game after if you're ejected in a game, you're disqualified not only for that game but for the following game.

So you're really punishing him. So so that goes to the back of officials minds. I mean, it's got to be something very blatant to to get ejected from a game for the most part, especially when you know you're going to get dequeued for the following contest.

But I think that has some merit to what you're saying. A 25-yard penalty. That's that's pretty substantial.

You know, that's a quarter of the field. And could definitely change a game in a heartbeat. Well, you know, but if you think about, you know, back to the origins of penalties, penalties were turnovers or fouls, you know, were turnovers.

The penalty was the loss of the ball. So, you know, forward passes until 1906 forward passes the turnover, you know, on sportsmanship on sportsmen like, you know, conduct until 1889 was a turnover. So, you know, and then dequeues were, you know, much more common.

I mean, people should get up in arms about targeting disqualifications now. But, you know, hey, to me, if, you know, if you if you're going to endanger, you know, if you're going to endanger another player, then that's not good. And I personally love what college football does with the targeting.

And, you know, it's called on the field, and they really take a great look at it to make sure that the official on the field was calling it on the spot to get it right, says it is going to be an impactful thing. It might be the star linebacker getting ejected or staying in the game. You know, it's so many times you see that happen in the last couple of years since they've been doing that and enforcing it and even getting rid of the penalty.

Sometimes I think it's a great thing for football. And I'm glad that they do that. Yeah.

And I mean, people go, and people make a lot of arguments against it. And, you know, hey, you know, when I played, I was aggressive with Bob about, you know, whatever, go ahead and tell your story. But it's like.

You know, you just have to learn not to hit that way in that situation. You know, they all know where the sideline is. They all know, you know, things like when the ball's coming and you can't hit the pass receiver until he gets a ball, all those things.

They're aware. And so, to me, I don't buy the argument that, you know, it can't be controlled. Right.

Go lower. Go higher. Don't hit the guy in the head.

A good legal tackle has just as much impact, I think, as somebody crushing somebody in the head or whatever. And the guy's probably not going to be hurt, you know, by a good tackle on the midsection. You know, just a good wrap-up.

So, yeah, I think that goes a lot to teach the teaching technique of modern coaches. You know, just teach them to hit and wrap up and take a guy down instead of trying to take him down with a blow. Yeah.

You don't need to decapitate. Right. Right.

Well, Tim, great stuff. Great discussion. You know, I know we got a little bit off-topic with the half-distance penalties, but it brings up so many great elements of football, of the game of yesteryear and today.

And you do that each and every day with some of these tidbits, just like this one, where you bring up something that's maybe not the mainstream talk of football history or even modern-day football, but you bring it into a new light and a story of its own. And we'd love for you to share with the listeners how they, too, can enjoy these on a daily basis. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, I just try to find things that I think are interesting every day and that shed light on past practices and hopefully illuminate something about the current game, at least something that we can compare ourselves to. And so, you know, if you're interested in following, just go to footballarchaeology.com and subscribe.

You'll get an email every day in your inbox at 7 o'clock Eastern that has that story. And otherwise, you can follow me on Twitter at football archaeology. Either way, if you're interested, consume it however it is that makes you happy.

Well, Tim, we thank you for once again joining us here. And I'm going to throw this out here, Tim, and hopefully you won't get angry with me. But these are such interesting things.

And I'm sure there are a lot of listeners who may have questions about where something started in football. And maybe we could get them in contact with you. And maybe on a future show, we could answer some of those questions.

So either you go on to Tim's website, footballarchaeology.com, or you can email me at pigskin-dispatch at gmail.com. And send in your questions about where something started. And maybe Tim has it in one of his multiple books or on one of his tidbits. And if not, he loves to put on that research hat and hit the library hard and the newspaper archives.

And we'll try to find something for you. So, Tim, thanks again. And we will talk to you again next week.

Very good. Darin, thank you very much, as always.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

---

Have you ever wondered how American football evolved from its rugby roots into the juggernaut sport it is today? The answer might surprise you, and it involves a surprising organization – the YMCA.

Today, we're thrilled to welcome Timothy P. Brown, the mastermind behind the fascinating website footballarchaeology.com. Mr. Brown has dedicated his research to uncovering the forgotten stories and hidden origins of the game we love.

In this special post, we'll delve into the often-overlooked role the YMCA played in shaping American football. Through a conversation with Mr. Brown, we'll explore how this organization fostered the development of the sport, nurtured its early pioneers, and ultimately helped lay the groundwork for the gridiron giants we witness today.

So, buckle up and get ready to embark on a journey through the fascinating history of American football, where we'll unearth the surprising influence of the YMCA!

Here is the full transcript of the conversation with Timothy Brown on the YMCA's influence on football

Darin Hayes
Welcome again to the pig pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to Tuesday football, archeology .com day. Timothy P. Brown, the host of that website, is here to visit again, as he does every Tuesday. Tim, welcome back to the pig pen.

Timothy Brown
Hey, thank you, Darin. I'm looking forward to talking about a song. Well, it's not; it's about a subject related to a song that we can't talk about and that we can't sing or play because of copyright restrictions.

Darin Hayes
But, audience, we can share with you that Tim is dressed like an Indian chief, and I am dressed like a construction worker as we are talking about the subject, but we're just kidding. But of course, we are talking about the great organization of the YMCA. We have probably heard of that before or attended or taken some swimming classes like I did; I have one not too far from me. And we have some great ties in football history with the YMCA history that Tim had in a recent tidbit. So Tim, why don't you take it away and share this great story with us?

Timothy Brown
Yeah, so, you know, this is one of these. One of the things that fascinates me about football is that it is a different type of organization that supported and helped football grow, especially in the early years. And so we tend to think of football as this thing that's run through schools, and then obviously, it became professionalized. And so the NFL and AFL and AFC and, you know, various semi-pro teams, whatever they're, you know, but there were, you know, back in the day, there were organizations like the American Legion after World War One, there were all kinds of industrial leagues, some of which are where the basis of the NFL, right. So, different kinds of organizations have influenced football's growth and one that is vastly underestimated, I think, by many is the YMCA. And so it came about in a couple of different ways. One is that, back in, you know, one of the arguments for playing football and justification for football was the Muscular Christianity Movement that came out of England. And so it's just kind of this, this belief in the mind and the body and the spirit and that, you know, football was a way to meld, you know, that all three of them came together in football and provided good training for young men who needed to be hardy, you know, da da da. And so, that philosophy matched very well with the YMCA, which also had, I believe, come out of England, but in any event, the YMCA had a school that is now Springfield College in Massachusetts, that was was a school to train people to go out into the world and be YMCA directors. So I mean, it was kind of like a seminary, or you can think about it however you want. But you know, this is when there weren't physical education majors anywhere, and if you wanted to become somebody who would go out and teach, you know, physical fitness. You know, you also bought into some of the, you know, the religious side of it, then the YMCA training school was the place to be. And so, you know, right after he graduated from, from Yale in 1890, Amos Alonzo Stagg shows up, but, you know, he becomes the football coach and, well, basketball wasn't invented yet, but he was a football coach and baseball coach at YMCA training school. Now, in those days, he also played for them. So he was, you know, a player-coach. And, you know, they played typically a bit of a, you know, and, you know, they kept playing, you know, for years, they're still playing today in Springfield, but, you know, they would like a lot of schools in the Northeast States to step up and play, you know, Harvard and Yale here and there. Most of them played, you know, a smaller college schedule, but they played; they were very competitive and had a lot of good players. And one of the guys on Stagg's teams, the two years that he coached there before he went to UChicago, one of the guys was John Naismith, who ended up inventing basketball while at Springfield. And another guy who's a little bit later was William Morgan, who invented volleyball. So, these schools were pretty influential and certainly created those two sports. And, and then, you know, playing football. And so, but, you know, their impact came from World War One. And the YMCA and its role is kind of underappreciated, you know, in training camp, any American training camp around the world, and then even those, like rest camps and stuff, you know, once and once they're in Belgium and France, and in England, had a YMCA hut. And so these were typically fairly simple structures. But, you know, they, they had stationery for the guys to write home, they had, you know, a library, just they taught classes, especially, you know, there was a lot of, you know, they weren't GIs yet, but they were, you know, the doughboys, a lot of them couldn't speak English, so they teach English classes. But another big emphasis was that they supplied, you know, what would be the equivalent now of $80 million worth of athletic equipment to soldiers. Now that was basketballs and tennis rackets, etc. But football was a big one. And so, if there were athletic events at a military camp in World War One, it was likely very much, you know, YMCA involvement in it. And so, you know, these are especially like the interregimental games rather than the all-star teams for a camp. So, you know, that was an opportunity, you know, this is a time when I think it was less than 5% of Americans went to college. And so they, you know, they might have played for some rinky-dink little high school team in the little farm town that they grew up in. This became an opportunity for them to experience, you know, well-coached, you know, and more sophisticated football. And so it was, you know, it really kind of democratized football, you know, the World War One camps. Because, I mean, the vast majority of guys of that age range, you know, served in some form or capacity or their brother did or, you know, so it, you know, really spurred interest in football. And, you know, there's many, you know, folks that had made the case that, you know, that military football in World War One was a key to spurring the development of the NFL, you know, because it just demonstrated that people would come and attend games played by these former collegians, these college all-stars that, you know, nobody had said that they would do that before, you know, the NFL before that, you know, the pro leagues before that were mostly like kind of steel town folks and guys who, yeah, some of them went to college, and some of them didn't. Still, it was, you know, more of a semi-pro field than what came in the 20s, you know, and then obviously really took off in the 50s and 60s. So anyways, it's just, you know, the YMCA is one of those organizations you don't think of as being influential in the development of football, but it was. And there was, you know, physical instruction for the Navy anyway. Was this guy named Walter Camp? So, I mean, they were connected, right?

Darin Hayes
Yeah, another interesting story comes out of that with Nay Smith and a connection to football innovation. And I wrote an article about three years ago about who was the first to wear a helmet was the question and nay, smith's name is thrown in there because he, he, I wouldn't say that he wore a helmet. He had a; it was described as his, uh, he was getting cauliflower ear from getting knocked around playing the line, you know, in 1891 game against Amherst is what I sort of narrowed down to going through some of the descriptions of it. I think that's a game on October 17th, 1891. His girlfriend at the time helped sew some flannel together and tie it around his ears so he wouldn't get boxed and be irritated with his ears. It was one of the first head coverings in football that was publicized. Uh, they were not like a rag tied around your head or something, you know, but something for protection on your head. So, it's just odd that, here, the inventor of basketball who gets credited, played at this small college and has had so many great sports sprout out of it and so many great sports stories that connect to football. I think that's just amazing. Yeah.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, he, well, he, I've used that image of Naismith with that headgear, I think, in one of my books, but you know, definitely in some of the writing. And I know I got that I got, you know, Naismith was Canadian. So I got that image from their equivalent of the National Archives; whatever, I can't think of the name right now. But yeah, it's a great image. He's playing center; he's snapping the ball with his hands. And, he's got that, the thing wrapped around his head. Yeah, I, you never know, you never know where stories will come from. And, and the, you know, what I enjoy is, you know, the links of one thing to another. Yeah, so that's fun.

Darin Hayes
And I think it's interesting, too, if you can; you made me think about it in this context. So here you have Amos Alonzo Stagg, who, I assume, graduated from Yale. I think he graduated from there. Yeah. So he graduates from Yale and gets his master's in a phys ed degree at YMCA school. Just today, we look at him like, Hey, what the hell was that? You know, you went to Yale, you know, and are going to get a phys ed degree, you know, but

Timothy Brown
Well, you know, he was. I think he was a divinity student at Yale, but I'm not positive.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, I think you're right.

Timothy Brown
But he was definitely, I mean, his whole upbringing, a very religious man. And, and so, yeah, it made sense. Right. And, and some of his, you know, the guy who became president at U Chicago, knew him at Yale because he'd been, you know, faculty there. And just, you know, so he knew the character of Stagg. And, you know, he's an excellent athlete, one of the best baseball pitchers of his time. And so, that's part of why he said, hey, I want you to come out here.

Darin Hayes
I'm just putting in today's context. If my kid graduates from Ivy League after paying that and says, hey, I'm going to go to community college to get a phys ed degree too, because that's what I want to do. You're like, what do you mean you'll do that? You know, let me choke you first. But yeah, great stuff. That is a very interesting story. And it has so many webs and tentacles coming off, and it's just awesome. And I'm sure, you know, that connects to a bunch of your other tidbits. And you have these tidbits to come out every day, about 7 pm. They're very enjoyable. And, you know, talk about some great parts of football history that aren't mainstream but are very interesting. Indeed, maybe if you could share how folks could get their hands on those every day, too, that would be some enjoyment for them.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, so, you know, my site is footballarchaeology.com. You just go out there and subscribe, and once you're subscribed, you'll get an email with that day's story every day. And then, you know, kind of read them at your leisure. Alternatively, I'm under the same name, Football Archaeology; I'm on Twitter threads and on the sub-stack application. So, however, it works for you, if you want to read it, that's how you get to me.

Darin Hayes
Well, that's very good, Tim. We appreciate you preserving that football history each and every day, coming on each week, and sharing with us. And, uh, we want to talk to you again next week, and we appreciate you.

Timothy Brown
Thank you. That's very good. I look forward to it.

---

Women playing football is not a new concept as we have seen time and time again through history. Heck we have even read and heard of some ladies that play on the men's teams.

Timothy P. Brown does an outstanding job of retelling the story of 1937 when some young ladies vied to play NCAA Football with the men.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on the 1937 Kicking Women

Hello, my football friends, this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to another Tuesday as FootballArcheology.com's Timothy P. Brown joins us each and every Tuesday to talk about one of his recent tidbits that he writes about football history past and shares it with us. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, thanks, Darin, for the chat. I hope the listeners get a kick out of this evening's topic.

Well, I don't know if the men will, but maybe the women will, because it's OK. Yeah, you have a great title that really grabs the reader's attention.

And I remember when this came out back a few months ago, the Kicking Women of 1937, that could, you know, grab attention in multiple different ways. But from a football aspect, it's really intriguing to think about women kicking football anytime, especially back in the 1930s. So why don't you share the story, please? Well, I mean, you know, now it's not entirely uncommon, right? You know, I mean, it's been, oh, whatever, past 15 years, something like that.

You know, there's been various women at the high school or college level doing some kicking and recently had a woman playing defensive end or outside linebacker and putting the putting a smack on the quarterback. So this one is kind of one of those stories where it's like, you know, it's one of these where I stumbled across it when I was reading something else. And I saw this story about George Washington University, which is based in Washington, D.C. They have had what would never be considered a storied football program.

For whatever reason, they could never get it together. They were not a very good team, but they played football from 1928 to 1941.

And they're trying to turn the program around. I mean, it's a fine university and everything. They want to be proud of their of everything that they do.

So they went out, and hired Gus Welsh, to be their new head coach in 1937. So Welsh was the quarterback at Carlisle when Jim Thorpe was playing. And then I think he was a little bit younger than Thorpe, but he continued playing there.

He ended up playing in the NFL for four or five years. Then he went on to be the head coach at Washington State and then somewhere in Virginia. Then he was the coach at Haskell, you know, which is one of the Indian schools in Kansas.

So he'd been around a little bit but ended up at George Washington University. And, you know, he's trying to get this program resurrected and get some attention because, you know, he at one point made a quote that it was like, you know, the only way we're going to get any attention is to play a halftime of the Redskins game. So, you know, so he's just trying to get some attention for the team.

And so, you know, in October of 37, the story starts floating around that that he's got a co-ed, so a woman who's attending George Washington who's going to kick for him, you know, kick extra points. And. You know, it just kept popping up in the paper.

She's going to she's going to kick in the upcoming game or this Saturday. And then it didn't happen. And, you know, it goes on a couple of two, three times.

And so. And there's even, you know, I found one photograph that was in the newspaper of him holding the ball. So, you know, Gus Welsh is holding the ball.

And this kicker was supposed to be a barefooted kicker. But there's this woman wearing a skirt and she's got shoes on, but she's still, you know, so publicity kind of picture. But it kind of just goes on and it's going to happen.

And the student body votes for it. They support this program or, you know, having a female kicker. And then they kind of at the last minute, the faculty says, no, go.

You know, they would not allow one of their women students to to participate in the football program. So the day that that hits the newspaper, there's a story right next to it that talks about Tuskegee Institute down in, you know, in the south where they're claiming they have a kicker as well, a woman kicker. And that the plan is that she's going to kick in the rivalry game on Thanksgiving Day against Alabama State.

So the difference, though, is that Tuskegee's article names the woman and it was Mabel Smith. And so as I dug into, OK, well, who's Mabel Smith? You know, what's your background? It turns out that Mabel Smith, at the time, was the American record holder in the long jump, which, you know, she had set she had set the record at the AAU meet in 1936, which was the qualifying meet for the 36 Olympics. And unfortunately for her, the women's long jump was not an event at the 36 Olympics.

It didn't come into like 48. So she would have been the U.S. rep had she had they had the long jump at the time. But they didn't.

So she but she held that record. I mean, it really it was an amazing jump. And she held that record into the 1960s.

And she said in 30, that would have that would have been the Berlin Olympics. Right. We're Hitler.

That's right. Jesse Owens. Yeah.

OK. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

So. Yeah. And in fact, I think she had a teammate at Tuskegee who made the team because she ran in the sprints or something like that.

But in the event, so, you know, obviously a premier athlete. So, you know, it's certainly believable that she could be an effective kicker. And then, you know, as it turned out.

On game day, she was on the field, but she was only there because they were recognizing that year Tuskegee had won the AAU championship, which was not just colleges; it was, you know, any club team, anybody at the time. They were the national champions for women's track and field. And so she was on the field to be recognized for that.

And Tuskegee won the game 14 to nothing. So they did kick two extra points, but it was there, I think, half-baffled back, you know, but one of the male players who kicked the extra points. But the other thing about Mabel is that she, you know, graduated from Tuskegee.

And then I forget where she did her master's, but she got a master's degree. Then she ended up getting a doctorate at Cal Berkeley. And then, you know, became a faculty member at Texas Southern and taught there for, you know, basically spent her career teaching, teaching at Texas Southern and kind of an education department sort of arena.

But anyway, so just an amazing, amazing person. And, you know, life, life history is just kind of cool. Even though she didn't get to kick in the game, you know, she had a pretty amazing story.

Yeah, boy, the brains and the athleticism. That's pretty amazing to be a world-class athlete at the time in multiple sports, you know, get attention. And you named four different universities.

There was a tour of the whole United States where she went and taught. So that's pretty incredible. And I'll start off with that sort of publicity stunt that the coach was doing at George Washington.

So interesting that that's kind of ironic that you found those in the same newspaper side by side of a woman kicker. So very, very. Yeah.

I mean, I suspect what happened is, you know, I don't know if Tuskegee picked up on the George Washington thing or if they were just kind of going to do it anyway. But I'm sure the editor found that second story and said, OK, let's put these two together. I was fortunate enough to find the one.

And that led me to the second one because otherwise, it was kind of like, oh, you know, it's a much better story with the Tuskegee side of it. Right. So definitely.

Well, Tim, you have some interesting items like this each and every day on some great football past stories and, you know, just interesting little tidbits that you call them appropriately. And maybe you could share with the listeners where they too can join in on the fun and read these tidbits each day. Sure.

So just go to www.footballarchaeology.com. That's a Substack application and our newsletter blog site. And so if you do that, you can subscribe, and you'll get an email at seven o'clock Eastern every night, and you'll get the story delivered to you that way. Then read it at your leisure.

You can also follow me on threads or Twitter, where I go into the football archaeology name. And then, or if you have the Substack app, you'll get it in your feed that way as well. Well, lots of different ways.

Whatever works for you. Yeah, that's a great variety. And, you know, no excuse not to be able to get it, whether you're on the go or at home or want to catch it a couple of days later or a week later or a year later.

I find myself going back through some of the ones I read a year ago. And they're still interesting. They're evergreen, with their history and fascinating stuff.

And you do a great job. So I appreciate it. Well, I sometimes find myself going, oh, boy, I don't remember writing that one because I've got 800 of them out there now.

So something like that. So, yeah, I forget that I've even written on some of the topics. Yeah, it's a it's great, phenomenal pieces that you write there.

And they're very interesting. So we appreciate you coming on here each Tuesday and talking about one of them with us and sharing your knowledge and some football history. And we would like to talk to you again next Tuesday.

Very good. Thanks, Darin. Look forward to chatting.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

-Transcribed Conversation on Football Dirty Play with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends; this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to another Tuesday. FootballArcheology.com's Timothy P. Brown is joining us once again. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Thanks for having me once again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And we will talk to you again next Tuesday.

Always appreciate the opportunity to talk football. Thanks there.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.