Timothy P Brown

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Full Transcript of the Episode on Helmets Without Chinstraps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Darin Hayes:
I realize I'm still a

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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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.

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One item that almost all in attendance look at when attending a football game is the stadium scoreboard. They come in different shapes and sizes and can be as simple or as high-tech as a supercomputer, but they all provide basic game information.

One thing they all do is keep the score of the contest but it is interesting to know the story of the verbiage on these information centers.

The story of how the word "Visitors" and or "guests" first appeared on scoreboards from FootballArchaeology.com.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on Opponents Visitor Scoreboard

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 where we get to welcome in our guest, Timothy Brown of FootballArcheology.com. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin, thank you. Always good to be here chatting with you about old football stuff.

Yes, old football stuff, and we're definitely going to be talking about that today. And since you are a guest here on Pigskin Dispatch, I guess you're my visitor, not my opponent. So I think that'll maybe lead to some of the topics you're going to talk about today from one of your recent tidbits.

Yeah, so that is a beautiful segue. Not very imaginative. Yes, yes.

Yeah, so I just think this one is really fun. I mean, part of what I like about football is the evolution of words and terminology. And my most recent book was basically about that topic.

And so this is one, it got started with, I had come across a story probably three or four years ago about Harvard. There was a professor at Harvard who, when they built Harvard Stadium and they put up the scoreboard, it said Harvard and then opponent. And he just didn't like the term opponent.

He just felt like these are our guests. And so he wanted them to change the terminology. And he was like, by then, he was a Dean.

So kind of what he said happened. And so they changed the terminology to guest or visitor. So even now, I went out and searched a bunch of different, scoreboard manufacturers, and there, unless it's a digital one where they can put in whatever name of the visiting team is, the typical scoreboard will be like home and away, or it's the home team's name and then visitor or guest.

And so opponent just isn't there anymore. So this guy, and this is back in 1905 or something like that, that he finally got the thing changed, but he is this one guy's opinion. And basically it's kind of proliferated throughout football and probably all kinds of other.

I think all sports because I could, I can remember when I was a kid in grade school, we had an old scoreboard, the old dial clock type, our scoreboard and had, but it had, I'm pretty sure it had a home, and it had guests on it. I guess I never really thought about it, you know, cause now today you always see, you know, visitors or away is probably the common thing, but, but those are, those are actually kind of polite and welcoming things, I guess, I guess the opponents or, you know, the, you know, the idiots from across town or whatever else you're going to put on there. And those were the days when, oftentimes after the game, the two teams would sit down and have dinner together. You know, so, you know, they were supposed to be treated as guests. And so, yeah, it's just, you know, it was kind of a different time.

And especially like in the Ivies, it was more of a gentleman's sort of thing than perhaps even it is there today, but yeah. So, you know, it takes us back to a bygone era. Right.

But the other thing about that then was, you know, so I'd had this story sitting in my head for four years, and then it was like, well, this isn't enough to do a tidbit. I mean, you know, I've got connected to something else. And so then I came across the story of Lehigh and Lafayette, who are, you know, bitter rivals.

And in the 1959 game, then, it was at Lehigh. Both teams were four and four coming in though Lehigh was favored. However, as the game progressed, Lehigh did not treat Lafayette as a guest.

They treated them as something beneath an opponent. And, you know, because Lehigh was unexpectedly losing them, some of their fans, you know, apparently got ahold of pears and apples and had them in their pockets or whatever. They're out there in a very cold, you know, last game of the season, cold weather.

And they started flinging them up into the Lafayette stands. Later on, lettuce and cabbages and apparently a few bottles went Lafayette's way as well. And as that was happening, Lehigh was falling further and further behind on the field.

And so then the last thing was that you know, Lehigh ends up, or Lafayette wins the game 28 to six, and they end up, the Lehigh fans went out onto the field to protect the goalposts so that Lafayette could not tear them down. Because, you know, back then, fans toured on the goalposts all the time, you know, they were wooden. They weren't as secured into the ground as they are now.

Plus, you know, enough teams hadn't been sued yet for people being injured by falling goalposts. So the home team didn't protect them as well as they do nowadays. But anyway, you know, so that was kind of a riot, and a bunch of fights ensued.

And, you know, so there was a time where there were tensions between the Lehigh and Lafayette fans. But one of the cool things about that story then was that a day or two after I published it, I got an email from a guy who played in the game. And so he and I are, you know, we'll be connecting and chatting in the near term, but he sent me some information.

And I did another. One of the tidbits of late was about the era of using rubber footballs. There was talk about rubber footballs replacing the leather. And so this guy, Mike, became a Big East official.

And so, you know, he ended up part of the story that I tell. And that is one of the stories that he sent me, you know, in a document that he had produced. So anyway, we're going to get together and chat a little bit.

But it's one of the fun things about reading these things is, you know, I, oftentimes I hear from the children or the grandchildren of people, you know, that I write about, but in this case, it's, you know, somebody who's out there playing on the field that day, so, which is pretty cool. Yeah.

Very cool. Now, isn't Lehigh and Lafayette the longest? They played the most times of any two opponents in college football history. Is that my thinking? Right. Okay.

Yeah. They played most often back in the 1890s; they played twice a year. So that's part of why they went ahead of everybody else.

But, otherwise, I think they've, I think they've played every, every year, but you know, perhaps there was a gap somewhere. Yeah. Yeah.

Very interesting. Great story. And it's great that you're getting some great feedback from folks like that, too, especially somebody who played in the game.

That's, that's really cool. So yeah, very, very nicely done. Well-researched, just like everything that you do is, and you have such interesting things that come out each and every night in your tidbits, Tim.

And, you know, folks, I'm sure, well, we know they appreciate you're, you're getting some responses back, and maybe if you could share with the listeners here, how they too can partake in reading some of your tidbits, that'd be a great thing. Yeah. So, you know, the best thing or the easiest thing is to just go to my site, footballarchaeology.com, and just subscribe.

And then, every night, you'll get an email at seven Eastern, and it shows up in your inbox. And then, you know, you know, I have some people clearly, you know, the best majority of people read it that night, or at least they open it that night, decide if they want to read it or not. But, you know, there are others, they let them pile up to the weekend and then, you know, you know, they'll go through them because I can just, you know, the number of hits that I get or email opens, you know, I can tell, you know, that the system tracks that for me.

So anyway, that's the best thing. I post on threads now, I post on the Substack app, and I'm still posting on Twitter. It has now been named X, so we'll see how long that lasts.

All right, Tim. Thank you very much, and we will talk to you again next Tuesday.

Very good. Thank you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

A walk into any American football stadium reveals a familiar sight: towering scoreboards displaying team names, scores, and the enigmatic word "VISITORS" beside one of them. But have you ever wondered how this seemingly mundane term became an ingrained part of the gridiron lexicon? Surprisingly, its origins hold a fascinating window into the evolution of American football and the shifting dynamics of competition.

Here the story is told best Visitors on the Scoreboard Football Archaeology Tidbit.

-Frequently Asked Questions About Football Field Equipment

-Who invented the scoreboard? A man named Arthur Irwin came up with the concept of the modern scoreboard for baseball and then created a modified version for other sports like football. Learn more about Irwin and his design in this conversation Arthur Irwin's Scoreboard.

-How was time kept in a football game before the scoreboard clocks existed? Officials would use hand held and later wristwatches to time the events. Check out this article on the Evolution of the game clock or Timing of Games As the Sun Sets

---

Every once in a while, a coach will come up with a surprise formation in a game that will make us all pay attention and, many times, scratch our heads. The VOlunteers at Tennessee once had a pre-snap line up that befuddled opponents.

In this episode, we talk with Football Archaeology founder Timothy P. Brown and a recent Tidbit he wrote that examines an extremely odd offensive formation used once by the University of Tennessee long ago.

The subject originates from Tim's Tidbit post titled:The Sidesaddle Quarterback and Tennessee Formation.

-Transcribed Conversation of the Side-Saddle QB with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends, this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pig Pen and welcome to another edition of Tuesdays where we go and visit Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com, and he shares one of his most recent tidbits on some great football history with some great insight. And we really enjoy this. And Tim, tonight you have a great subject to talk to us about and welcome back, by the way.

You wrote a tidbit about side saddle quarterback formation, and we're anxious to hear about it and what you have to say about its history. Yeah, so this is one of those where, and thank you for your gracious welcome, by the way, that this sort of got thrown in there. Sorry about that.

Yeah, so, you know, this is one where, you know, I enjoy it, and I think, you know, people who are into football enjoy some oddities that came along the way. Right. And, you know, the game did not show up the way it's packaged today.

So, there are some things that were done by some of the top coaches that just seem a bit odd. So this one, the side saddle quarterback, you know, in order to kind of understand it, I got to go back another, you know, maybe even 60 years because side saddle was kind of 30s and 40s. And Tennessee, especially, is used a lot.

But, you know, in the so if you think about even rugby today. The guy that we might consider the quarterback is the guy who gets the ball. You know, they're having the scrum, and they're using their feet to kick the ball back to that person.

Then he picks it up and tosses it to somebody else. Well, when football began, they did exactly the same thing because they were playing rugby. And then even as they started, you know, going with the rule of possession and downs and all of that, they still were doing fundamentally the same thing.

The center snapped the ball. With his foot and, you know, the ball was laying on its side. He put his foot on top of it or put his foot in front of it, and he healed it back or rolled it, you know, put it either way.

He rolled the thing back. And so the ball was coming back unpredictably. And so the quarterback, just like the guy in rugby, was kind of squatting behind a foot or two behind the center.

And he picked the ball up and tossed it to somebody else to run with it. So then, in football, you know, in the late 1890s, they started snapping with their hands. Initially, there was a great photo of Henry Lewis, who was an All-American center at Harvard.

You see him snapping with his hand, but he's got the ball on its side. So when they first started snapping the hand, they were still doing just like they did with the feet. They rolled it on its side back to the quarterback.

So the quarterback stayed in more or less the same position as that rugby guy and, you know, grabbed the ball and then tossed it. So then a little bit later on, then they started what we really now think of as snapping, where they were lifting the ball up and tossing it, either lifting it and putting it between their legs where the quarterback had his hands, not up on the butt, but down low. And he'd grab it, or they just roll it back, or they toss it back to him.

So a lot of times, that quarterback sometimes is directly behind the center and other times is off to the side, so kind of between the guard center gap. And, you know, and I'm not sure exactly what the rationale was for that back in the day, but that all pretty much mostly went away. You know, in the early 19 teens, when the Notre Dame box was getting big, there was a rule change regarding who could run with the ball.

The first guy receiving the center, the snap from the center, could now run with the ball. And so they started snapping back to. The fullback or halfback in the backfield.

And so the whole single wing offense and, you know, the Carlisle formation and all that kind of stuff was coming into play. So, a lot of times at that point, the quarterback never even touched the ball. But a lot of times, you stay in that same position.

Sometimes you move over a position or two. But there were times that he'd still he'd still get the ball. You know, it's more of a fake, you know, or a change up for them.

But then in, in the 30s, Tennessee developed the side saddle QB formation. And it got it, you know, it got him to the Rose Bowl. So, I mean, they were they were a heck of a team, you know, back then.

They were, you know, there were a lot of good things going on. But the side saddle quarterback, you know, like this earlier guy, he'd align in kind of the guard center gap. And he would, but he'd be perpendicular to the line of scrimmage.

Right. And he was fake. He was in the guard center gap on the strong side, but he was facing the weak side.

And then from there, he could he could get the snap, though, that he was more of a faker and blocker than, you know, a runner. But he could get the snap. Most of these still snapped it back to the to the deep backs.

And, you know, it was just, you know, I think they had the belief that this could be something that aligned him that way, confusing the offense or, I'm sorry, confusing the defense. And it allowed him to do, you know, spin moves and reverse out and lead, you know, lead blocking to the weak side more effectively because they used to run, you know, dives to the weak side. He'd head over to the weak side and, you know, smash up in there.

So it's just one of those goofy things that it's like, you know, I don't know how they figured out that they thought, you know, why exactly why they thought this was better than other approaches, but it worked. And so then there were, you know, after that, guys from Tennessee, you know, guys who played there like Bowden Wyatt. He ended up being the coach at Wyoming after the war.

Or, yeah, in forty-seven. He was in Arkansas, and then he ended up being the coach in Tennessee. But they, you know, he continued using it, though he converted to the side saddle running a tee rather than a single wing.

And there were other guys, you know, place another guy used it at Wyoming. It was used at Amherst, Brown, and BYU, BYU, even in the early 60s. And then the one that, you know, maybe surprises most people is that of the guy named Bede. I believe his last name is Bede.

I'm not sure if it's Bede or Bede, but Dick Bede from Youngstown State. He's the guy who invented the penalty flag. But he ran the side saddle in the late 60s and early 70s.

One of his last quarterbacks was Ron Jaworski. So, you know, Jaworski, I mean, it's new enough that if you're old enough to remember Ron Jaworski as a player, then this side saddle thing is a little bit closer than you might expect. You know, it's not that far back in the game's history.

So it's just one of those little oddities. It's just kind of fun to think about and how they ended up coming up with this thing. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely interesting.

It's very unique. And I think these coaches, you know, they're what makes football so interesting. It's all these games within a game and a strategy.

And how can you put the defense under duress to gain an advantage in changing formation, having something they're not used to seeing? I'm sure that gains an advantage real quick if a defense isn't ready for it. So, somebody like Bill Belichick or somebody else will probably bring this out. One of these upcoming seasons, and we'll all sit down and say, hey, Tim talked about that back last year.

Well, yeah, Belichick's a big old time football scholar. So he's he's I'm sure he's very familiar with with this thing. But yeah, if anybody would pull it, pull it out, it'd probably be Belichick.

Well, look at the NFL basically brought the single wing back. What, 10 years ago when they they call it the wildcat. But they're running single single-wing principles.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what a lot of that stuff is.

Even, you know, some of the things like the counter tray. And, you know, I mean, that goes back a little bit further. But that's just wing T-type stuff as far as I'm concerned, you know.

And so, yeah, it's what's old and new again. And, you know, it's sometimes what we think of as new, sometimes just somebody under comparable. You know, situations came up with the same thing all on their own.

Right. And other times they were just watching an old film or came across some concept and, you know, they borrowed from the old guys. But either way, hey, if it reinvigorates the game and and brings in something what what looks to be new.

You know, that's great. Yeah, most definitely. Well, Tim, speaking of something new, you have something new that comes out each and every day in your tidbits, something new to us that's actually old and a game of football.

And we really appreciate the wide array of things that you present to us each week. Now, there's people out there that are always wondering how they can be enjoying it on these tidbits each and every day. And if you could share that secret with them, they'd be much obliged.

Yeah. So it's no secret at all. If you're if you're interested in it and you're reading the articles every day, just go to Football Archeology, Football Archeology dot com.

Subscribe. It's free. So and you'll just get an email every day with the you know, with the information in your inbox.

I mean, you can still go to the site and read, read the past, read the archives, etc. The other alternative is, you know, I post each tidbit on Twitter, so you can follow me on Twitter at Football Archeology. And that's it.

But hopefully either way, you get it and you read it and you have fun with it. Yeah. And the beauty of it is football history is evergreen.

So whether you look at it tonight or you look at it 10 years from now, it's still going to be the same as this history. So still be refreshing. So, Tim, I really appreciate you sharing your time and your knowledge with us and this great football history.

And we will talk to you again next Tuesday. Very good. Thank you, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

---

One of the top experts in early football rules history Timothy P. Brown joins us in the discussion to explain how travel for the teams and fans was so much different than what we are used to going to far away games..

This conversation is based on Tim's original Tidbit titled: All Aboard for Loyola Chicago Football.

-Transcribed Loyola Chicago Train Ride Team with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigSkinDispatch.com. Welcome to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history, and welcome to Tuesday. It's Football Archaeology Day, and we have Timothy P. Brown from FootballArchaeology.com to join us to talk about another one of his tidbits.

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Hey, Darin, good to see you again. Appreciate you having me on.

I always look forward to it. Happy time every week. Yeah, this is something that we all look forward to.

I know the listeners are; we've got a lot of feedback on it. It's sort of a Tuesday tradition to hear from Mr. Brown on some great football history. And you have a real gem tonight to talk about.

You have a tidbit that you put out on November 1st called All Aboard for Loyola Chicago Football. Yeah, so this is one. For me, it's kind of a fun item from a couple of different directions. One is just that I have, over the past, you know, ten years, I've probably owned a couple of these itineraries.

So itineraries of like a team taking a trip across the country, and they get this little booklet that tells them you're on this train, you're on that train, da-da-da, your meal's served this time, that time. Lately, I've come across a couple of these like this one for Loyola. So it's a 1930. Call it a leaflet, you know, for basically advertising a trip that was being organized when Loyola Chicago, you know, they're playing football all the time.

They were heading down to play St. Louis U, you know, in St. Louis. And so, you know, this is a time Route 66 existed by then, but, you know, that probably took a pretty fair chunk of time to, you know, to go by car. And they probably didn't have the largest ball of twine or statues of dinosaurs at that point in time.

Probably not yet. Let's hope they didn't. But so, you know, what happened was two guys who were the captains of the basketball and football teams the previous year, they organized a trip through, you know, whatever the, I think it was Illinois Central, but anyways, you know, one of the major railroads.

So they basically set up a package where you could take real transportation down there for a night at one of St. Louis's finest hotels and then a ticket to the game. And then you, it was a Friday night game. So you'd take off, you know, Friday morning, watch the game, stay overnight Saturday, then jump on the train, you know, come back on Saturday.

So, you know, it's just kind of an interesting thing. Like the, you know, the one guy who was the basketball captain, you know, he would have been in the NBA had it been, you know, 20, 30 years later, because he was, you know, an All-American, he was a stud, but there just weren't, there wasn't much in the way of pro basketball. You know, he played semi-pro and stuff like that.

But anyway, the guy who was a football captain the previous year was the freshman coach at Loyola. So they put this package together. And, you know, it cost $10.50, which seems really cheap, but it was, you know, 186 bucks in 2020.

So yeah, you know, you had to lay out some money. But, you know, so they go down, and then, you know, they play a game. St. Louis has a brand new stadium, Walsh Stadium, that they opened that year.

They'd had, you know, played one or two games there before. St. Louis U was favored. And, you know, that was back when Newt Rockme would make his prediction.

So he's, you know, he's playing against these teams, so he's predicting what's happening, you know, across the country. So he predicted St. Louis U to win. And, sure enough, it turns out that Loyola, you know, wins the game.

I think they scored a touchdown, you know, fairly early in the first half and then just kind of hung on. But the odd thing then was that they built a stadium in 29, meaning they Loyola. But after the 30 season, they dropped football.

So the guys, the fans who took the train down to St. Louis, saw Loyola win a game, and then they lost the last two games in the season. So if you were fortunate enough to go to St. Louis, you saw Loyola Chicago's last football win ever, you know, because they were done after that. You know, so anyways, it's just kind of a neat little, you know, side note.

But, you know, they were really, I mean, I'm sure there were other schools that dropped football before that. But, you know, they were playing at a reasonable level, you know, kind of a G5 level today, something like that. But, you know, they just ended up dropping it.

St. Louis kept playing. They played until the 49 season before they finally dropped it. And then, the coach, the guy who was St. Louis' coach at the time, continued on.

He ended up, he was GM of the Cleveland Rams when they won the 45 NFL championship. And then they moved out to LA. And he was the guy who signed Kenny Washington, who was the really the first modern, you know, post-World War II African-American player in the NFL.

So he's, you know, a little bit of, you know, hey, if you win the NFL championship and you're the guy that signed Kenny Washington, well, you made your mark, you know, so. Yeah. He's got some definite football history there in many aspects.

Great, great story. I love these little gems you dig up. These are great.

Well, yeah. I mean, it's just kind of interesting for me because when my boys were little, they were on a wrestling team. And I mean, they were little.

And part of we did an annual trip where you jumped on a train and, you know, took the train to this other city for a tournament, and you stayed there for the weekend. And, you know, but I think that was the last time I was on a train. Maybe I was probably on a train, I'm sure.

I was in Europe, but here in the States, I think that was the last time I was on a train. Yeah. Well, there's still a lot of travel to cover for it.

I know a company I work for, we make components for the trains. Of course, we have a big locomotive plant here in Erie, formerly GE, which Wabtec now owns. And so, for a lot of locomotives, you see, we build components for that company.

So yeah, train travel is still really big. Yeah. I wish it was bigger, but you know, maybe if we get some of these high-speed things at some point, that'd be pretty sweet.

Yeah. We never know. It could be more economical someday than flying and some of the other forms of transportation.

So yeah, good stuff. But speaking of these little gems, you have a book out, and I know we've talked about it a couple of times, but maybe you could just say a few words about it and where people can get ahold of their hands on one of those copies. Yeah.

So the new book is called Hut Hut Hike. It's a history of football terminology. So it's basically, you know, I just kind of sat down and brainstormed what I thought were key football terms.

And then, I solicited input from a handful of other folks and basically ended up with about 420 terms. And I basically went through and identified when that term first arrived in football. So a word like handoff or blitz or, you know, even things as basically as a punt, you know, when did those words first come into football? Now, somewhere there from the beginning, you know, straight out of rugby, but others came, you know, all along.

And I think the newest one I have is a medical tent. So, you know, it's because of the guys down in Alabama that, you know, created those things. And so they're, you know, I've got a picture of their, you know, medical tent in the book.

Yeah. And so, you know, there's lots of pictures too. So, you know, pictures, drawings, you know- For simple people like me that like the pictures.

Yeah. Well, I love the pictures, but, you know, because sometimes it's just a lot easier to get across a point if you've got a picture to look at, you know? So- Words are getting in the way of my pictures. Well, this one, I've tried to cut down on the number of words.

So that's not easy for me. So you made it for just for somebody like me is what you're saying. That's right.

You can be a speed reader and get through this one, certainly in a day. Yeah. It's like we said before, you know, this is just a great book.

You could basically, you know, open up the book to any page and pick right up at it, close the book, and open up another page, and you'll still be learning something. You're not missing something. It's a part of a bigger story, but it's not really connected in a story format like some of the other books.

So it's a great reader to do like that. So, folks, I think it's really, really good investment to check it out. And I think you'll learn something.

You'll have some memories and probably a couple of aha moments, just like I did. Yeah. And maybe win a few bets.

Yeah, maybe. Maybe win some trivia at your local watering hole when they have those going on trivia nights. All right, Tim.

And where can folks get it? So it's on Amazon. Yeah. So if you're, you know, in paperback, it's Kindle.

And if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription, then you'll have access to it for free. So. Nice.

All right. It's called Hut, Hut, Hike. And make sure you get a copy of it and then check it out because it's some pretty cool stuff.

So, Tim, we thank you again for joining us here tonight. And you want to maybe give folks an idea where they can get a hold of the tidbits that you have coming out each and every day? Yeah. Just find me at footballarchaeology.com and you can subscribe there.

And then, you know, I posted to Twitter, but basically, if you want to make sure you get it every day, whether you read it every day is no story. But if you want to get it every day, sign up, and you'll get an email essentially at seven o'clock every night, Eastern time. And it'll start your evening the right way.

All right. We could all use a little bit of that. So, Tim Brown, footballarchaeology.com. Thank you very much for joining us.

And we'll talk to you again next Tuesday. Okay. Very good.

Thank you, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

---

The American football playbook boasts an arsenal of throws, each designed to exploit specific defensive weaknesses. However, one unassuming play, the shovel pass, carves a unique niche. Unlike the glamorous deep ball or the precise drop pass, the shovel pass thrives in simplicity.

This post welcomes Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology as he delves into the murky origins of this deceptive play, exploring its evolution from a potential improvisation to a strategic weapon in the modern NFL. We'll examine the technical aspects of the shovel pass, its tactical advantages, and the impact it has had on the way offenses approach moving the ball downfield. Prepare to get down and dirty, as we uncover the surprising history and strategic power of the shovel pass.

You can find Tim's original Tidbit on this subject complete with images, at ESlowing The Pass Rush With A Shovel.

-Transcription of Slow Pass Rush with a Shovel 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 day where we get to visit with our friend Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. This is a good opportunity for us to go Dutch on this podcast. To go Dutch on this podcast.

Dutch Myer was the coach. Oh, okay. All right.

I had to think about that for a second. I thought, you know. Well, this shows that, you know, this is not rehearsed, right? Right, right.

You're name dropping already. I throw these singers out at you and you're like. Usually it's a dad joke segue into the title.

And the title, folks, and this is my confusion, is slowing the pass rush with a shovel. So I'm trying to think what Dutch, if he's doing a play on the word on ditch or, you know, I don't know. Dutch Meyer.

Dutch Meyer. Okay. Well, why don't you tell us a story about Dutch Meyer and what he has to do with the pass rush being slowed? Yeah.

So, I mean, this is, you know, I mean, nowadays we had a recent podcast about the draw play, which, you know, has, you know, is basically kind of shows up probably in the late thirties and then, but really became more commonplace. The draw play that we now know, probably more late forties, you know, kind of a play. And so this idea of, you know, but so the whole purpose of the draw play is to give the defense one look, you know, you're showing them pass when you're actually running it.

Well, before they develop the draw play, they still had the same need of trying to deceive the defense. And one of the ways that they developed best as I can tell, you know, around the early 32, 31, 32 kind of timeframe was the shovel pass. And so, you know, if you think about like a wing T formation at the time, they might've had a wing over on the, not wing T, I'm sorry, but you know, single wing.

They might've had a wing over on the right-hand side till back gets a deep snap, you know, from the center. And then the, the wing on the right-hand side crosses comes across the formation and the quarterback doesn't talk some kind of toss or flip, even a shovel pass to that guy as he's going right to left. So, so that was, you know, and it was one of those plays where, you know, as the defense is coming in, you're, you're, you're trying to get it to somebody who's crossing over just so that they have to be looking out is, is this a play that they're going to run? Right.

I mean, is this a, is this something I need to guard against? And so it was one of the, one of the ways to slow down the pass rush. And there weren't very many of them back then. There weren't very many ways to slow them down was to, was a shovel pass.

So in the 39 Cotton Bowl game, you know, this was a game where TCU had three players drafted the next year in the first 10 of the NFL draft. And, and what their, the number one pick in the draft was Davey O'Brien, who was TCU's quarterback. And you can see him in the background, but he was, you know, five, eight, you know, fairly stockly built guy, but, you know you know, he was a hell of a hell of a quarterback and just, you know, really smart guy, all that kind of thing.

So, so they were, you know, at the time TCU was one of the teams that threw the ball all over the yard, you know, now nothing like happens today, but you know, when they, they played Carnegie Tech in that game and you know, they, both teams rushed for about 150 yards, but TCU passed for on the order of 250, whereas Carnegie passed for like 60 or so yards. So it was one of those games where, you know, they just, TCU was clearly the better player, but, or the better team, but during the game, they threw eight shovel passes. Right.

So it kind of tells you, I mean, name a game nowadays where, where a team throws eight shovel passes, just doesn't happen, you know, doesn't happen. But for them, that was like one of their central plays because, you know, a lot of the other ways that we, you know, quarterbacks still had to throw the, in college, quarterbacks still had to be five yards behind the line of scrimmage to throw a pass. So none of our bubble screens and none of our quick, quick slants, none of those existed.

They were illegal. And so this was one way that they could slow down the pass was a shovel. So, so they completed five of the eight shovel passes.

And that was one of the ways in the second half, they advanced ball down the field. And because this is also in the days of, you know, essentially no or very limited substitutions. O'Brien, the quarterback kicks the game winning field goal in the fourth quarter.

Right. I mean, it's been a while, you know, since I remember a big time quarterback in a bowl game, kicking a field goal to win the game. Now, I mean, I don't know when the last time was, you know, when that happened, there were, there's been some punters like Greg Martin, you know, he's a guy that, you know, maybe some listeners remember he punted, but it's been, you know, Blanda probably was the last guy that most of us can think of though.

And yeah. But you had Doug Flutie do a drop kick one time, but it got no points. So I don't think it was more of a. Yeah.

I mean, that, that was basically a circus kick. Right. Right.

And which is fine, but you know, for a guy who did the regular kicking for his team, O'Brien was one of the last ones and he was, you know, place kicking, not, not drop kicking. So anyways, it's just, you know, I guess it's just one of those things where, you know, it's one of those period pieces where, you know, where they're using the shovel pass in a way that we don't use today, but make sense that they had developed it. And then the same guy who's throwing the shovel pass is a guy who kicks a game winning field goal.

So then he ends up, you know, he only played like two years in the NFL. He, he ended up, you know, I think he just didn't like the pro game very much. And he was on a really bad team.

And so he ended up, he left, uh, left the NFL and became an FBI agent. That's back in that era where you make more money, you know, working in a grocery store than playing in the NFL too. And you don't get hurt as much.

So, but yeah, the, the shovel pass. So that's, uh, you know, traditionally one of the safest passes to throw because it looks weird when it's an incomplete pass, but it's not a fumble because it's a forward pass if it's dropped and it's hard for defenders to see it because you're sort of hidden behind those, those big guys up front, uh, with the throwing actions. It's really not enunciated like, uh, an over the shoulder passes.

Yeah. The challenge is, you know, it's, it's hard to know now, like how much traffic there was coming in and coming at the quarterback as the guys crossing. Um, you know, I, I didn't find any game film of that particular game.

So, um, Gosh, you would think the defenders would start to get wise to it after a little while. So maybe they just were inept. And then it served its purpose, right? I mean, that's right.

It slowed down the pass rush if they got wise to it, but yeah. Um, or, you know, maybe they left some guy, guy to be a spy or something, but you know, they weren't that bright back then. No, no surprise, especially a Western Pennsylvania team.

God, Carnegie, you know, that's, they should be brilliant. Well, they lost. So yeah, no wonder they're, they don't have a D one program anymore.

Uh, interesting stuff, Tim. That's a, that's a great story. And to hear about Davey O'Brien and, uh, you know, some of his, uh, great feats of football.

So that's some cool things. So you have some very interesting things, not only about players like Davey O'Brien and teams like, you know, TCU and a concept of the shovel pass, but you have all kinds of different, uh, intricacies of the made football, the game that it is. And some are forgotten except by folks like you reminding us on your daily tidbits on your website.

So maybe you could share, uh, you know, where people can find, uh, your, your writings at. Sure. Just, uh, go to footballarchaeology.com. Um, you know, I've got a whole archive now, you know, about a thousand articles out there on different, different elements of the game.

And, uh, so I have added subscribe. If you want to get an email every time that I publish an article, otherwise follow me on Twitter, follow me on Substack or follow me on threads and, or just go out to the site whenever you feel like it. All right.

Well, excellent job as always, Tim, we really appreciate, uh, getting informed and educated on the, the arts of football from yesteryear. And we would love to hear more about it next week. And thanks for going Dutch.

Yeah. Thanks Dutch.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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This is something that sports fans probably take for granted in the modern scoreboard when attending an athletic event. These generally large appendages are an information hub for what is happening in the event.

The questions arise: Who invented the scoreboard concept and when? What problem did the invention and resolve?

-Arthur Irwin and the First Football Scoreboards

A great piece of gridiron history comes from a famous baseball player who designed the template for the modern scoreboard. Timothy P Brown tells the tale of Arthur Irwin and his invention.

-Transcribed Conversation on Arthur Irwin Scoreboard 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 when we will be honored with the presence of Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.
Hey, thanks, Darin.

And the honor is all mine. All mine, sir.

No, no, it's me and the listeners. We get this weekly treat where you reminisce about a piece you've written recently and your daily tidbits. We get to talk to you about it, pick your brain, and learn something new about football history. Tonight, we will go up on the scoreboard and learn a little about that and some of its associations with other sports.

Then, I'll let you talk about this gentleman and his invention. Yeah, so this one is one of my favorite stories in a while, largely because this is one where I just really learned something. It's one of those where, you know, I don't know, I'm, you know, I probably put in 20, 30, 40 hours of research in the past on maybe more, you know, on a couple of different topics related to early scoreboards and game simulations and things like that. And I'd always seen them as three separate things floating around, you know, in the ether that wasn't connected.

And then, for some reason, I was, you know, checking into, you know, doing another dig on scoreboards. And I came across a mention of an Irwin scoreboard, which, if I'd seen it before, I don't remember it. So I dig into that.

And all of a sudden, it's like, everything makes sense. Everything is connected, so it was just like this great revelation for me. So, I mean, the story is that there's this guy, Arthur Irwin, who, perhaps people who are into old-time baseball would know because he played like 13 years in the majors.

He was also a player-manager in the latter part of his playing career. And then he, you know, once he was done playing, he continued managing. So, there was a point in his career when he was managing the Phillies.

And as was the case back then, baseball players needed jobs after the season. So, being an athlete, he got a job as a trainer at Penn, you know, University of Pennsylvania. So, you know, back then, the trainers were like the guys who would physically condition athletes across sports.

They were the guys who would diagnose, you know, they didn't have sports medicine per se back then. So they were the guys who'd figure out how to resolve a Charlie horse, you know, how to, you know, fix a sprain, tape them up. So that was his role.

But while he's there, he designs and builds a scoreboard. And I think it was actually before they had Franklin Field, but, you know, he builds a scoreboard for, you know, for Penn. Because prior to that, everybody used baseball scoreboards, you know, if they were in a baseball stadium or they didn't have any scoreboards.

So he builds this thing, and it's got the rudiments of what scoreboards have today. You know, down a distance, you know, it said who had the ball and who was in possession. It had a little thing up at the top, a little kind of a football field graphic that they'd moved this football along, you know, as the team progressed on the field. So things like that.

Then he ends up patenting it. So, you know, there are drawings on his patent application that show the format of this scoreboard. And then I found a couple of early photographs of his scoreboards, you know, up there on the field, and they look, you know, just like his patent application.

So then what happens is, you know, he builds a business while he builds multiple scoreboards. And, you know, in some cases, they permanently install in locations, and in other cases, as he moves them around, you know, they're like the Goodyear Blimp; they show up at different places. But, you know, he's hired to do it.

He then has people, and he staffs the operation when a scoreboard is being used. And in the course of all that, you know, they had to develop a system of, you know, they didn't have really telephones on the field, and they didn't have walkie-talkies or, you know, those kinds of things. So they developed this signal system, what they would call wig wagging back in the day.

So a guy or two on the field would follow the plays and, you know, use these contortions, something similar to the semaphore flags of, you know, in the military or like referee signals, you know, they contorted their bodies, or they spelled out letters. They would essentially communicate with the guys operating the scoreboard, the down and distance, who had substituted whatever information they had. And so, you know, it became this thing that, you know, for the big games in the East, you pretty much, you know, it became an expectation. You have an Irwin scoreboard up there, and everybody knew what the Irwin scoreboard was.

So when they built Harvard Stadium, then I think they, you know, I've never gotten a real, I've got one image that isn't too great of an early scoreboard there. So, you know, I think it was an advanced version of an Irwin scoreboard, but he ended up hiring a guy whose name was Eddie Morris. He ends up being the wigwag.

You know, he always wore a red sweater and a white hat. And for about 20 years, everybody at this guy was following along. Sometimes, he'd be out on the field doing his signals up to the guys in the box or up on the scoreboard.

And so he became like, before mascots, he became like one of the mascots, you know, something like that. And so anyways, you know, then they also started at Harvard, where he would signal in, like who made the tackle, who ran the ball, those kinds of things. And so they were selling, you know, scorecards that had the number of each of the players.

Now, the players didn't wear the numbers, but there was a number on a scorecard for Smith and Jones. And then if Smith made the tackle and Jones made the run, they'd signal that and they'd post those numbers, the corresponding numbers up on the scoreboard. So it was just a way to, you know, for the people in the stands to kind of know who the heck was who, because nobody wore numbers and they all look the same and, you know, whatever.

And they're just running in these mushes. You know, that was the nature of football at the time. So then eventually, you know, then later on, obviously they added numbers to the players, you know, on their jerseys.

The other thing that he did was they would do the Irwin scoreboards in the gymnasiums or in theaters. So they do it, especially for an away game, and they'll get connected by telephone or telegraph. And then, so it became a thing where you'd pay some money, go to the theater, and you could watch the game as a simulation based on what was happening down in Philadelphia, you know if you were in Boston.

And they even did it in Boston. They do games at Harvard, and for the big games, like the Princeton and Yale games, those would sell out. And so people who couldn't get into the game would go to the theater to watch the simulation. And then, so, I mean, it's just kind of crazy stuff like that.

Now that that image you have from 1893 and so, I mean, listeners, you can go to the show notes, and we have a link that'll take you right to Tim's article, and you can, you can see this image, and it's sort of like a sketch of what the intention of what the board should be for 1893. But it's really interesting because at the top, as you said earlier, they've got a thing called field board, and it's got an image of a football that sort of slides down, and the points of the ball indicate what yard line, I guess, the ball is on for the, for the next down. And it almost reminds me of the modern day, if you're watching an NFL game and you follow on nfl.com or cbs.com and you want to know real play because you can't watch a game or whatever your, you know, your wife makes you go shopping or something.

You can see, you know, where the plays are going. So it was kind of interesting, you know, 130 years ago, when similar technology started then. So that's really cool.

Yeah. Yeah. From a representation.

So, and that image is right from his, it's just the front page of his patent, you know, documents. So yeah, I mean, fundamentally, you know, everything that he had listed on his early thing is right there, you know? So, and as you said, you know, I mean, I do that where I'm like, I'm watching one game, and I got another one on my computer that I'm just, you know, tracking the, the progress of the game. Right.

So, right. Yeah, it's definitely very cool. So now the other thing that's really, that's pretty bizarre about this guy is that he ends up, you know, so at the time, you know, I mean, he was a ball player, so he was traveling a lot of the year and then he would, you know, when he's doing these scoreboards, he's traveling basically on the East coast.

And at one point, he was diagnosed, I don't know if he was formally diagnosed with cancer, but basically, he was told, you know, you don't have long to live. And so he gets on a boat and goes from New York to Boston and falls overboard or just jumps in the water to end it. And so he, he dies.

And then, as they're trying to settle his estate, it turns out that, you know, kind of came up that he had a wife in New York and another one in Boston, you know, with children on it. No wonder he had to keep score. He had to know what was going on.

You need to make some cash. Yeah. So anyways, I mean, it's, it's a sad, a sad end, but yeah, I mean, so just kind of a bizarre ending to a pretty wild story, but you know, for me, it just brought together the simulation.

So, I mean, I now believe he was his, you know, Irwin's scoreboard was the first simulation. He was the designer of the first football-specific scoreboard. And then, you know, I'd always made a big deal out of the Harvard stadium sport and their wigwag system.

And then I, you know, now kind of understand that he was the one behind that. And that is, his stuff was around, you know, ten years earlier, you know, maybe not as quite sophisticated form, but nevertheless. Very interesting.

And it's great that you see them, especially that image from 1893, and the similarities to our modern scoreboard still carry on the tradition of what he started. It's just a fascinating and a great testament, a great idea. Yeah.

It was pretty brilliant. That's a great story, Tim; I appreciate that you're sharing that with us. Like you do every day on the tidbits that you have from footballarchaeology.com, and maybe you could share with the listeners how they, too, could get into the tidbits.

Yeah. So ideally, you go to www.footballarchaeology.com and subscribe, and you'll get an email every, every evening, seven o'clock Eastern with, you know, just basically it got the contents of that, of that night's story. You can also just bookmark it and, you know, go whenever you want.

I also post links on Twitter and on threads as well as on the Substack app because my site—I've got my own name for it—is actually a Substack application. So those are the ways to get there and have at it. Yeah.

And help you keep your score on the scoreboard each and every night. So. I do.

We definitely appreciate you sharing your story and bringing some of this football antiquity to us to our modern day making it relevant again and carrying on and letting us know the name of Arthur Irwin and his great idea that he had and some great stories from him too. I also forgot to mention, he was the first non-catcher, non-first baseman to wear a glove in the major leagues. And so Spalding then sold the Irwin glove, you know, throughout the 1890s and early aughts.

So I forgot to mention that, but that's another, you know, he's a big deal in baseball. Yeah. Wow.

It's definitely an all-around sport. We can all thank him for the sports that we watch. So wow.

Some great stuff, Tim. We appreciate it. And we will talk to you again next week.

Okay. Thanks, Darin. All right.

Bye.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.