Football History

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

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

It may just take the cake for being the strangest.

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

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

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



TBrown_PuntBehindBarbedWire_1

⏰Wed, 05/01 04:44AM · 12mins

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Timothy Brown:
Kind of a prickly situation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Timothy Brown:
Very good. Thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very good. Look forward to chatting again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown Jerseys with Emblems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah. Yeah. A hundred years ago.

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

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

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

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

Right. Right. And other sports did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

-Football Jersey Frequently Asked Questions

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

-When did football jerseys start having numbers on them? Though there was documented talk of it since 1894, players did not all wear digits in a game until the 1905 Iowa State at Drake game, check this out more on this storyThe Origins Of Football Player Numbers.

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

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

---

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

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

You Can also find the podcast version of the discussion

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

From Humble Beginnings to Widespread Adoptio

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

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

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

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

The Rise and Fall of a Tradition

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

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

Here is the transcription of our conversation on helmet numbers:

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

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

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

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

Darin Hayes
It was shocking with that lightning bolt.

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

Darin Hayes
right?

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

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

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

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

Timothy Brown
Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Darin Hayes
about that.

Timothy Brown
It just is it's a pittance.

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

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

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

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

-Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

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

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Remember the days of scrambling to find a bar with the big game on, or praying your free trial of a streaming service wouldn't cut out during the winning touchdown? Today, catching the NFL's most anticipated matchups often requires a click and a credit card – a far cry from the days of local broadcasts and shared experiences.

This post dives into the fascinating history of pay-per-view (PPV) for American football, exploring its evolution, impact on the game, and the changing landscape of how we consume the sport we love. So, grab your remote, settle into the comfort of your couch, and join us as we rewind and explore the rise of PPV in the world of football.

From Turnstiles to Touchdowns: How Pay-Per-View Revolutionized Watching Football From Your Couch

-Conversation Transcribed on Football's Early Pay-Per-View TV with Timothy Brown
Darin Hayes:
Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes at Pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. Welcome to another Tuesday, where we will go and visit with our friend Timothy Brown of footballarchaeology.com. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Timothy Brown:
Hey, Darin. How are you doing? As you said, I am looking forward to chatting about pay-per-view.

Darin Hayes:
Yeah, I think you are because you told me just to have the video of you here. I had to pay you to, uh, to view it. So, so yeah, that, that money's in the mail. So don't worry, it's coming.

Timothy Brown:
Okay, good.

Darin Hayes:
is in cash, right? Yeah, it's a Canadian cash. Is that okay?

Timothy Brown:
That's fine. I live right across the river. So, okay. Well, good news. Canadian dollars. That's, that's great. Or loonies or toonies, whatever you got.

Darin Hayes:
Oh, he's got the whole vernacular done. All right, all right, Tim, you are referring to, of course, a tidbit that you wrote recently titled Football and early pay-per-view television. And that's an interesting thing, especially what we've been seeing here in the last year or two with the NFL, which is taking us into some different venues for watching TV. Maybe you could speak on those, the history and what's going on now.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, this tidbit got published, and it looks like it was February. And so I published it in reaction to, you know, NFL games being on peacock. And, you know, for whatever reason, I get peacock for free. So it didn't bother me that games are on peacock. But, you know, it's a bunch of people who don't have peacocks. And, you know, I mean, there are different things. For example, I'm a big CFL fan. And I couldn't get CFL games for part of last year because they had switched their package. And, you know, so access to the games is a big deal, you know, and, even if you're a casual fan, you know, I mean, you want to be able to watch the game. So, you know, and, and just generally, we've become so accustomed to easy access to games, whether it's high school, college or pro, but especially NFL, you know, we were so accustomed to just, all you got to do is go to one of the major channels, and the game's going to be there. You know, it's just an assumption. And so, you know, part of the reason for writing this is because that certainly was not always so, right? I mean, the game was not always available. And so, you know, I mean, historically, football teams didn't have television money; they relied on the ticket sales or the gate; they got, you know if they own the stadium, they got some money for billboards, you know, from an advertising perspective, they got, you know, vent, you know, from vendors that were selling goods in the stadium. Later on, they also picked up the radio, but, you know, not a whole lot of money was coming out of the radio. So but the huge influx and, you know, yeah, it was certainly one of the several biggest influences in the game of Football, at least in terms of college and pro, was the influx of television money because it just funded so much in the way of salaries and specialized coaching and just, you know, just so many things that changed the nature of the game. So, but it's one of those deals where when we, you know, sometimes, you know, people look at history and say, well, okay, this is the way it happened. So that was the way it was going to happen, or it had to happen. And that's just not true. I mean, you know, it's as much history as much about what could have happened as what did happen, you know, because there's just all kinds of alternative histories of something else that had changed; it could have happened a different way. And so pay-per-view is one of those, you know, we think that the only way it could have happened, you know, as far as television rights and everything in college and pro Football is the way it occurred. But there were other, you know, other forces at work that just didn't play out as well. And so, you know, I use, you know, kind of that kind of background thinking, and then talk about the 1963 NFL championship game. And so even then, you know, so television was getting, you know, was starting to really run and, you know, they had already negotiated the, and, you know, probably the biggest turning point was that they got them, they basically, you know, Congress passed the, the whatever, it's the Sports Act of 1963, or whatever it was, but that basically, you know, gave antitrust exemptions to pro Football, that allowed them to negotiate league-wide contracts rather than franchise by franchise contracts, which is changed the dynamic, but, you know, still PPV was, was still out there. So, at the time, in 63, it carried on, and I forget when it finally ended. But, you know, NFL teams and NFL teams had blackouts. So, any game, like if you lived in Green Bay, or Pittsburgh, or Baltimore, or wherever you lived, you could not broadcast that game; you could not broadcast an NFL game within 75 miles of the site of the game. And so, you know, if, you know, basically, people never saw home games unless they had tickets because they wanted to force people to buy tickets, right? Because that's where the money was, the money wasn't the money, and it still wasn't in television; the money was in the tickets and ticket sales.
Darin Hayes:
I can tell you we still have blackouts here.

Timothy Brown:
What?

Darin Hayes:
They even black out when you have an NFL ticket. We're in Buffalo, the Buffalo Bills market here. We're within a hundred miles of Buffalo, a hundred miles of Cleveland, a hundred miles of Pittsburgh. So we sort of, if there isn't a way game for Buffalo, they have all the rights because they have to show the way games for Buffalo. Even if Cleveland is playing Pittsburgh in a rivalry game, we sometimes can't see that because of that. Now I had, I had pay-per-view, and I think it was Pittsburgh playing at Buffalo. It didn't sell out, and the game was blacked out in my area, even though I had the NFL ticket. So, they still black things out for the home teams.

Timothy Brown:
OK, so I didn't realize that was still going on.

Darin Hayes:
Oh, crazy. I don't know why, but they do.

Timothy Brown:
So, but OK, so I mean, if you live in an area like that, then, you know, then then it's the current experience for people. Right. But, you know, back then, it was so this: here it is, the NFL championship game. And in a darn good-sized city like Chicago, which at the time was probably the number three city in the country. Right. And the game is being televised. You know, it's played at Wrigley Field. So only forty-eight thousand people can get in there. And so what they did was, you know, this is, again, still the time when people are thinking pay-per-view is going to be the model. And at that point, there was kind of a it is pay -that something is going to happen in movie theaters. When I was a kid, there were still boxing matches that you'd go to the theater to watch. Or is it something that's going to happen at home? And so at that point, what it was, they had three locations like the McCormick Center, a big convention center like Chicago Stadium or something like that, and some big theater. But they had forty-eight thousand in Wrigley Field. They had twenty-five and a half thousand people in the history theaters to watch the game, you know. And, you know, if you live far enough outside of Chicago, then you just drove to the boundary line, and you went to a bar and watched it, you know, watch the game there. But so, I mean, it just tells you how many people would want to go watch a game and pay for it. And it was, you know, this game was the end of December. So if you went and watched it at a pay-per-view location, it was warm, which is nice, you know. And, you know, there were still a lot of people at that time predicting pay-per-view was going to be the model. Right. And, you know, we've talked about this before, where the idea is there, but the technology isn't to make it happen. Right. Whether that's equipment or broadcasting. And in this case, it was broadcasting. So there were people saying that what was going to happen was that they were going to be in a community. You'd have your television, and then you'd have an attachment on top of your television where you would feed quarters into this little box, you know, like a parking meter kind of thing, and get to watch some show for 25 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever it was. And but it was like, I mean, people were like, yeah, this is going to happen. And, you know, then it's like, well, who the hell is going to come around and collect all these all these quarters? You know, you've got to make sure somebody is home to get in their house to collect them and but actually, actually, after writing this, I found out there was actually one city, I forget where it was, but there was one city, at least, where they actually had this whole system set up, and people would go around and collect the quarters from people's houses. It's just bizarre. But, you know, again, this is, you know, there weren't credit cards, there weren't magnetic strips. I mean, there were credit cards, but there were paper, you know, there were no magnetic strips. There's no subscription, and you can't pay by the Internet. There's no streaming, you know, all that kind of stuff. Things we take for granted today. So you can't hear it? Well, why didn't they just stream it? Well, you know, there was no streaming. Right. So anyway, I just think it's really fun to kind of look back at that. But it's this thing of, you know, it's, you know, what they call the naturalistic assumption just because you can't get an ought from it, just because something is that way. It doesn't mean it ought to be that way or had to be that way. And so, you know, that's kind of the history that is written by what happened, largely by what happened as opposed to what could have happened. You know, so yeah, it's just an amusing, amusing episode.

Darin Hayes:
Yeah, definitely. Did they call it pay-per-view in your area when you were growing up? Here, they called those for boxing, wrestling, and anything like that. It was called Close Circuit TV.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, I think most people call it the closed circuit. But yeah, actually, closed circuit. Another thing about football, you know, there was a period, actually, mostly in the early 60s, where maybe it was a little bit earlier, maybe it was the late 50s too. But there was a time when people's football coaches started using closed circuit technology to watch game film while the game was going on, or game tape. And they do it on the sidelines; they do it up in the booth. And then they finally axed that because at the college level, they axed it more for money. You know, it just became an arms race, you know, a technology arms race. And then the NFL just said, boom, no more of this. So that is the underlying reason why even today, I mean, people now have the pads and iPads on the sideline. But basically,

Darin Hayes:
You get the sponsor; it's Microsoft Surface. That's the only thing else. Yes, yes, sorry.

Timothy Brown:
My bad. Well, the NFL police were coming to your sponsorship rights, not mine. I've got my socks pulled up all the way, by the way. Um, so yeah, but you know, so, I mean that whole thing of not having technology on the sideline originated during this pay-per-view and closed circuit, you know, same, same technology, same underlying technology and time.

Darin Hayes:
Yeah, I guess the other question is that it's more of an ethical question. I know you said in the beginning that you have the free peacock, and you got it on. Well, I have the free version of Peacock, and I couldn't get that game. They, they, they wanted me to pay the, whatever, $5, $7 a month, uh, to join their, their peacock hub or whatever the hall it is to watch this. I was one of the ones that, uh, I, I said, just on the purpose of it. I said, why, why can I watch every other playoff game? And I can't watch this sub-zero game with the Dolphins going to Kansas City.

Timothy Brown:
Well, so, like myself, I do ESPN Plus because that gives me access to the college games for basically an FCS kind of school that I, you know, follow; I get their Football and basketball that way. And in the past, it gave me access to a lot of CFL games. So you know, it's like, I'll pay that, you know, to get access, right? I have that as well. Yeah, but, you know, I don't think it'd be a tough call for me to pay more money for something else just to watch a couple of games here and there.

Darin Hayes:
Yeah, I don't know where they plan because I know they plan on doing more games this coming year on that same thing. And I heard they might be because I think every team is going to be playing a game out of the country. That's what they had in 17 games. So, every team will eventually lose one home game. I don't think it's going to be fully that way this year. But I think they may be doing that to those games, not just in 2024 but years beyond that, I heard, where you can't go to the stadium. And the only way you can watch your team is to do, you know, Amazon; you have to have Amazon Prime where you got to have peacock, or you have Paramount or whatever there, whoever else is going to join the club here for viewing televisions.

Timothy Brown:
you know, we'll see how all that stuff works out. I mean, you know, it's, it's one of those things where, you know, I think, generally the the availability has increased the popularity, you know, over time. And now, they're starting to try to figure out, okay, is there still a way to make even more money? And, you know, maybe they're gonna kill the golden goose, but, you know, that's for other people to decide.

Darin Hayes:
Yeah, right. And I didn't even see what the numbers were. I don't know if they made them public or what the numbers were for that peacock game. I would have to believe they got a small portion of what they would have normally gotten if it had been on NBC.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, I don't know, you know, I don't, you know, I, I watch, I'm pretty religious about watching my favorite teams, but for the, the average, you know, Sunday afternoon NFL game, I don't watch much of anything. You know, I'll watch a little bit here and there, but not really.

Darin Hayes:
Yeah. All right. Well, Hey, I mean, it's a great story, and it's something that's, uh, you know, sort of coming true in our lifetime here. So we may have to be facing that more and more as we go on. Cause I know there's at least two or three games this coming season, regular season and playoff games where they plan on having it, uh, you know, well, there's Amazon every week. So, I guess we are paying for it now in some respects. People don't have enough Amazon to pay for that, but yeah, it's coming. And, uh, you know, like I say, the NFL is a billion-dollar industry for a reason. And that's, uh, they know how to make money off folks like us. That's for sure. Um, we'll see. Yeah. Right now, Tim, you have, uh, you know, some great pieces of history, just like you spoke about here, uh, that you write about on a regular basis. And, uh, you, you have, I believe, a thousand of them now. Maybe you could share with the listeners and viewers where they can enjoy some of your writing.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, it's footballarcheology.com. It's a Substack app or Substack newsletter blog. So just go there, subscribe. You'll get an email every day, or not every day, but every time I publish. And alternatively, you can follow me on Twitter, on threads, or on the Substack app. And at least you'll get exposed to what's out there.

Darin Hayes:
All right, Tim, we really appreciate you sharing this story with us and enjoy having you here each week, and we hope to talk to you again next Tuesday.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, look forward to it. Thank you.

---

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?.

---

Calling all gridiron gurus! Ever wonder how fans first paid a premium to watch football on TV? Today, we have historian Timothy Brown joining us to delve into the forgotten era of early pay-per-view for America's favorite sport. Buckle up and get ready for a touchdown worth of knowledge!

Broadcasters aren't entirely switching to paid subscriptions for NFL games. They're offering a mix. Traditional channels like CBS and FOX still air in-market games for free. However, for out-of-market games and exclusive content, streaming services like YouTube TV with NFL Sunday Ticket or ESPN+ are becoming increasingly important. The NFL is adapting to the changing viewership landscape, offering both free and paid options.

This conversation is based on Tim’s original Tidbit found at: Football and Early Pay-Per-View Television.

Also available is the Podcast Version of "The Original Football TV Subscription Service with Timothy Brown".

-Conversation Transcribed on Football's Early Pay-Per-View TV with Timothy Brown

Darin Hayes: 
Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes at Pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. Welcome to another Tuesday, where we will go and visit with our friend Timothy Brown of footballarchaeology.com. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. 

Timothy Brown: 
Hey, Darin. How are you doing? As you said, I am looking forward to chatting about pay-per-view. 

Darin Hayes: 
Yeah, I think you are because you told me just to have the video of you here. I had to pay you to, uh, to view it. So, so yeah, that, that money's in the mail. So don't worry, it's coming. 

Timothy Brown: 
Okay, good. 

Darin Hayes: 
is in cash, right? Yeah, it's a Canadian cash. Is that okay? 

Timothy Brown: 
That's fine. I live right across the river. So, okay. Well, good news. Canadian dollars. That's, that's great. Or loonies or toonies, whatever you got. 

Darin Hayes: 
Oh, he's got the whole vernacular done. All right, all right, Tim, you are referring to, of course, a tidbit that you wrote recently titled Football and early pay-per-view television. And that's an interesting thing, especially what we've been seeing here in the last year or two with the NFL, which is taking us into some different venues for watching TV. Maybe you could speak on those, the history and what's going on now. 

-Football and early pay-per-view television

Timothy Brown: 
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, this tidbit got published, and it looks like it was February. And so I published it in reaction to, you know, NFL games being on peacock. And, you know, for whatever reason, I get peacock for free. So it didn't bother me that games are on peacock. But, you know, it's a bunch of people who don't have peacocks. And, you know, I mean, there are different things. For example, I'm a big CFL fan. And I couldn't get CFL games for part of last year because they had switched their package. And, you know, so access to the games is a big deal, you know, and, even if you're a casual fan, you know, I mean, you want to be able to watch the game. So, you know, and, and just generally, we've become so accustomed to easy access to games, whether it's high school, college or pro, but especially NFL, you know, we were so accustomed to just, all you got to do is go to one of the major channels, and the game's going to be there. You know, it's just an assumption. And so, you know, part of the reason for writing this is because that certainly was not always so, right? I mean, the game was not always available. And so, you know, I mean, historically, football teams didn't have television money; they relied on the ticket sales or the gate; they got, you know if they own the stadium, they got some money for billboards, you know, from an advertising perspective, they got, you know, vent, you know, from vendors that were selling goods in the stadium. Later on, they also picked up the radio, but, you know, not a whole lot of money was coming out of the radio. So but the huge influx and, you know, yeah, it was certainly one of the several biggest influences in the game of Football, at least in terms of college and pro, was the influx of television money because it just funded so much in the way of salaries and specialized coaching and just, you know, just so many things that changed the nature of the game. So, but it's one of those deals where when we, you know, sometimes, you know, people look at history and say, well, okay, this is the way it happened. So that was the way it was going to happen, or it had to happen. And that's just not true. I mean, you know, it's as much history as much about what could have happened as what did happen, you know, because there's just all kinds of alternative histories of something else that had changed; it could have happened a different way. And so pay-per-view is one of those, you know, we think that the only way it could have happened, you know, as far as television rights and everything in college and pro Football is the way it occurred. But there were other, you know, other forces at work that just didn't play out as well. And so, you know, I use, you know, kind of that kind of background thinking, and then talk about the 1963 NFL championship game. And so even then, you know, so television was getting, you know, was starting to really run and, you know, they had already negotiated the, and, you know, probably the biggest turning point was that they got them, they basically, you know, Congress passed the, the whatever, it's the Sports Act of 1963, or whatever it was, but that basically, you know, gave antitrust exemptions to pro Football, that allowed them to negotiate league-wide contracts rather than franchise by franchise contracts, which is changed the dynamic, but, you know, still PPV was, was still out there. So, at the time, in 63, it carried on, and I forget when it finally ended. But, you know, NFL teams and NFL teams had blackouts. So, any game, like if you lived in Green Bay, or Pittsburgh, or Baltimore, or wherever you lived, you could not broadcast that game; you could not broadcast an NFL game within 75 miles of the site of the game. And so, you know, if, you know, basically, people never saw home games unless they had tickets because they wanted to force people to buy tickets, right? Because that's where the money was, the money wasn't the money, and it still wasn't in television; the money was in the tickets and ticket sales. 

Darin Hayes: 
I can tell you we still have blackouts here. 

Timothy Brown: 
What? 

Darin Hayes: 
They even black out when you have an NFL ticket. We're in Buffalo, the Buffalo Bills market here. We're within a hundred miles of Buffalo, a hundred miles of Cleveland, a hundred miles of Pittsburgh. So we sort of, if there isn't a way game for Buffalo, they have all the rights because they have to show the way games for Buffalo. Even if Cleveland is playing Pittsburgh in a rivalry game, we sometimes can't see that because of that. Now I had, I had pay-per-view, and I think it was Pittsburgh playing at Buffalo. It didn't sell out, and the game was blacked out in my area, even though I had the NFL ticket. So, they still black things out for the home teams. 

Timothy Brown: 
OK, so I didn't realize that was still going on. 

Darin Hayes: 
Oh, crazy. I don't know why, but they do. 

Timothy Brown: 
So, but OK, so I mean, if you live in an area like that, then, you know, then then it's the current experience for people. Right. But, you know, back then, it was so this: here it is, the NFL championship game. And in a darn good-sized city like Chicago, which at the time was probably the number three city in the country. Right. And the game is being televised. You know, it's played at Wrigley Field. So only forty-eight thousand people can get in there. And so what they did was, you know, this is, again, still the time when people are thinking pay-per-view is going to be the model. And at that point, there was kind of a it is pay -that something is going to happen in movie theaters. When I was a kid, there were still boxing matches that you'd go to the theater to watch. Or is it something that's going to happen at home? And so at that point, what it was, they had three locations like the McCormick Center, a big convention center like Chicago Stadium or something like that, and some big theater. But they had forty-eight thousand in Wrigley Field. They had twenty-five and a half thousand people in the history theaters to watch the game, you know. And, you know, if you live far enough outside of Chicago, then you just drove to the boundary line, and you went to a bar and watched it, you know, watch the game there. But so, I mean, it just tells you how many people would want to go watch a game and pay for it. And it was, you know, this game was the end of December. So if you went and watched it at a pay-per-view location, it was warm, which is nice, you know. And, you know, there were still a lot of people at that time predicting pay-per-view was going to be the model. Right. And, you know, we've talked about this before, where the idea is there, but the technology isn't to make it happen. Right. Whether that's equipment or broadcasting. And in this case, it was broadcasting. So there were people saying that what was going to happen was that they were going to be in a community. You'd have your television, and then you'd have an attachment on top of your television where you would feed quarters into this little box, you know, like a parking meter kind of thing, and get to watch some show for 25 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever it was. And but it was like, I mean, people were like, yeah, this is going to happen. And, you know, then it's like, well, who the hell is going to come around and collect all these all these quarters? You know, you've got to make sure somebody is home to get in their house to collect them and but actually, actually, after writing this, I found out there was actually one city, I forget where it was, but there was one city, at least, where they actually had this whole system set up, and people would go around and collect the quarters from people's houses. It's just bizarre. But, you know, again, this is, you know, there weren't credit cards, there weren't magnetic strips. I mean, there were credit cards, but there were paper, you know, there were no magnetic strips. There's no subscription, and you can't pay by the Internet. There's no streaming, you know, all that kind of stuff. Things we take for granted today. So you can't hear it? Well, why didn't they just stream it? Well, you know, there was no streaming. Right. So anyway, I just think it's really fun to kind of look back at that. But it's this thing of, you know, it's, you know, what they call the naturalistic assumption just because you can't get an ought from it, just because something is that way. It doesn't mean it ought to be that way or had to be that way. And so, you know, that's kind of the history that is written by what happened, largely by what happened as opposed to what could have happened. You know, so yeah, it's just an amusing, amusing episode. 

Darin Hayes: 
Yeah, definitely. Did they call it pay-per-view in your area when you were growing up? Here, they called those for boxing, wrestling, and anything like that. It was called Close Circuit TV. 

Timothy Brown: 
Yeah, I think most people call it the closed circuit. But yeah, actually, closed circuit. Another thing about football, you know, there was a period, actually, mostly in the early 60s, where maybe it was a little bit earlier, maybe it was the late 50s too. But there was a time when people's football coaches started using closed circuit technology to watch game film while the game was going on, or game tape. And they do it on the sidelines; they do it up in the booth. And then they finally axed that because at the college level, they axed it more for money. You know, it just became an arms race, you know, a technology arms race. And then the NFL just said, boom, no more of this. So that is the underlying reason why even today, I mean, people now have the pads and iPads on the sideline. But basically, 

Darin Hayes: 
You get the sponsor; it's Microsoft Surface. That's the only thing else. Yes, yes, sorry. 

Timothy Brown: 
My bad. Well, the NFL police were coming to your sponsorship rights, not mine. I've got my socks pulled up all the way, by the way. Um, so yeah, but you know, so, I mean that whole thing of not having technology on the sideline originated during this pay-per-view and closed circuit, you know, same, same technology, same underlying technology and time. 

Darin Hayes: 
Yeah, I guess the other question is that it's more of an ethical question. I know you said in the beginning that you have the free peacock, and you got it on. Well, I have the free version of Peacock, and I couldn't get that game. They, they, they wanted me to pay the, whatever, $5, $7 a month, uh, to join their, their peacock hub or whatever the hall it is to watch this. I was one of the ones that, uh, I, I said, just on the purpose of it. I said, why, why can I watch every other playoff game? And I can't watch this sub-zero game with the Dolphins going to Kansas City. 

Timothy Brown: 
Well, so, like myself, I do ESPN Plus because that gives me access to the college games for basically an FCS kind of school that I, you know, follow; I get their Football and basketball that way. And in the past, it gave me access to a lot of CFL games. So you know, it's like, I'll pay that, you know, to get access, right? I have that as well. Yeah, but, you know, I don't think it'd be a tough call for me to pay more money for something else just to watch a couple of games here and there. 

Darin Hayes: 
Yeah, I don't know where they plan because I know they plan on doing more games this coming year on that same thing. And I heard they might be because I think every team is going to be playing a game out of the country. That's what they had in 17 games. So, every team will eventually lose one home game. I don't think it's going to be fully that way this year. But I think they may be doing that to those games, not just in 2024 but years beyond that, I heard, where you can't go to the stadium. And the only way you can watch your team is to do, you know, Amazon; you have to have Amazon Prime where you got to have peacock, or you have Paramount or whatever there, whoever else is going to join the club here for viewing televisions. 

Timothy Brown: 
you know, we'll see how all that stuff works out. I mean, you know, it's, it's one of those things where, you know, I think, generally the the availability has increased the popularity, you know, over time. And now, they're starting to try to figure out, okay, is there still a way to make even more money? And, you know, maybe they're gonna kill the golden goose, but, you know, that's for other people to decide. 

Darin Hayes: 
Yeah, right. And I didn't even see what the numbers were. I don't know if they made them public or what the numbers were for that peacock game. I would have to believe they got a small portion of what they would have normally gotten if it had been on NBC. 

Timothy Brown: 
Yeah, I don't know, you know, I don't, you know, I, I watch, I'm pretty religious about watching my favorite teams, but for the, the average, you know, Sunday afternoon NFL game, I don't watch much of anything. You know, I'll watch a little bit here and there, but not really. 

Darin Hayes: 
Yeah. All right. Well, Hey, I mean, it's a great story, and it's something that's, uh, you know, sort of coming true in our lifetime here. So we may have to be facing that more and more as we go on. Cause I know there's at least two or three games this coming season, regular season and playoff games where they plan on having it, uh, you know, well, there's Amazon every week. So, I guess we are paying for it now in some respects. People don't have enough Amazon to pay for that, but yeah, it's coming. And, uh, you know, like I say, the NFL is a billion-dollar industry for a reason. And that's, uh, they know how to make money off folks like us. That's for sure. Um, we'll see. Yeah. Right now, Tim, you have, uh, you know, some great pieces of history, just like you spoke about here, uh, that you write about on a regular basis. And, uh, you, you have, I believe, a thousand of them now. Maybe you could share with the listeners and viewers where they can enjoy some of your writing. 

Timothy Brown: 
Yeah, it's footballarcheology.com. It's a Substack app or Substack newsletter blog. So just go there, subscribe. You'll get an email every day, or not every day, but every time I publish. And alternatively, you can follow me on Twitter, on threads, or on the Substack app. And at least you'll get exposed to what's out there. 

Darin Hayes: 
All right, Tim, we really appreciate you sharing this story with us and enjoy having you here each week, and we hope to talk to you again next Tuesday. 

Timothy Brown: 
Yeah, look forward to it. Thank you. 

---

They say necessity is the mother of invention, and in the world of football, that invention sometimes comes wrapped in a pigskin and launched downfield. Today, we delve into a groundbreaking moment – the first ever extra point conversion by forward pass in American football history.

This wasn't just another point attempt; it was a play that challenged the status quo and redefined the way points were scored. Join us on a podcast journey with Timothy Brown and article exploration as we dissect this pivotal moment. We'll meet the players and coaches who dared to defy convention, analyze the strategic thinking behind the play call, and explore the impact it had on the game's evolution.

Was it a stroke of genius or a desperate gamble? Did it spark a revolution in offensive strategy, or was it a one-off act of audacious improvisation? We'll uncover the story behind the throw, the roar of the crowd, and the lasting legacy of this innovative play that forever changed the way extra points were scored. So, buckle up, football fans, and get ready to revisit a moment where forward-thinking met football history!

Could this be the first instance of a converted extra-point attempt after a TD via a forward pass? Timothy P. Brown tells the play's story as the Washington & Jefferson Presidents played the Lafayette Leopards in 1921.

-Transcription of Extra Point via the Forward Pass 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 guess what? It's Tuesday again.

And we are here with Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com. And he has some great tidbits from some of his past writings that he's going to come on and chat a little bit about. Tonight, we're going to be talking about a very interesting one that came out in March. Tim Brown, welcome to The Pig Pen.

Darin, good to see you again and get a chance to chat about old-time football stuff. Always fun. Yeah, old time football.

There's nothing like it. And there's so much that we don't know about it that your tidbits really bring to light. And, you know, I learned so much from really enjoying them.

And you always have something that I'm going to take out of each one of those and, you know, store it in the old crock pot because it's something interesting from football yesteryear. And tonight is no exception. You really have an interesting one, sort of a development of the game that, in some cases, we still see today.

Yeah. You know, so this one's about the first. Extra point conversion by forward pass.

Right. And so, you know, there's a lot of stuff in football, and sometimes when I'm writing stuff, it's like, well, this was the first time this happened. OK, well, this is the first time we know it happened.

In a number of cases, you know, did it happen another time before that could be, you know, and especially earlier on, we get the more it's dependent on, you know, it happens when there was a reporter there when they wrote it in the newspaper. So, I just wrote fairly recently about the first crisscross or reverse in a football game. And that occurred in 1888 at Phillips Handover, the prep school, you know, in the east.

And but, you know, big time school, wealthy kids, wealthy alums got reported in Boston newspapers. And therefore, we know what happened. Did somebody else pull it off somewhere else beforehand? Could have been.

But, you know, the received wisdom is this is when it happened. So now, with the first extra point conversion by forward passes, the timing is a lot easier to figure out than when that first happened because until 1922, if you were going to convert the, you know, after scoring a touchdown, if you were going to do the goal after touchdown, you had to kick it there. You couldn't run it.

You couldn't pass it. So it had to be by kick. So we know that the first conversion bypass couldn't have occurred until 1922.

So then we get into, OK, well, when in 1922 did it happen? And so I at least don't have it. I mean, try as I might, I could search every newspaper archive and comb through every book that I own. I don't have a real effective way to try to find that first time. So, in this case, I'm relying on a newspaper report from 1954.

So a look back article saying, hey, here's what happened in 1922. But the cool thing was it wasn't a high-profile game. By two teams that you might not think of as high profile teams nowadays, but in 22, they were.

So it was a game, you know, kind of, you know, maybe the fourth week of the season, a game between Lafayette and Washington and Jefferson. So, you know, nowadays you go, OK, Lafayette and Washington and Jefferson. But at the time, Lafayette was riding a 17-game winning streak.

Washington and Jefferson was on a 17 point unbeaten streak. And I say unbeaten because they had tied California in the 1922 Rose Bowl or. Yeah, so.

So anyway. You know, they. You know, so really, two top teams are playing, and they're playing on the polo grounds.

So in until 1922, I guess, you know, you had to you had to kick it. Typically, people drop-kicked it, but they did the placement kick as well. So then in 22, you got the ball at the five-yard line.

You could kick it, you could drop kick it, you could snap it to a holder in place, kick it, you could run it, or you could pass it in for a touchdown or not for a touchdown, but for the conversion. But of course, you know, since it's starting from the five. The kick is probably your better option unless you don't have a good drop kicker, or you don't have a good place kicker, a good snapper, or a good holder.

Right. So, as it turned out, in this game, Lafayette went ahead 13 to nothing in the first half. And so, you know, Washington Jefferson's kind of chugging along a little bit.

But then in the third quarter, they score a touchdown and convert. So now it's 13 to seven in the fourth quarter. Lafayette, Washington Jefferson's quarterback, a guy named Brinkert.

He throws a touchdown pass. So now it's a 13-13 tie. And so the game depends on their ability to convert.

So he had the previous time they scored; he had drop-kicked it. The quarterback had drop-kicked for the extra point. So this time around, he sets up, you know, the team sets up just like he's going to dropkick again.

They snap it to him. And one of their ends, who are playing in tight as they typically did, then, you know, scoot out into the end zone all alone, and he tosses him the P, and they convert the extra point bypass. So again, we think that's the first conversion by a forward pass.

And they, you know, they ended up winning the game. That was that was the last score of the game. And so all the.

You know, all the other W and J fans leave happily in the Lafayette fans are disappointed. So what? So I have a trivia question for you. But if about what's well about Washington Jefferson.

But I'm going to set that aside to see if you want to cover it. If you have questions about the game or anything like that, we need to discuss. Well, I guess one of the questions is not particularly about the forward pass, but it's right about that time, as you share in your story, and you just mentioned it is one of the ways was the kick for the extra point similar to what we know today. Maybe the scoring was a little bit different.

Now, where's how was I'm interested in how the holder may have been because I know on free kicks, the holder was lying flat on their stomach, which I'm not exactly sure why, why they laid on their stomach to do that. You know, we said that we have holders today for free kicks on a windy day when, in the NFL, you have a holder on the ball. But I was just wondering, would did they take a snap from their stomach while the holder was on a stomach for those kicks? Or is it more similar on a knee like we do today? Yeah, I think I've seen different versions of that.

Initially, they may have tried to do the thing on the stomach. So, you know, the reason they did it on the stomach was on the free kick. The defense had to be 10 yards back of the ball.

And so as soon as as soon as the holder or they used to call him a placer, but as soon as the holder set the ball on the ground or as soon as the ball touched the ground, the defense could rush. So what they what the holder would do is lay prone. You know, you basically run on it.

You'd lay on his stomach and perpendicular to the path of the kicker. Right. Then he put one hand under the ball and one hand over the ball, balanced it, and held it right close to the ground.

And then, when the kicker was ready, he pulled the underhand out. And then, you know, so the ball was sitting on the ground, held by his upper hand. And then the kicker would come through, you know, follow the path and kick it.

So, you know, I think. You know exactly why it developed that way. It's kind of hard to know, but it does make sense.

You know, I mean, in a nun or in a free-kick situation, that particular method of holding makes sense. Now, once you introduce the snap. So, the snap to the holder originated in 1896.

And, you know, it's just one of those nobody thought about it before. So two brothers who, you know, played at Otterbein in Ohio developed it and then it spread quickly. But they but still most people still drop kicked anyways, because that's what, you know, the guys were trained to do.

So in those situations, I mean, early on, I believe mostly what they did was you know, the football was still transitioning from rolling the ball on its side. There was still some of that or tumbling it back rather than really kind of a long snap like we think of it today. So they a lot of times a holder would kind of squat like a catcher in baseball.

And, you know, so you could move a little bit to grab the ball and then set it down. And then they started switching to, you know, what we think of today as a holder. I don't know what you call that position, you know, one knee on the ground or one knee.

Raised, but, you know, I've got pictures of even into the late 30s. I believe it is. I've got a picture of an Arizona player still doing it.

The squatter, you know, the squatting catcher's way. So it probably depended on how accurate your long snapper was, you know, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, it's one of those that, you know, when we think of the snapping position or the holder's position, that's the only way that makes sense.

But, you know, they tried different things along the way. But the catcher's position definitely makes a lot of sense. You know, adopting it from baseball, you know, you have a wild pitch, which is much like a snap.

You don't know where it's going to go sometimes. And they can maneuver a little bit. And probably they probably had a guy that played catcher on the baseball team, maybe as a holder to he's familiar from maneuvering that.

So that makes a good sense. So, all right. Well, thank you for that.

That's a good explanation. So, OK, what do you get for your trivia question? OK, so this may be one of my favorite trivia questions, but, you know, we've talked enough that maybe this is an obvious answer to you, but maybe not so much for your audience. So, you probably should allow the audience a little bit of time to figure it out.

OK, so the question is, there are four teams that do not currently play. FBS football has played in the Rose Bowl game. What are those four teams that are not currently in the FBS and played in a Rose Bowl game? Yeah.

OK, folks, before I answer, if you want to hit pause and answer it yourself, and I'm going to proceed to answer. I think I mentioned one of them earlier in the podcast. OK, well, let me let me say, does it does it count military teams? Are you counting military teams in that? Yes, I am.

OK. All right. Well, after spending almost 50 days of Rose Bowl coverage just a few months ago, I hope I get this right.

So, I think the Great Lakes team, I'm going to say Washington and Jefferson because we're talking about them tonight. That's two.

Let's see. Was it Columbia? No, no, Cornell, the other Ivy League. No, neither one of them ever played.

Well, Cornell or Columbia played in the 34. Yeah, Columbia. I must say, but it's not them.

No. OK, Harvard, because they're not FBS. No.

OK, I'm trying to think about who the other military team that played in the World War One era was. Well, actually. OK, so I asked the question, which should be, are you currently not playing Division One because there are teams like Harvard and Columbia?

OK. All right. OK.

FCS. Yeah. OK.

OK. Not a problem. No problem.

All right. OK, so they're so they're they're not playing in Division One football at all. So.

All right. So, OK, so you said Great Lakes, W and W and J, W and J. I'm trying to think of the military team from California that the one starts with an M. I took my tongue out. I'm not it's like Miramont or something.

And it's not. Yeah. So Mare Island, Mare Island, that's what they played twice.

They played in 18 and 19. And then. Another military team.

Great Lakes, I'm stumped on the last one; I'm stumped on the last military team. Great Lakes and Mare Island played in the 1919 game, and Mare Island and Camp Lewis played. OK, in the 18 game.

Camp Lewis is sometimes referred to as the 91st Division because that's where that Division was stationed. OK, you took away my easy bunnies with the Ivy League schools. I thought I had.

Yeah, I screwed up with the way I asked the question. So, I apologize. And to all the listeners that are scouring their brains trying to figure out the answer.

So it should have been like FBS or FCS schools. Yeah, or just D1. So normally, you know, there are some people when I ask this question, who either just draw a blank, or they might know there are these military teams.

But hardly anybody knows about Washington Jefferson. They're typically the toughest ones. The only reason I know about Washington Jefferson is because I'm in the process of doing a lot of research on a book that has a lot of W and J players in it.

However, from the late 1890s and early 1900s, they played with W and J. But I have a couple of books on W and J football. It's kind of still fresh in my mind. So, I know you're a PA guy.

That's right. They're the Western PA team. So, for the South Southern team from us, I think you can be a Western PA, and we're the first Norse.

But hey, that's true. Hey, great question, though. I really like the fact that it was a good one.

So, Tim, your tidbits are, you know, bringing up items like this constantly every single day, sometimes a couple of times a day. Why don't you share with the listeners how they, too, can share in on all the fun of hearing these? Yeah, so, you know, best way is just to go to my website, footballarchaeology.com, subscribe. And that by doing that, you'll you'll get an email every night at like seven o'clock.

I may actually push that a little bit later. But anyways, we'll get an email that with, you know, with the story for that that evening. And, you know, if you if you don't want the emails, then just you can follow me on Twitter, though, that's becoming less and less useful as the days go on.

I even did a blue checkmark, which, you know, I normally wouldn't have done. But, you know, that doesn't seem to help. I did the same and had mixed results myself, but we'll see how it goes.

So. All right, Tim, I appreciate it. And we'll talk to you again next week with some more great football history.

Hey, thank you, sir. I appreciate it and look forward to it.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

---

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

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

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

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

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

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Good to see you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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