Football History

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The Football Archaeology of the Football Men Who Endorsed and helped Goldsmith Sporting Goods to make football equipment in 1935.

Helmets are probably the first piece of equipment we think of when someone asks us about football. The head covering may be the most recognizable element of the gridiron.

Timothy Brown, like many of us, is enamored by the evolution of the football helmet as a product and safety device. Tim collects football catalogs selling the equipment and then dives into the variations and innovations that were derived along the way.

In a recent post, 1935 GoldSmith Sports Equipment Consulting Staff, Tim delved into the 1935 Coaching Consultants and reps that GoldSmith had and then came on to share what he found with us on a podcast episode.

-Transcription of 1935 GoldSmith Sports Equipment Consulting Staff with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends, this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history, and welcome to another Tuesday as we get to visit with our friend Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Thank you, sir. Look forward to chatting again, as always, and hopefully we'll have something interesting for people to listen to.

Yeah, you, Tim, you have some amazing things happening, you know, each and every day, and every once in a while you get some of these zingers that like, just like, I can't call it an earworm, I don't know what it is, it just, it stays with me all day when I read it. I read it in the evening and it stays with me through the night. I'm laying in bed thinking about it, wake up next morning, and one of those is, you keep going into the Goldsmith's catalog, and you had one that, you know, that you had back in September out as a tidbit that talks about some staff that Goldsmith's catalog got some information from, so maybe you could talk a little bit about that tonight.

Yeah, so, you know, so I guess, you know, first off, just, you know, by way of background, I have something on the order, you know, 30 or 40 vintage sporting goods catalogs, you know, so I collect them over time, or I've collected them over time, it's just a way to be able to look up, okay, well, you know, some of it's just images, you know, for the tidbits, but it's also just, you know, you can look at them and understand, okay, this is what this equipment was made of at the time, and how things changed and things that they created that disappeared because they didn't really work very well, or they were uncomfortable, you know, whatever it may have been. Anyways, I collect these catalogs, and most of them, I'm just, you know, I'm buying them online, and so I don't, typically, I'm only seeing like cover photographs, a couple of inside pages, but I don't know what, you know, it's not like, you know, it can be a 90 page catalog, but I'm only seeing images of a couple of them. Anyways, this was one of those, you know, I bought this, Goldsmith was a big brand at the time, and I didn't have a lot of Goldsmith catalogs, so I, you know, picked this one up.
And, you know, then once it was delivered, it was like, right away, okay, this is really cool, because in addition to just normal pages, showing the equipment, the pricing and everything for shoulder pads and helmets and whatever, each of the different major types of equipment, they had a lead in cartoon page that kind of told the history of that type of equipment, the history of football shoes, the history of helmets. And so, it was, number one, it's just kind of fun imagery, they're interesting cartoons. So, it was just a way to, you know, kind of go through those, and then, you know, what I've done, you know, it's a series of, there will be an eighth week now, but, you know, so it's just a way to publish, to do these, show these cartoons, and then just go through the equipment of the time.

And so, this is mid-30s, you know, so what was equipment like, you know, then. And so, this, the first of those cartoons was about what they called their consulting staff. And so, that was, you know, essentially, consulting staff was like, the coaches, and one trainer, who were their, like, their advisory staff, they were the guys who they would go to, to talk through, you know, what kinds of changes do we need for the equipment, or if they had a research and development group, they would show them, they'd show these coaches, hey, here's what we've come up with, what do you think about this? Can you have you guys wear this stuff in spring practice, or in regular practice, and see how it performs? You know, so they were, you know, obviously, these coaches were paid.

And in many cases, they, that, you know, the manufacturers would then, you know, just like your old baseball gloves, where it was like, the Mickey Mantle glove, or whatever, you know, there were, there were pants, and helmets, and footballs, that had the Newt Rockne name on it, or who met Pop Warner, and John Heisman, and, you know, so. Well, Tim, was, was Goldsmith, were they sort of in the Midwest? Is that what I'm getting a sense of? Or what part of the country were they centered out of? You know, a lot of the coaches that are on this advisory staff are Midwest guys. So, I kind of get a sense of that.

But, you know, there was a lot of Midwest, like D&M was out east, they were like a Massachusetts firm, but Spalding was Midwest, Reach, I believe, was Midwest, or a couple down in St. Louis. So, yeah, I don't have that catalog in front of me. But I could, you know, I could look, look it up.

And I can, you know, let you know, you know, kind of where they were based. Yeah, that's, that's what I was, Is there a reason you ask her? Well, I know that Spalding was out of Chicago, and it just seemed, you know, and it seems like, like you said, this, a lot of these coaches are Midwestern teams, Western Conference, Big Ten teams. And I just wondering, you know, if there was a reason why maybe, you know, distribution or something that they were in the center of the country because you really, you think about that area, you know, football starting in the east and moving west, you'd almost think the equipment would be more of an eastern-based, you know, industrial shipping out.

But just curious. Yeah, I think, well, my understanding is a lot of it was the stockyards in Chicago, you know, so there was access to leather. Okay, you know, so I mean, so much of the early equipment, yeah, so much of the early equipment was leather, that, you know, it made more sense to be where you could pick and choose and get high-grade leathers and yada, yada, yada.

So, yeah, I mean, it's funny, it's one of those things you wouldn't even think is, you know, there's no reason anymore, you know, to be near a source of leather.
Obviously, you know, baseball gloves are a different story. But otherwise, you know, most football equipment, there's no leather involved anymore.

And then the ball, you know, obviously, the balls were leather. So anyways, yeah, that's, that's why I love it, you know, started in the Midwest. That makes perfect sense.

Okay, thanks. Yeah, so, so then, you know, like these coaches were, you know, the folks that they had on at that point, so in 1935, they had a Hunk Anderson, who was at North Carolina State, but it just finished a tour at Notre Dame. So Midwest, then he had played at Notre Dame.

Noble Kizer was at Purdue. Fritz Crisler was at Princeton, but he had been at, he had played at Uof Chicago. He had coached Minnesota before going to Princeton.

And then obviously ended up at Michigan. Doc Spears had been all over. Well, he kind of he was a journeyman, he was actually a doctor, but a football coach, but he was at Wisconsin at the time.

And I can't remember if he had just gone there. I think he got fired after that, and then went out to Oregon, or it could have been the other way around. And then this guy, Frank Major Wandel, from Yale, who was, he was one of those interesting guys at the time, there were a lot of, it's kind of like, you know, there are these strength and conditioning coaches now who are, you know, kind of, they have their own brand, they're, they're nationally known, nationally recognized guys.

And, you know, back then, there were trainers like that, too. And he was one of them. So he'd been longtime trainer at West Point, and he ends up down at, I think it was LSU for a couple of years.

Then he ends up at Yale, which is where he was at at the time. So, so actually, the mix isn't that much Midwestern. But it's interesting, because the image that you have, and folks, if you've got to enjoy these images that Tim's talking about, we have link in the show notes, you can go to Tim's page and see some of these, he's talking about these cartoons.

But Major Wandel, you know, everybody else is sort of wearing like white knickers. And he's got like, I don't know if they're plaid knickers, or, but that's what jumps out of you on the page to me, is these knickers. And it's he's in the lower right hand corner of the page I'm looking at, but he must have been a character to have some like looks like he's golfing, maybe.

Yeah, I mean, he's one of those guys who just like came out of some gym in New Jersey, and ended up eventually hooking in with, he did some training, you know, during World War One, and then ends up at West Point for quite a while. But yeah, I mean, back then, trainers were function both. They handled both the kind of sports medicine side, you know, they weren't physicians.

But when we think about athletic training, we're thinking about, you know, hot baths, and cold baths, and, you know, taping guys, and, you know, some kind of contraption, you know, so it doesn't hurt, as well as strength and condition. So they were both at the time, and mostly conditioning, they didn't do as much strength work. But yeah, a lot of these guys were, you know, they're big on the whole, getting guys to roll on the ground to toughen them up.

Things that we now think are pretty absurd, but, you know, that was kind of core beliefs at the time. Yeah, I can remember back when I was playing when I was, like, I think the first year I played, maybe I was in fifth grade or something. I remember our coach, he was old school.

He was an older guy. And you'd have part of your calisthenics, you'd run in place, and then drop and make sure your stomach hits first, because that's going to toughen your gut up, you know, as everybody gets the wind knocked out of when you hit the ground, and you're gasping trying to get back up. But I picture that kind of training.

Yeah, that was the deal. But one of the things I thought was kind of cool, I can't remember, you know, which eater left this as a comment or a question, but, you know, I'm a Purdue fan. And, you know, there were a lot of schools back in the 30s that wore winged helmets, right? I mean, we now associated with just a select few schools.

But back then, it was very common. Nevertheless, you know, this guy made a comment that you know, back in the 30s, mid-30s, in particular, Purdue wore winged helmets, you know, so wing in front straps, you know, going back, kind of, you know, the Michigan, Delaware, Princeton style now. But she's like, so that's where you know because Noble was one of these advisory coaches.

And so I would bet if you look at images of the Purdue team from that era, there probably weren't some, some form of Goldsmith helmet, right? So as opposed to some competitive brand. So anyways, but for him, it was kind of a neat insight because it's like, so that's why they were those, those stupid. Now, with these coaches, sort of being on the board of directors, or the consultants of the now the day, is that, you know, their teams buy all their equipment from a Goldsmith, then is that was that's part of the deal of, you know, I've never really seen anything that goes into the details of those kinds of contracts.

I mean, I've read a few things about Knute Rockne because he was like, I mean if you think that there's somebody that, that is on every commercial nowadays, like, you know, save been, you know, down in Alabama's on a fair amount of stuff. But Rockne was, I mean, he was pitching, obviously, all kinds of athletic equipment. And then he pitched Ramblers or Studebakers, you know, one of those brands, he made coffee, he did all you know, stuff for Kelloggs, a lot of stuff for Kelloggs, and they had coffee at the time.

I just thought Barbasol was big on Barbasol. So he was from a Holmes and Travis Kelsey, eat your hearts out. Newt Rocky was first.

That's right. Major sponsor ambassador. Yeah.

Okay, so well, yes. Did the coach or did the teams buy that brand of equipment? And so I've never really, you know, I've never seen anything definitive. In that regard, and I have this kind of a storyline I've never checked into.

You know, I have read a number of things with Newt Rocky and his, you know, he, he promoted a lot of different kinds of consumer goods, but then also a lot of football equipment. So I mean, I have to believe that they, at minimum, they benefited from the, you know, they got discounts on the equipment, and in some cases, free stuff in order to test it, you know, it had to be that kind of thing going on. But, you know, the research I've done in the past about, you know, like when logos first came, you know, when logos became prominent in the 60s, really Adidas, you know, among track athletes that whole thing got going, and they were, you know, giving away equipment, paying athletes to wear their branded goods.

So that's really where that started. But there were probably, you know, less, you know, maybe a little bit less formal, you know, kinds of, you know, deals in the past, right? You know, yeah, I'm just picturing like a high school coach or athletic director saying, Hey, you know, Fritz Kreisler's endorsing this product, goldsmith, we better write our equipment there, because, you know, we're, we're Fritz Kreisler fans, or, you know, you know, Hunky Anderson fans, whatever, you know, they see they're endorsing it. And, you know, that's probably a lot of the attraction from for having them on the covers.

Yeah. And, you know, I'm sure they got that they got paid something just like, you know, the baseball gloves. And, you know, those athletes got things, and somehow they get money when their gloves are sold.

Right. So right. But, you know, the details of it, I don't understand, or, you know, really know anything about.

I wonder, I picture, you know because you have some great images of the helmets. I wonder maybe, you know, we can look back at some old photographs. Maybe I'll do that in some spare time here and look and see if you can tell a goldsmith helmet from, you know, a Spalding or some of the other manufacturers.
And maybe you can tell that way and say, Hey, you know, Purdue was wearing a goldsmith in 37 or. Yeah. And yeah.

Well, even in that article, I did do that. I couldn't find a good sharp image of the Princeton team from that era to see, well, what helmet they wore? Well, in fact, what I, the only thing I really found was a, it was a painting or an illustration from a year, you know, Princeton yearbook. And the helmets of Princeton players are wearing what we think of as a classic winged helmet.

It was. There's a helmet style. It kind of looks like, now I'm blanking on the term, but it's kind of like a three-leaf clover sort of design. It's, you know, so anyway, but, you know, and Goldsmith offered that helmet and, or that style of helmet, but I think others did as well.

So sometimes it's hard to tell like what brand, because, you know, people, you know, they, they wore, you know, they had similar designs, you know, different brands. Okay. Gotcha.

All right. So go ahead and continue. Yeah.

Well, I was mostly just gonna say, I'm not sure, you know, I'm just, I put together some notes in advance. And so I don't know that I had had anything else. I mean, other than just one of the things that's pretty remarkable, as in all the catalogs or in all the different products, is it like on helmets, you could go from, like, say, a $15 helmet down to like one that costs $2 and 35 cents.

So the, you know, they, they end up having these high end helmets, and then, then there's kind of moderately priced ones, and then there's pretty inexpensive helmets. And so you just gotta, you know, it's like now, every helmet has to meet a certain base at least, you know, performance level, you know, based on Noxi. But, you know, back then, it was like, well, no, we, this is a helmet, it's good.

You know, but there's no measurement standards or anything. It's just like you're taking somebody's word for it. Yeah, that leads into one of the questions I was gonna ask you because the the ad for the helmets that you have on this tidbit, you know, it has three examples of helmets that they were promoting.

And all of them say leather lined. Now, what would be the alternative to leather-lined in that era? Would it be like, you know, cloth or something? Or, you know? Yeah, I think the internals were either leather or felt for the most part. And so you'll, you'll also see things.

You pretty much have to look at the less expensive ones to get a handle on the alternatives. For example, moleskin was kind of a high-end material for pants. It was not as popular in the 1930s, but it was still a high-end material.

Canvas was a low-end material. And then there might be different kinds of twills and maybe duck and whatever. I don't even know what some of those things really are, that they're one form of cotton, you know, material or another, but then by the 30s, you were getting into, you know, silk, and a lot of times it's like airplane cloth, which is actually a form of silk.

So silk, and then I'm blanking on the kind of the really shiny material that satin, you'd see that satin, yeah, it's so you'd see satin on the front of you know, certain, certain teams pants. So yeah, I mean, some of it was once they got into some of the, the not-so-like silk, one of the real values of it was lighter, much more water repellent, you know, so it didn't soak up sweat and, you know, water in a rainy situation. So the players, you know, felt lighter, but it also silk is much easier to dye.

And you can do a much broader range of colors, whereas the duck and canvas pretty much always had earth tones, you know, one or tone or another. So everybody wore kind of the same look in pants until New York versus wearing purple pants. So, you know, I mean, it's, you think about it, that was a big deal.

Awesome. Somebody, hey, they're wearable pants. Right? Yeah, I was just trying to go when you were saying, you know, that from the $15 helmet down to the $2 and 35 cent helmet, I'm picturing, you know, hey, you know, varsity players, you get the $15 helmet with a leather lined and freshmen, you're going to get the burlap lined helmets, you know, uncomfortable.

Yeah, well, I'm sure that sure that was short, obviously, the freshmen who were wearing the stuff, those latest and greatest 10 years ago. Right. And the thing on some of that is, I was looking at, so I'm still writing, you know, writing one of these, and it there's, there's kind of like a flap in the back between kind of the ear hole area in the back.

It's got some kind of flexible extension, some kind of elastic band there. So there was that part of the sizing. If you look at the catalog, sometimes not a lot is said about helmet sizing.

And so, you know, I always had a big old water bucket head. So I needed a big helmet. I've got a younger brothers, you know, got a pinhead.

And, you know, so, but presumably, we would have been issued the same helmet. So, yeah, I'm sure they had some kind of size variations, but, you know, they don't talk about much of the catalog size variations. You had to stuff some straw or a rag in the back or something to make it stay on your head.

Tim, that's a fascinating stuff. And you've, you've got a lot of these goldsmiths that you've been coming out as you said, you had an eight-part series on it, but you have a lot of other interesting stuff coming out, you know, seven days a week. Maybe you could share with folks how they could get in touch with you to learn about your tidbits and read them each and every day.

Yeah. So, you know, so my preferring would be that it just visits the site and you subscribe. And, you know, that way, basically if you're subscribed, you can, you'll get the, you'll get the tidbit by email every night.

Cause I assume it's seven o'clock Eastern. If you, if you're a Substack reader, you can also just get it and follow me on Substack. And then, you know, you'll, you'll be able to get them every night.

Some people don't want the email, but there you go. They like getting it on Substack. I also, at least for now, tweet it every night.

And then I also posted on the application threads. So me on one of those, it's always Football Archaeology. You know, if you enter that, you'll find me.

And then it's kind of like happy reading. All right. Well, Timothy Brown, thank you.
Once again, footballarchaeology.com is the place to go and we appreciate you, sir. And we will talk to you again next Tuesday.

Very good.

Thank you. Thanks, Tim.

Transcribed by TurboScribe

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The modern-day football helmet seems to be changing almost annually to make the game safer. At no time since the inception of wearing protective headgear did it change more drastically than when leather helmets were replaced with the new plastic technology?

One of the top experts in early football rules history Timothy P. Brown joins us in the discussion to chat about the transition of the material composition of helmets. Timothy Brown's FootballArchaeology.com has a daily football factoid that he shares that is really quite interesting in a short read.

This chat is based on Tim's original Tidbit titled: Transitioning from Leather to Plastic.

-Transcribed Leather to Plastic Helmets with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends, this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And we like to look down that portal every Tuesday and go into some football archaeology with our friend Tim Brown of that very site, Football Archaeology. Tim Brown, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Thanks for having me back. Looking forward to chatting once again.

Yeah, we are really enjoying these these Tuesday meetings that we have and, you know, talking about some different aspects of football that are sort of some of them are a little out there. They're not directly related to the game. Some are very directly related to the game, but they're all very interesting indeed, and we really appreciate you sharing these with us.

Yeah. You know, I just love football in all dimensions, including the technical side of the game, the fan experience, and how it's handled in the media. And so equipment and uniforms, all that kind of stuff.

And so, you know, I just try to approach it from a different place, you know, every couple of days to, you know, basically try to mix it up, you know, try to do some different things. Well, I'm glad you said you would like to talk about the uniforms and some of the equipment because I think that's a subject I'd like to discuss today because you had a recent tidbit out, and you called it the transition from leather to plastic. It's one of those things that's not directly involved in the game of football, but it's such an important element of it and such a big change that happened to the game.

And I'd sure like to hear about it. Yeah, well, I mean, I think the development of plastic helmets and then, you know, metal-reinforced face masks is one of the defining elements of today's game. And so, I mean, obviously, a lot happened before that, but the game just has changed dramatically as a result of that development.

So, you know, I think the thing that's that, you know, maybe people don't recognize it when they, with the Intercollegiate Football Association, adopted word for word effectively, adopted the rugby rules in 1876. I mean, they changed three or four rules, but nothing, nothing really significant. Well, one of the rules that came along from rugby was a rule that basically said that you could not players could not wear anything that had a hard substance.

And they cited a substance called gutta-percha, which was some kind of rosin or, you know, it was basically like what we might think of as an early plastic. And, you know, it came off of trees from Indonesia or whatever. But so, you know, anything that was hard could not be worn on the uniform.

So, you know, all the protective gear early on was soft leathers. Right. So when they had any kind of head harness, there's a softer leather is heavily padded, both on the outside and inside.

You know, the shoulder pads that they wore were, you know, fairly just pads filled with felt and horsehair and things like that. They used a little bit of sole leather, which is harder leather, on helmets for a little bit around the turn of the last century. And then they got rid of those.

They basically outlawed them. So so then, you know, football went, you know, continued with this no hard substances thing and then, you know, for decades. And then they kind of started allowing a little bit more sturdy helmets.

Right. Those still those tended to be fairly soft on the outside. But then in 1940, Rydell introduced plastic helmets and Northwestern was first team to wear them.

A few other teams had them early on. And then they also the U.S. Army got a hold of them and actually borrowed helmets from West Point and then basically modified it. And then Rydell became a supplier to the Airborne.

So, you know, Airborne trainees wore Rydell football helmets when they were jumping out of airplanes. You know, you see images of that here and there. But so, the football helmet preceded the crash helmet that the pilots were wearing.

Yeah. So until then, you know, there were people who tried, you know, I mean, if you think about the early guys in planes flying around like gliders. All right.

There was a if you were if you're going to hit the ground, you were really going to hit the ground. And so, you know, they tried to do tried to wear various types of pads on their head. But again, it was more like a football helmet.

And a lot of them, you think about the World War one ace and Snoopy and everything, you know, they're just wearing a leather kind of hood. But so they ended up. They started, you know, they used the because of World War two supply issues, they really couldn't produce any more civilian helmets.

So it really wasn't until after World War two that the helmets kicked in the plastic ones. And so they they were adopted pretty, pretty quickly. But there were still a lot of people holding out there.

You know, folks who just thought these things were too hard. They're causing a lot of injuries. Most guys didn't wear face masks at the time.

So, you know, you got hit in the face by a hard helmet. You know, that didn't feel that good. So and, you know, that's, I think, part of the reason why additional people started wearing face masks.

But yeah, I mean, it was just there was this constant battle of should we retain more of the rugby element where you don't pad up and then let the game go wherever it goes, or do we try to protect players from, you know, I mean, what the plastic helmet did was it protected people from skull fractures. Right. I mean, the leather helmet did that to some extent, but not really.

Plastic helmets did do that, but again, they came at the cost of now you're hitting somebody else with a hard plastic helmet. And then coaches started teaching, you know, spearing and things like that. And, you know, some of the blocking changed to take advantage of the hard helmet.

But they eventually outruled all of that or outlawed all of that. So anyway, it was just kind of an interesting period of time. And, you know, really, I think basically by 61 or 62, pretty much everybody had been switching over to plastic helmets.

You can still buy them, but you can still buy leather, is what I meant. But typically, it was, they're selling, you know, pretty much all over or all. So, it was such a long period of time to, you know, like over a decade, it sounds like maybe a couple of decades for that transition; it wasn't like a wide sweeping change where they, you know, the rules maker said next year, everybody wears plastic helmets.

So you had games for probably some participants were wearing leather and some were wearing plastic. Is that true? Oh yeah. Yeah.

And in fact, so the this, that, that tidbit about the transitioning from leather to plastic, there's an image or two that shows some guys wearing the old leather helmets with the straps, you know, crossing the head or crossing the, you know, the top of the helmet. And then other guys, what's clearly a plastic helmet. So, you know, I think through probably 1949, 50, you would see a lot of that.

And then after that, it became, you know, there were just certain people who just, Hey, this is a helmet I always wore. I wore it in high school. So I'm going to continue wearing it.

You had guys who didn't wear helmets at all. You know, you had the Tommy McDonald's of the world, um, in the NFL who didn't wear a helmet. Um, so, but you know, I think there were just some old school coaches who didn't, you know, who just thought that the, the leather helmet was safer.

Um, I think they were wrong, but that's what they thought, you know? So, um, but the, you know, the other thing was that you know, the, you know, the leather helmet, there was like, it kind of, it wasn't a suspension system, but there were, you know, there was padding inside of it, then, the early plastic helmets were all suspension systems, you know, and I don't know if you ever wore one of those, but I did, you know, and there was, you know, it didn't offer anywhere near as much protection as the padded and the airfield ones that, you know, I was able to wear a little bit later. Um, but you know, the other thing that, you know, you, you mentioned about, you know, there wasn't a rule that said you had to wear a plastic helmet, um, that still really didn't come into place. Um, the, um, the national testing organization, I think it's people call it Noxie, but N O C S A E always got the little stamp on the back of the helmet.

Um, that opened its doors in 68, started certifying helmets in 73. And it wasn't until 78 that the NCAA required anyone playing in a game to have one of those stickers on their helmet. That's I didn't realize it was as recent as that.

I was thinking it was back in the fifties or sixties, but yeah, very interesting. That, you know, it was, um, you know, there was, there was a lot of, you know, testing, a lot of universities were involved in testing the helmet quality. Um, Wayne state, uh, here in the Detroit area was big.

Michigan was big on it. Uh, North Carolina was big on it. So, you know, there were various, um, uh, Northwestern did a bunch of.

Uh, testing in the early sixties with like sensors to measure how hard, you know, the level of contact and, you know, the strength of the hits that were occurring. So, anyway, it was all academic research. And so it wasn't until somewhere in the seventies that they really kind of figured out and had a reasonable set of standards that they could even try to enforce.

Isn't it kind of interesting that, uh, sort of the more things change, the more they stay the same? Now we are seeing teams; all the NFL teams, I think, had to wear the guardian cap over their hard shell, which is a softening. I'm not sure exactly what the materials, but I know it's, it's like a dead deadens, any blows that you take it to the head, uh, where you, you know, instead of having that impact, you know, hard plastic, the hard plastic, whatever the materials they make them out of now.

And, uh, it almost goes back to those days of the, the leather of, you know, that impact, but you still have the hard shell underneath it to give that extra protection. So I'm actually, uh, writing an article on the history of the pad, you know, the external pads, uh, just, you know, partly driven by, you know, kind of the prevalence of the, the guardian, uh, pads, but, you know, so it's, it's an interesting thing. There was a Cornell did a lot of development work on that and, you know, their, their students or their players wore, I think it was just a strip, um, you know, through the middle, but the challenge that they had initially with the external padding was, um, that the, like if it's plastic to plastic, it's fairly clean hit boom.

It's that's it. Whereas with the padding that they had then the, the two helmets stayed in contact with one another and increased the force and increased some of the torque. So that was part of the reason why that never really went forward.

And I think that's probably still part of the case, but I know I'm not enough of a technologist to know that. Just as a side note, I think you probably remember the pro caps in the 1990s. I think a couple of members of the Buffalo Bills wore them.

Um, they were the sort of like that, um, almost like a styrofoam, almost like a wrestling mat type material that you'd put over the top of the helmet. Those were made, uh, or actually found by a guy about five, 10 miles from here, founded them here near Pennsylvania. And they were making those.

So, but never, never took off though. Well, actually I think it's called the thing was called materials called Insolite, but that's the stuff that Cornell initially put on top of their helmets and then Ohio state, Oklahoma, Duke, others use them. Um, that was also Insolite was the first material used to create the initial like wrestling mats that weren't made of horsehair and felt and all that stuff.

So, there's a connection between the two. I mean, it was sort of what I described as a wrestling mat. I wasn't too far off then.

Oh, very interesting. Well, Tim, you did it once again, you educated us on something that was a little bit off the beaten path that, uh, maybe us football fans wouldn't pay attention to, but you're keen. I caught another one and we appreciate that.

Uh, why don't you let folks know, uh, where, where they can find more of your material and, uh, follow you on social media? Yeah. So, um, you can just find me at, uh, footballarchaeology.com. Uh, there's an option.

There's always an option to subscribe. And if you subscribe, you'll get the content into your email box whenever I post anything, which is at least once a day. Um, otherwise follow me on Twitter.

Um, and again, just look for football archaeology, and you should be able to find me. Okay. Tim Brown and football archaeology.

Thank you very much. Once again, we'll talk to you next week.

Okay, cool. Thanks, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

-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 History-of-the-Winged-Helmets">when helmets had wings.

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

---

Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology found some images of two-tone colored football jersey numbers and dug up some history on these unique features from the past.

Tim takes us back to Cal Tech and their innovation of split and two-tone colored jersey numbers with his original Tidbit titled: Two-Tone and Split Jersey Numbers.

-Transcribed Two-Tone CalTech Jerseys with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to Tuesday, FootballArcheology.com day. Timothy P. Brown, the founder and head writer of that site. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Good to see you again on a beautiful summer evening. Looking forward to talking a little bit of old football. Yeah, we are getting to the point where football is.

You know, there's pads being clacked around the country and balls being thrown. And we're going to be seeing a lot of that real soon. Well, of course, we can still watch our friends north of the border who have been playing, but it is getting exciting.

Yeah. I mean, well, I was going to say before you added the CFL, our CFL friends, I've been I don't I haven't been really watching when it's on CFL Plus, but when it's on the CBS thing, you know, I take those and watch those games. So it's fun.

It was some great, great football. It definitely is a lot of offense. They really gear it towards scoring some points.

So that's what makes it attractive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So we're going to talk tonight about one of your tidbits that you had back in June, you know, just a little over a month ago and talking about some jerseys, which is a favorite topic. I love talking about those and something in particular unique about the numbers, and I'll let you take it from there. Yeah.

So this is. Sometimes, I can't even recreate how I found some of these stories, but I think what happened was I I was looking, somehow I'd come across the story about Caltech. So California technology.

And right there, you know, it's going to be something wacky when that school name and football come together. There's something going to be. Yeah.

Well, they don't play football anymore, at least at the varsity level. But they did for a long time. You know, they had success in the California small college circuit, you know, the Occidentals and the Whittiers and, you know, those kinds of schools.

And. But, you know, they sit in the school in Pasadena. And so, you know, one of the cool things about them is that there's a picture of one of their home games in the Rose Bowl, in 1933 or something.

But, you know, they played their games in Tournament Park before the Rose Bowl stadium was built and then in the Rose Bowl because they're literally right next door. And so anyways, you know, they did attract a couple of thousand fans to see a game under the lights and in the Rose Bowl. So, you know, kind of fun stuff.

I'm sure it had to be a big treat for any of the opposing teams to get a chance to play there. But so somehow, I came across them. I actually wrote two stories in a row about Caltech because the previous tidbit was about the face shields that they wore in the 1940s and 41st centuries.

And but they ended up, you know, they were basically shields to allow guys who wore glasses to play football. And this is before face masks, you know, were common. And so somehow, in searching through their yearbooks, I came across a couple of pictures where it's like, what is going on with those jerseys? And so what they had was, you know, for want of a better term, two two-toned numerals on the jerseys.

So they they only had numbers on the backs. They didn't have them on the front. But that they had, you know, a wide, a dark, wide stripe that ran through the sleeves and then the body and maybe, you know, just above the belly button, but not all the way up at the chest.

And so it's probably a six-inch wide, seven-inch wide stripe. And because that thing was there when they put the numbers on, you know, they couldn't have like a dark number. Because it would have overlapped with the dark stripe.

And then, on the rest of the jersey, where it's white, they couldn't have a white number. So what they did was they had a two-tone number. So on the dark where, you know, where it went over the dark stripe, it was a white number.

But then, above the stripe, it was dark. Yeah. So let me let me cut in here real quick here, folks.

If you want to, Tim will explain this. You can see a great example of it. We have the link in the show notes to take you right to Tim's football archaeology dot com site.

He's got some great images of what he's talking about there. So you can appreciate that. So I'm sorry.

Go ahead, Tim. Yeah. So, yeah, I should I should have mentioned that myself.

But so the thing is, you know, I mean, like, I literally track every college yearbook that I look at, you know, just to make sure I have covered this turf before or not. And, you know, I probably need to go through a bunch of them just because I'll see new things. But I've looked at, like, now, I'm just under thirty-four hundred old college yearbooks that I've paged through to look at the, you know, the football section.

And I've never come across these two-toned numbers before, or at least I haven't noticed them. Anyway, I think they're unique. You know, I've seen like Penn used to have, or Penn probably still does.

And Harvard, both schools, I've seen like the P or the H logo where. There'd be a diagonal, you know, split, you know, from lower to lower to upper. And so one would be maroon, and the other would be white, and one would be blue and the other white.

So, you know, so if you can imagine that, if you've seen that logo, then that's basically what it looked like, except as a horizontal split, you know, upper and lower of the dark and the white. But anyway, it's just one of those weird things that thankfully never caught on. And as much as, you know, nowadays it used to be, you could only have Arabic letters, and then there were certain constraints; you could only use these typefaces.

Nowadays, there's so much. You know, basically unreadable. And I think I think they still there's just a greater number of fonts.

I think they can use what they've got. So we're going to have, you know, a certain size block number to be legal. I think even NCAA, because otherwise somebody like Oregon would be pushing the limits probably beyond what Caltech did in this case.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have to.

Yeah, it's just, you know, I've seen too many like white on gray uniforms, you know, white numbers on gray uniforms. The fonts are all the things that they look like. They're from NASCAR.

They're just big, ugly. And so anyway. And don't get me started on colored fields because that's another story.

Yeah. Yeah, I know there's one blue one in particular. I don't even know if I can watch the games.

It drives me crazy. But great football there, but not the great field. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, this is just one of those things that is kind of bizarre.

I mean, I've never seen it. You know, it obviously didn't take off, and it didn't become popular, but, you know, maybe somebody else had one. If they do, reach out and let us know. Well, that's why we count on you for the bizarre football items.

And you definitely deliver those. And this is one of them. So we love it.

I mean, I think it's a great it's great conversational pieces. And you learn a lot about what people were trying to experiment with and innovate or try to gain an advantage over the other team or whatever. Personal style choice.

I don't know what you'd call this, but it's cool stuff. It's really interesting. So we appreciate that.

I mean, I've used it a couple of times, but it's the, you know, innovation versus oddity. You know, it's if people adopt it and, you know, it takes off, then, oh, you were innovative. But if you did something that everybody thinks, especially looking back, you know, 50, 60 years later, you know, what in the heck were they thinking? But why do those people have stripes down the middle of their helmets? What are they crazy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Those things. Yeah. I know.

Wow. You know, if you could share with us, you know, the listeners so we can enjoy your tidbits because you have items like this, you know, seven days a week and you have you have some beauties that are come on there like this and you'll get a good chuckle out of her. Just be entertained for, you know, a few minutes and talk about the people at the work around a water cooler next day or whatever.

But he's well; you're having a few cold ones. It's a great way to do it and get some football history every single day. So, Tim, could you share how the folks could join you in that?

They appreciate that. Sure. You know, the best way to do it is just to go to football archaeology dot com and subscribe.

You can do that for free. And then, you know, basically, you'll get an email from me every night at seven o'clock Eastern. I'm also on the substack platform on on Twitter and on threads.

So and all under the same name, football archaeology. Well, Tim Brown, thank you very much once again for talking to us about some great football history and your football archaeology dot com tidbits. And we will talk to you again next Tuesday.

Very good. Thank you very much. Have a good one.

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

-Football Jersey Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

-Whose college football jersey was the first to be 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.

-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.

-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.

---

In the rich tapestry of American football, where strategy and athleticism intertwine, there are moments when innovation pushes the boundaries of the game. One such instance is the gadget play known as the "Helmet Toss," a daring maneuver that once captivated audiences with its audacious flair. Introduced in the early days of the college game, the play involved a player taking off their helmet. While it showcased the creativity and risk-taking spirit that drives the sport, the play's inherent dangers and unpredictability led to its eventual ban by league officials. Football Archaeology.com's Timothy Brown joins us to discuss a brief yet memorable role in football history, illustrating how the pursuit of innovation can both challenge and reshape the very rules of the game.

If you love the football talk on the history and evolution, then you check out the original article Tim wrote Helmet-Tossing Trickeration.

Also check out the podcast version of our chat at They Tried This Football Gadget Play With the Helmet! Pigskin Dispatch Podcast.

-Transcribed Toss leather Helmet Trickeration with Tim Brown

Hello, my football friends; this is Darin Hayes at PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history, and welcome to another edition where we get to visit Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com on a Tuesday and talk about some gridiron from yesteryear and some great aspects of the game. And Tim's got some great stories today in our edition.

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Good to see you.

And what could I use as a dad joke? I think I'm out of luck. I don't think I have anything. Yeah, I think you're tricked out.

Yeah, that's... I figured that's what you were setting yourself up for. But of course, Tim... Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Well, I was just going to say that I was being the, you know, the straight man in this little comedy routine. And usually, those don't work out so well when you're the straight man, and I'm telling the jokes. Your delivery is much better than mine.

Of course, we're trying to segue into kind of very poorly, I might add, into Tim's great article that he wrote back in July 5th called The Helmet Tossing Trickeration, which, you know, sounds like a mouthful here. And I'm sure we'll have a few more laughs and learn a lot about some football here with this story. Yeah, so I will take a moment; hopefully, in the very near future, my next book, A History of the Football, will be released and available for sale by Football History Enjoying Public.

Anyways, one of the things that I cover in that book is, you know, when and why stripes arrived on the ball. And so stripes basically came, you know, appeared on footballs for two reasons. One is that they were added to help people see the ball when they played night games or when they practiced at dusk.

You know, a lot of times you just would paint a ball white or yellow, but those were slick and slippery. And so they, you know, adding a stripe, you know, they thought would allow, would cause less problems with, you know, the slickness of the ball. So part of it, white stripe or a black stripe on a white ball was just to help people see at night.

But the other thing that, the other reason was to eliminate kind of a camouflage effect. And so, you know, the stripes got added in the 20s, mostly in the 30s. But, you know, back then teams were just starting to wear white jerseys on a fairly regular basis.

Stanford was one of those teams. But so if you used a white ball at night, it was like, okay, well, the opponent was like, well, we can't see the ball because you got white jerseys. And then back, and the same thing kind of happened with the brown ball.

Teams, not many teams wore brown or tan jerseys, but almost everybody was wearing pants that were earth tones. They were khaki. So they were, you know, they were the khaki color or they were brown, or they were, you know, some kind of a greenish brownish blob.

And so it would sometimes be hard to see the ball against that background. And so, and they were also, a lot of teams were wearing, you know, that there were friction strips, but before the friction strips, they'd wear those like pieces of leather that were kind of oval looking on their jerseys. And so, so anyways, for those reasons, it was sometimes hard, you know, you'd lose sight of the ball because of the uniform that the, that the opponent was wearing.

So, so that was a problem. And in that time, there was also some trickeration that was going on. This is in the 20s and 30s, but there was another, there was an older trickeration that had occurred back in, in 1909, which is really the focus of this tidbit.

It's just taken me a little while to get there. So back in 1909, Virginia Tech and North Carolina were playing a game and Virginia Tech had three brothers named, well, their last name was Hodgson. And one of the guys was E.R. Hodgson, and he was the right guard.

Vivian Hodgson ends up, you know, scoring the first TD in the game and E.R., the guard, moves back to be the kicker. This is not him, but you know, figured I'd put a kicker out here. And so, you know, he converts the, converts the kick.

So Virginia Tech's, you know, leading. Five minutes later, Virginia Tech is on the 35 and E.R. Hodgson sets up again to kick, this time a field goal. And rather than, you know, as a snap is made, Hodgson, the kicker, pulls off his brown leather helmet, which is basically the same color as the football.

And he tosses the helmet over the right side of the line so that the, so that the NC State players would think that he was throwing a football. And instead, well, he was throwing a helmet, obviously, but the holder got the ball and he ran around the left side of the NC State line and goes for a 35-yard touchdown. So it's just, you know, this is one of these things where the helmets look enough like a football in terms of just the tanning of the leather that you could throw your helmet and people would think it was a football.

And then in the second half, he sets up again and to place kick another field goal and the ball gets snapped. Instead of going to the, to the holder, the ball gets snapped to the E.R. Hodgson, the kicker. And it's, it's hard to, you know, the, the way they describe it, it's not entirely clear whether, you know, but he handed it off to the quarterback who maybe was positioned out at a wing position.

And it was either like in a draw or a Statue of Liberty sort of play, but the quarterback went for a 75-yard run, you know. So here's poor NC State, you know, they, they thought they were playing a pretty big, pretty good game until they saw ball flying over the, the left side of the defense line, turns out to be a helmet, not a ball. And then they get the old Statue of Liberty play, which was then a new play, pulled on them.

So, you know, two long touchdown runs and unfortunately for them anyways, Virginia Tech won. But so that, that one of the other side lights to this is that these, you know, these trick plays, throwing the helmet around, you know, people continue doing that a bit. And in like the late twenties, there was some guy, I've never figured out who he is, some guy, but he apparently played somewhere in the South.

And he, he would take, he was a running back, he'd take his helmet off and toss it to the ground, you know, sometime close to being tackled, because then some of the defenders would think it was a loose ball, go for the, go for the helmet instead of the, instead of trying to tackle him. And so then that was when they implemented a rule that said every team has to paint their helmets with some kind of striping, you know, cross stripes, or like, you know, kind of like the Michigan Wolverine, you know, type of helmet. You had to have some contrasting colors painted on the top of your helmet.

So it didn't look like a football. So anyways, that's all I know. That's it.

Yeah. That's quite a mouthful there of what you just said. I mean, some great, great stories.

First of all, you almost got to think of back how almost every episode of the A team ended back in the eighties where Hannibal would say, I love it when a plan comes together. It sounds like those, those trickeration plays were to their peak performance there on both of them getting a big touchdown plays, helping them win the game. But the other thing is you almost got to think, you know, it's hard for our modern sensibilities to say, okay, a player's taken off their helmet in the middle of a play.

You know, even in between plays when they're on the field, you know, nowadays they, you know, celebration, they get 15 yard penalties. So obviously that was not the rule back in that era. Well, you didn't even have to have a helmet, you know, at that, at that point.

So, yeah, I mean, you know, people by, well, actually in like oh nine, probably most players didn't wear one. Maybe half did, it probably depended on the team, but you know, certainly in the twenties and thirties, you know, then pretty much everybody was wearing them, but um, like Tommy McDonald, dude, I think he was the last one to play without a helmet. I'm pretty sure that was him.

Maybe, maybe I'm getting him mixed up with some, no, he was the last one to play without a face mask. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Okay.

I think you alluded to it a little bit, and I think this is what you were talking about. If you go back, you know, back more towards the turn of the century and where the players, the standard equipment was, they were wearing like the vests, like the leather vests, you know, and you know, then the moleskin pants were that tannish color, like you're talking about in football. So I mean that era, and I think all teams were wearing, I don't think they had different color vests.

It was all the same color that had to be really challenging for a defense to be able to follow the ball and run the ball every play too. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, you basically had to rely on, you know, everybody wore long-sleeve sweaters or jerseys, and then they'd have a stripe, or they'd have socks of the same color.

So that was a primary way to tell. And it's like, you know, eventually college players kind of went to the no hose or no stocking look, you know, they just have the, but like the white sock, right. And, but back then everybody was still wearing shin guards.

And so, you know, the some, you know, early on, they'd wear them over their socks, and then they started wearing them under their socks. But I think the socks probably helped keep them on. And it was just a better look instead of having those shin guards.

But I was coming from the aspect of just trying to follow the ball when you have your midsection and your lower, you know, portions of your body are consumed the same color as the football. And, you know, there's 22 guys on the field like that. It's had to be extremely hard as a defender to follow where that ball is.

Yeah. And, you know, half the time, they were running up the gut. So it's like, you know, how they figured out who had the ball sometimes, you know, who knows.

And they weren't the nice clean fields that we see today either. I'm sure most of them were just mud pits. Yeah.

Especially the end of the season. Yeah. No doubt about it.

Yeah. Well, some interesting stuff and some things that we really have to appreciate that our football forefathers had to go through and experience both in the elements and by rules and some of the craziness of the absence of color in the uniforms and stripes on the ball that we take for granted. Of course, the NFL doesn't have the stripes, but almost every other level has some form of a stripe on there.

Now, I guess that's the other thing I'm sitting here trying to envision when you're putting stripes on balls back in the early twenties. It's not like they had, you know, masking tape and spray paint that they could put it on. So I'm assuming somebody's got to almost like detail this, you know, with a stripe with a brush and very little template.

Somebody with a steady hand and some kind of tape or something. But, you know, I mean, when the manufacturers got involved too, it was like, again, this is another thing I talk about in the book, but it's like, where do you put the stripes? Right. How many stripes? Do you have one stripe? Do you have two stripes? Do you have three stripes? Do they go just one way or do they go the long way? I mean, you know, so that there are these things that we take for granted that, well, of course, the white stripe goes there.

Well, no, that's an arbitrary place. I mean, there's probably reason why they ended up where they ended up, but, you know, I mean, they were just trying stuff, you know? So it's like, Billy, go paint white stripes on the ball. Okay, boss.

And, you know, Billy went and did it. Nobody told him how far it was supposed to be and how wide the stripes had to be or anything like that. Yeah, I think if I had to do it, it would probably look like a melted lightning bolt going around there.

I'm sure it wouldn't be going around. That'd be a tough thing to do on an odd shaped ball like that. I've got some images of the striping on the field as well that sometimes was not quite as straight as one might like.

I've experienced that in modern times when on the grass fields it's kind of hard to do measurements, that's for sure, when you have some of those crazy crooked lines in there. But, yeah, it's probably a better job than I would do, so I can't complain too much. Yeah, so, Tim, just another great way to look back at an aspect of football that it's hard for us to appreciate, but it happened and, you know, some of the things that people had to overcome playing the game that they love, just like we'd love it today, and we'd love just to hear about this history.

But you have some multi-times a week, you have some of these things coming up and writing articles on it, and maybe you could tell the listeners how they can enjoy some of these. Sure, just go to footballarchaeology.com and subscribe. All you have to do is submit an email address, and you'll start getting them every week or every time I post one.

Some of the stuff that I do, I, you know, only paid subscribers, you know, get access to it, but a lot of it is available for free. So, that's the best way. You can also follow me on Twitter, on threads, or on the Substack app.

All right, and keep us posted when that book comes out, so we can get the word out and get that in people's hands and enjoy the history of football and some of the aspects you learned about today, and we're going, I'm sure, in better detail in the book. So, Tim, we'd love to have you again next week, and we thank you for joining us today. Very good.

Thanks, Darin

---

Football Archaeology takes a snap shot look at the first time plastic helmets were introduced to live football games, and a bit on their creator, John Riddell.

The year 1940 marked a significant milestone in the evolution of American football, particularly with the Northwestern Wildcats facing off against the Syracuse Orangemen in a historic game that would forever change the sport. What set this matchup apart wasn't just the clash between two formidable teams, but the introduction of a revolutionary innovation: plastic helmets. This game, held on October 5th, became the first-ever instance in college football where both competing teams donned these newly developed protective headgear.

Prior to the adoption of plastic helmets, football players relied on leather headgear that offered limited protection against the physical rigors of the game. The innovation of plastic helmets, however, represented a leap forward in player safety and comfort. Spearheaded by Riddell, the company responsible for this groundbreaking advancement, the plastic helmets featured a hard outer shell that provided better impact absorption and reduced the risk of head injuries.

In the context of the 1940 Northwestern at Syracuse game, the debut of plastic helmets symbolized more than just a technological upgrade. It underscored a growing awareness within the football community about the importance of player safety—a theme that continues to resonate in today's game. The decision by both teams to embrace this new equipment reflected a proactive approach to protecting their athletes, setting a precedent that would eventually become standard across all levels of football.

Moreover, the game itself was a testament to the competitive spirit and evolving strategies within college football. Northwestern, under the guidance of head coach Pappy Waldorf, brought a disciplined and dynamic offense to the field, while Syracuse, led by head coach Ossie Solem, countered with their own aggressive defensive tactics. The combination of innovative helmets and strategic gameplay made the 1940 matchup not only a pivotal moment in football history but also a captivating spectacle for fans and players alike.

Beyond its immediate impact, the introduction of plastic helmets in the 1940 Northwestern-Syracuse game foreshadowed the ongoing evolution of football equipment and safety standards. It highlighted the sport's capacity for adaptation and improvement, emphasizing the continuous efforts to enhance player welfare while preserving the essence of competitive athletics.

In conclusion, the 1940 Northwestern at Syracuse football game stands as a landmark event where innovation met tradition, ushering in a new era of safety and performance in American football. By embracing plastic helmets for the first time, both teams not only safeguarded their players but also paved the way for future advancements that would shape the game we know and love today.

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

-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 History-of-the-Winged-Helmets">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?.

When did football helmets change from leather to plastic? Just after World War II saw the most abrupt changes, we have more in this in our chat with an expert:When helmets changed from leather to plastic.

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The ability to change direction on a dime, explode past defenders, and leave them grasping at air – these are the hallmarks of a truly agile football player. But how did these skills develop throughout the game's history? And how can modern players hone their footwork for peak performance?

No time for a video? Check out the Agility Drill Podcast version

Join us as we delve into the world of football agility drills with renowned football historian Timothy Brown. Mr. Brown's deep knowledge of the game's past sheds light on how training methods have evolved, offering valuable insights for players and coaches alike. In this exclusive interview, he'll be sharing:

-Historical Drills: Explore the agility drills used by legendary players of the past, and see how they've shaped modern training techniques.

-Drill Evolution: Learn how agility drills have adapted to the ever-changing demands of the modern game.

So, lace up your cleats and prepare to elevate your game. With Mr. Brown's expert guidance, you'll be well on your way to developing the lightning-fast footwork that separates the good from the great on the gridiron.

-Timothy Brown Box Aglity Drills

I've got an image that shows one of the early agility drills. And what this is, this shows, it was a 1921 Kansas State team. And, you know, they're, they're working out and they're trying to become more agile.

So nowadays, there's, you know, we have all these agility drills, and people run through ropes, or they, you know, but for a long time, people ran through tires, or in this case, they ran through wooden boxes. And, you know, it's same kind of thing as we asked players to do today, you're running through an obstacle course, sometimes they have these boxes, you know, pushed off to the right and left. And they got to do, you know, run with high knees, and they're double stepping or whatever, you know, whatever the coach told them that they needed to do.

So it was a way, not so much. Well, certainly it helped from a conditioning standpoint, but a lot of it was just trying to build agility. And, and, you know, kind of looseness of the step and the ability to cut and change direction.

But at the time, the best that they could come up with was either old car tires, or wooden boxes like this. And you know, you have to look at this and say, how many guys tripped on these things, and scuffed up their shins or broke a leg or whatever. And so, you know, it turned out that there was a guy named Joe, I believe it's pronounced Paupa.

He had coached the Chicago's Navy Peer Team during World War One. But he and he was a guy who in the 40s, who invited who invented what he called the runner training apparatus. But those are the ropes that we all know and love and that we probably ran through, you know, high-stepping at some point in our career, even if we were linemen.

So that he was the guy who invented the ropes. But you know, you think there's a lot of training devices and steps that people do nowadays. But they originated with obstacles like these boxes or tires, and then ultimately ropes.

And now there are ladders and, you know, different devices, all trying to get people to become more agile, lift their feet, and do other things.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

The iconic American football jersey has undergone a remarkable transformation since its humble beginnings. Early jerseys, crafted from wool in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, were heavy and cumbersome, offering little comfort or breathability for the burgeoning sport. As the game evolved, so did the jerseys. Leather entered the scene, providing some level of protection, but it remained stiff and restrictive.

The 1950s ushered in a new era of materials. Nylon, known for its tear resistance and stretch, became a popular choice. This marked a significant leap in comfort and mobility for players. However, it wasn't until the arrival of polyester in the following decades that jerseys truly embraced the demands of the sport.

Today, polyester reigns supreme. Its lightweight, breathable nature allows for optimal performance. The fabric wicks away sweat, keeping players cool and dry on the field. Additionally, advancements in technology have led to the incorporation of elastane (also known as Spandex) into some jerseys. This blend offers a comfortable stretch, allowing for a more tailored fit without sacrificing the jersey's structure.

The choice of material often goes beyond pure performance. Replica jerseys for fans are typically crafted from a less expensive polyester blend, offering a balance between affordability and a comfortable fit. However, even these jerseys prioritize breathability and moisture-wicking properties, ensuring a more enjoyable experience for the cheering crowds.

The evolution of American football jerseys reflects not just the changing needs of the sport, but also advancements in material science. From the stifling wool of the past to the high-tech, breathable fabrics of today, jerseys have become an essential part of the game, allowing players to perform at their peak while keeping fans cool and comfortable in the stands.

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

-Whose college football jersey was the first to be 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.

-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 story: The Origins Of Football Player Numbers.

-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 there are a slew of players from NFL history that 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.

Football is a sport that is very special to many people. It combines grit and power with endurance and elegance. If you're a fan of football now, you've most likely been one for the past few years and will continue to be one for the rest of your life. That's the thing about football: once you love the sport, you can't shake it. With the tremendous arena games, all the way over the thrill of simply watching it at home, football has a little something for everyone. 

Pexels Courtesy Jean-Daniel Francoeur| AD

There are certain teams that have been around for a long time, that have garnered a lot of support over the years and that have proven that they belong as some of the most reputable football teams and franchises around. This article aims to shed light on exactly that. 

-The Arizona Cardinals

The Arizona Cardinals are the oldest football team in the whole of the USA. This is a very special feat and one that is extremely impressive, especially in a country that lives and breathes football as much as the USA. They even bet on the sport to show just how engrossed they are in the game. Betting platforms are rather popular amongst football fans, who even stray away from football when it becomes too heated and try to find a good online fish shooting game with real money and no deposit, so that they have a thrilling distraction from the game. 

This team started its humble beginnings in 1898. Their name back then was actually different, it went as the Morgan Athletic Club. Back then, they were even based in the south side of Chicago. The reason they got their name as the Cardinals is because, in the early 1900s, the teams' managers received an old shipment of faded cardinal red football jerseys and just like that, the name stuck. 

The team was excellent when it started, which is exactly what propelled them to being part of the NFL in 1920 when it officially started. That was over a century ago, and since then, as you can imagine, the team has gone through many significant changes, never losing its Cardinal name, though. The team is now based in Phoenix. They're the oldest team in the franchise, but unfortunately, they have only won two NFL titles in the last 100 years. They are one of the least successful teams in the bunch; however, who knows, maybe the tides will change for them. 

-The Chicago Bears

Just like the Arizona Cardinals, the Chicago Bears started out under a different name. In 1920, they got their name from their then-founder, A.E. Staley, as the Decatur team. However, then Staley passed on the team to the famous George Halas in 1921, who moved the team all the way over to Chicago. After their first year, they were already showing success and Halas was already given the endearing name of 'Papa Bear', as he was known for walking up and down the field at every game, trying to help his team as much as possible. You see where the story and the name change are going. In 1922, seeing as they were located in Chicago and their managed was known as 'Papa Bear', the team got the endearing name of the Chicago Bears and the rest has been history. 

This team has done extremely well for themselves in the NFL and has proven time and time again that they are the ones to look out for. They have won 8 NFL Championships since they started and they have even won one Super Bowl Championship, to boot. Showing that they are truly the ones to watch and they continue to be successful even today. 

-The New York Giants

The New York Giants started their success in the early 1920s, they started their franchise in 1925 specifically and have shown progress and improvements right from then. They started their journey on the famous Polo Grounds in Manhatten, marking one of the most esteemed training grounds. As one of the only teams to have never changed their name, this team often says that it has been marked for success right from the very beginning. 

They naturally joined the NFL the moment they became a functioning team and actually managed to win the title four times over, in 1939, 1941, 1944 and 1946. Doing this made them one of the best teams to ever enter the NFL Championship and certainly a team to look out for. Another reason they are one of the most popular teams, even today, is because they have also won the Superbowl four times over, which is an incredible feat. 

Today, the New York Giants continue to be one of the most influential teams on the roster and one that shows incredible promise. 

-A Solid Foundation

One of the most impressive things about these older teams is that they continue to play, even today. The fact that football seems to truly be based on history and heritage, makes it far more understanding that football is one of the most beloved sports in the USA. Fans have been watching their favorite teams play for years and years, passing the love of the sport on to the next generation. Football also certainly shows no sign of slowing down. 

The Georgia Bulldogs football helmet isn't just headgear; it's a visual embodiment of the program's history, resilience, and relentless pursuit of victory. Here's a dive into the evolution of this iconic symbol:

In the Beginning (1892-1963):

-Early helmets lacked a consistent design, often featuring simple leather caps or rudimentary leather helmets devoid of logos.

-The iconic red and black color scheme emerged around 1906, adding a splash of Georgia spirit.


The Birth of the "G" (1964-Present):

-1964 saw the arrival of the now-legendary "G" logo, designed by artist Anne Donaldson. Its clean lines and bold presence instantly resonated with fans.

-The "G" wasn't simply a logo; it represented the program's grit, determination, and unwavering pride.


Variations on a Theme:

-While the "G" has remained the constant element, the helmet design has seen subtle refinements over the years.

-Different shades of red have been used, the helmet size and shape have evolved, and subtle details like outlining the "G" have been added and removed. Our friend Randy Snow has a great explanation of why Georgia's "G" looks so much like the Green Bay Packers and Grambling's headgear.




-Special Editions and Alternate Helmets:

-Georgia embraces the tradition of alternate helmets, showcasing variations like matte black lids for rivalry games or helmets adorned with commemorative decals.

-These variations pay homage to specific traditions, honor fallen players, or create a unique look for marquee matchups.

No pun but it is a Dog Eat Dog competition for mascot names sometimes.

Join us for more fun as we examine the origins of team and school mascots here on Pigskin Dispatch, your portal to Positive football history.

The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets' helmet design echoes the team's history, reflecting moments of innovation, tradition, and a constant drive to redefine themselves. Strap on your hard hat as we journey through the evolution of Tech's headgear:


Early Days (1892-1950s):

-Leather Lids: In the earliest years, players donned simple leather helmets, offering meager protection but lacking any visual identity.


-Yellow Experiment: In the 1930s, Tech briefly experimented with bright yellow helmets, a bold yet short-lived attempt to stand out.

-Maroon Monoliths: By the 1950s, the classic maroon helmet with a single white stripe emerged, a simple yet elegant design that became synonymous with the Yellow Jackets.


The Heisman Era (1950s-1960s):

-The "GT": Under legendary coach Bobby Dodd, the iconic interlocking "GT" logo made its debut on the maroon helmets, symbolizing Tech's commitment to both athletics and academics.

-Flying Forward: In 1962, amidst space exploration fervor, Tech embraced a helmet decal of a stylized yellow jacket in motion, nicknamed the "Flying Hokie" (though not an actual Hokie!). This dynamic design added a touch of futuristic flair.

-Return to Classics: By the late 1960s, the "Flying Hokie" was retired, and the simple "GT" logo continued to reign supreme, a testament to its timeless appeal.


Modern Evolution (1970s-Present):

-Stripes and Experimentation: In the 1970s, the maroon helmets saw occasional additions like multiple white stripes or a yellow border around the "GT" logo, showcasing a willingness to experiment while maintaining core colors.

Black Power Tribute: In 1971, Tech players wore black stripes down the center of their helmets in solidarity with the Black Power movement, a powerful demonstration of social awareness.

Present Day: Today, the Yellow Jackets retain the maroon helmet with the interlocking "GT" logo. Subtle variations, like matte finishes or alternate shade combinations, are occasionally introduced, allowing for modern touches without straying from tradition.