Football History

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

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

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

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on Opponents Visitor Scoreboard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very good. Thank you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

-Frequently Asked Questions About Football Field Equipment

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

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

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

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

-Transcription of Bootleged Footballs with Timothy Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

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

-Transcribed on Press Box History with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history, and welcome to another edition where we get to visit Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com talking about one of his recent tidbits. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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Football officials get a bad rap. Okay I am not saying they are without error, nobody is perfect, but the zebras get ill feelings thrown their way even when they are correct in their calls.

One of the top experts in early football rules history Timothy P. Brown joins us on the discussion to identify some of the stories of the communication regulation of some pioneering football officials. Timothy Brown's FootballArchaeology.com has a daily football factoid that he shares that are really quite interesting in a short read. They preserve football history in a very unique way and we are quite happy that Tim has agreed to join us each week to go over some of his Today's Tidbits.

A recent Tidbit that Tim had titled Herb Dana and the Associated Football Question Box, is our subject today.

-Transcribed Conversation on Officiating Signals of Herb Dana with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal for positive football history. It's Tuesday and we are going to join our friend Timothy Brown, the great historian and author that digs into the archaeology of football each and every day, but shares a little tidbit with us each week.

And today, Tim's got a great topic. Tim Brown, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Thank you very much. Looking forward to chatting once again and seeing where the conversation goes. Yeah.

You know how I'm a former official, so I've got the zebra blood still flowing in me. It's been a few years, but I'm still in the brotherhood, I think. I don't think they kicked me out yet.

And you have some great history on the officiating of the game. And we talked a few weeks ago about it, but you have some more insight and some more gentlemen that are responsible for some of the things that officials do. So, I was hoping you could talk about that today.

Yeah. So a couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about a guy named Herb Dana, and it was called Herb Dana and the Associated Football Question Box, which is a mouthful of kind of a word salad. So Herb Dana was a guy who played in the end at Nebraska.

He was on their 1921 team. That was his senior season. And then moved to Denver and started officiating there, doing some kind of the Rocky Mountain sorts of games.

Then he moved to San Francisco and very quickly rose up the ranks and became one of the top officials in the Pacific Coast Conference, what's now the PAC-8 or PAC-12 or PAC-10, whatever they are right now. And so part of the reason I raised him or one of the interesting things about his story is that he was not scheduled to officiate in the 1929 Rose Bowl, but the guy who was the scheduled referee, a guy named Frank Birch, we mentioned a couple of episodes ago, and he's the guy who invented the referee's penalty signals that we all know and love today. But a couple of weeks before the Rose Bowl, he tore his ligaments, so he couldn't officiate, so they brought in Herb Dana instead.

And so, you know, the 1929 Rose Bowl doesn't mean a lot to most people, but that is the game when a guy named Roy Regals, who was playing for California, picked up a Georgia Tech fumble and got turned around and ran the wrong way. And then his teammates stopped him in the corner of the field at the one-yard line. And so, and they basically tackled it, stopped him before he went into the end zone and, you know, for safety.

But so the referee then who actually marked the ball in that particular case was this guy, Herb Dana. So that was, you know, he was in on, you know, one of the most important plays or most famous plays in the history of football. So I just, you know, thought that was kind of cool.

But, you know, Dana, the other thing about him is that it was a big part of football back in the, you know, turn of the century through to maybe World War II. Officials often, so a lot of the officials were former players. And many of them were also like sports writers.

And even if they weren't sports writers, a lot of times they would, they'd write columns for the newspapers. And, you know, they became basically media personalities. So there was a guy, George Varnell, who some people called the Walter Camp of the West.

You know, he was a sports writer in Seattle and out there in Pullman prior to that. But he was, you know, I think he officiated more Rose Bowls than anybody else. So he's a big-time referee on the West Coast, he was on the football rules committee, but he was a sports writer, you know, and here he'd be writing all kinds of, you know, he'd be making predictions about upcoming games, including the ones he was going to referee.

He'd name all-conference teams, all kinds of things like that. That gets a little hairy to do that. Well, but, you know, it happened all the time.

You know, another guy, Walter Eckersall, was an All-American halfback at Chicago and became a sports writer for the Chicago Tribune. And he'd travel with the team, you know, he'd travel with the team that was going to play. He traveled with the Great Lakes, you know, team, you know, from 1918 to 1919.

But, you know, again, the same kind of thing. He profiled these teams, made predictions, and all kinds of things. And like he would, he'd referee the game, and then write a column about it, you know, and then editorialize about it, you know, over the next couple of days.

And that's just, you know, it's a conflict of interest that they didn't view as a conflict of interest. But, you know, for us nowadays, I mean, there's no way, you know, you can allow that to happen. So Dana was that same kind of guy on the West Coast.

And one of the things that's included in that particular blog post is, you know, some time back, I bought a postcard. And it was this pre-printed card that gave, you'd go, and you'd pick it up at a local gas station, and it was particular, you know, the Flying A brand of gas. And you'd then take that postcard, you'd write a football question, especially a football rules question, and you'd mail it to Dana.

And he would answer that either in the newspaper column or he also hosted a 90-minute radio show at the time that was then syndicated across, you know, you know, the West Coast and the Rockies. So this, you know, again, this is a guy, he was as big a media personality as most coaches, you know, everybody knew who Herb Dana was. So it's just that, you know, it's a different time.

And he, you know, here he's answering these questions, he's predicting who's going to win the big game this coming weekend. And then he, you know, not too long after all that was happening, he became the head of officials for the Pacific Coast Conference. And he was still doing those radio shows at the time.

So just, you know, just a very different time and place. We can't imagine it today. Yeah, I can see, you know, and I think he's done it, you know, Mike Pereira has done. That's probably the face of officials that we get used to nowadays. And he's got a great way of explaining the rules and everything.

But I don't know if I'd ever hear Mike Pereira saying, hey, I'm officiating a game today. And I think, you know, Stanford's going to win by three, you know, that's, I just can't, that blows my mind. But okay.

The other thing is the same thing happened with coaches. So John Heisman was a big, you know, very, very smart guy. And he wrote all kinds of columns.

And some of it was just, you know, things where he diagrams plays and da da da. But you know, he offered his opinion on lots of different things. Any number, you know, there are a lot of coaches. They would write a series of 20 different articles, just quick little things, diagram plays, and talk about some techniques.

And those would be published, you know, syndicated newspapers across the country, you know, for a season. So, a lot of coaches did that. Rockne did that.

And Rockne used to predict, you know, he'd talk about who the better team was, teams he never saw because they didn't have television at the time. Now, some of them, obviously, he had seen, and he'd compare them. He saw somebody playing week two and another playing week eight, and he'd offer his opinion on who was going to win the game, you know.

But so, you know, coaches did all that kind of stuff, too. Zupke at Illinois was another one that published a lot of articles. And so... Well, even Walter Kemp, you know, wrote for Colliers quite a bit back in the day.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kemp, you know, Kemp's authority came as much from his writing as anything else. Well, obviously, you know, his role is in the rules-making, you know, organizations. But, you know, he was, you know, if you think about it, he was like, you know, Vince Lombardi and Paul Zimmerman and a couple of other guys all rolled into one because he was a successful coach.

He was a big time official. He was, you know, the top writer, you know, prior to like Grantland Rice and those kinds of guys coming along. So, you know, it was their writing was a really big time way of their gaining influence.

Then, it transitioned to radio. And now we have, you know, guys, former coaches or somebody who's knocked out of the playoffs, they come and commentate, you know, during halftime of particular games or before the game. So same kind of thing going on.

But at least now we wait until they're out of the... Now we wait till their team's no longer playing before we let them start talking. Right. Well, fascinating stuff.

And we appreciate you coming on here and sharing that football history with us each week. And why don't you let everybody know once again where they can read your stuff and find you each day? Yeah. So footballarchaeology.com, that's my website.

There's a daily Today's Tidbit that comes out typically very quickly, hitting 30-second 40-second reads with the picture, too. A couple of times a month, I'll also be posting additional long-form information. So, the best thing to do is just subscribe to that.

And you'll get an email every day about typically about seven o'clock in the Eastern time zone in the evening. You can also follow me on Twitter at footballarchaeology.com. And that's, you know, that's my name there as well. Well, I can tell you or my wife can tell you, it's exactly at seven o'clock Eastern each day because we'll be sitting on a couch watching television or something, and she'll hear the ding go off on my phone.

And she goes, what's that? And I said that's Tim getting my tidbit for the day. Yeah. Sometimes, there are a few occasions where I've got something going at seven o'clock.

So, I sent it out earlier, or I just made a mistake, and I didn't schedule it correctly. You mess up my entire evening that way. I don't know what time it is.

I set my clock by you. Once again, thank you very much, Tim. And we'll talk to you again next week.

Okay. Darin, thank you very much. Look forward to it.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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Dive into the fascinating history of football with Timothy P. Brown, the expert behind Football Archaeology.com! In this episode, we'll unravel the origins of the sideline and pass eligibility rules, exploring how these fundamental aspects of the game we know today came to be. Join us as Tim sheds light on the evolution of football through the ages! #footballhistory #rules #sideline #passeligibility #footballarchaeology

This information comes from his original post titled: Eligible Receivers and the Sideline

For audio only check out the Podcast version -The Football History of Sidelines and Eligible Pass Catchers with Timothy Brown.

-Tim Brown on the Origins of Eligible Receivers and Sideline Play

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal for positive football history. Welcome to another exciting Tuesday where we get to go back in time and talk about an aspect of football history that may not be mainstream, but it is definitely worth the listen and education that we're going to get with Timothy Brown of FootballArcheology.com. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey Darin, good to chat with you again, and I look forward to talking about the eligibility of receivers.

Yeah, the eligible... No dad pun there, just straightforward information. Now, you don't want to talk about the married receivers, just the eligible ones, right? That's right. I had to throw the dad joke again.

That's really pretty bad. Yeah, that was bad. We'll let you do the dad jokes and I'll just be the straight man.

Yeah, so tell us a little bit about the history of the eligible receivers in the sideline. Yeah, this one's fun. I think just one of the things that I like about researching almost any aspect of football history is trying to find stories where the reason we have something today, a rule that's in place today, sometimes isn't the reason that rule was put in place originally.

Conditions change, so sometimes the rule still makes sense despite football evolving. However, the original rule was put in place for a different reason than why it makes sense today. So like a great example of that is the roughing of the punter penalty, and I won't get into the details of that. There's a tidbit out there, and if anybody wants to search for it, if you put in roughing the punter penalty in football archaeology, it'll come up right away.

Sounds like a future episode to talk to you about. Well, I'm surprised we haven't already. Yeah, I don't think we have.

Maybe we did. So, but that's one where, you know, that penalty was put in place. It was actually called roughing the fullback originally.

And so, you know, it just, it evolved for reasons that no longer exist in football based on rule changes. So, and the eligible receiver, like stepping out of bounds, that's really what this tidbit is about. And that originated kind of for reasons that no longer exist.

So, you know, back in the day, so pre-1933, football did not have hash marks. And so when a player was tackled close to the sideline, if they're tackled three yards from the sideline or two yards from the sideline or one yard from the sideline, the ball, the next play started wherever that player had been tackled, just as if they'd been tackled in the middle of the field. So, you know, offenses, every offense practiced and kind of had plays in their playbook that were called sideline plays.

You'd, you know, you'd change the formation. So you only had one, you know, you might, sometimes you had to have the center right on the sideline snapping the ball. Other times you might be able to fit the guard, the tackle or the end in there.

So one of the things that would happen is that if it was safe, four or five yards from the line of scrimmage or from the sideline, you might be able to put your whole right side of the line of scrimmage or of your offensive line in place, you know, inside the boundary. But sometimes in order for that, at that end wasn't, you know, if he's the eligible receiver and you're running a pass play in order for him to get, you know, to avoid the tackle or the defensive end and get down field, he'd just run out of bounds, you know, to dodge him, right. And which is perfectly legal.

There was no, there's no restriction on somebody leaving the field and reentering the field at that time. The other thing was that that was in the days of the coaching rules against coaching from the sideline, which typically required all the players and the coaches to be seated or kneeling back on the bench. So the sidelines were barren, you know, there is nobody there other than, you know, maybe a linesman, assistant linesman or two.

So if the end was aligned next to the sideline, he could scoot, you know, run 10 yards down field while out of bounds and then reenter and hopefully, you know, catch a pass. I think I, I think I officiated in the wrong era. That sounds like a much better sideline than when I officiated.

Yes. So anyways, you know, so these guys could reenter, you know, so if you went out of bounds, you could reenter, you know, nothing, nothing against doing so. But then, you know, then they decided, okay, well, these guys are going out of bounds.

I mean, they could have gone 10 yards outside of bounds and then reenter. So they, in 24, they made a rule change. And they said, okay, if the receiver goes, if an eligible receiver goes out of bounds, he's no longer eligible to catch a pass.

And then, and that stayed in place until 1978. And at that point, they said, okay, if he goes out of bounds on his own accord, then he's not eligible. But if a defender pushes him out of bounds or forces him out of bounds, then he can reenter and be an eligible receiver.

So, so that's kind of the, the other catch that he had to return immediately. You know, he got pushed out of bounds. He couldn't run down to five, 10 yards.

Like you said, he had to try to get back on the field as soon as he could. Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, so it's just one of those things where, you know, the original reason for putting this rule in place was because of these sideline plays. And then, you know, once he had the hash hash marks, then, okay, that reason goes away, but the underlying rationale still made sense. So they left it in place until making a modification, you know, basically 50 years later.

So, you know, it's just kind of goofy how some of those rules come into play and, you know, what, what the original reason, you know, was for them. Yeah, that, that is, that is interesting. Now, I'm not sure what they do in college and the professional level, but I know high school, that instance, now we're a receiver when they go out of bounds on their own and they come back in, it goes under the substitution rule.

It's an illegal substitution when they come back in, which is kind of interesting during live ball action. You know, he's a, cause they're a player where when they're one of the 11 that are inside the numbers, you know, at the ready for play and, you know, they break out on go wherever they'd like to on their side of the ball. But so they no longer are player when they exit on their own and they now become a substitute and now it's an illegal substitution when they come back on.

So it's, it's kind of an odd thing where you're, cause most of the rule books, I know for the NFHS, they're broke up in dead ball. You know, there's a bunch of rules on dead ball and then there's a bunch of rules on live ball and kicking and snap and everything. But this one is a live ball.

That's actually in the dead ball section, which is kind of drives you crazy if you don't know where to find it. Yeah. It is funny.

I mean, so just, that's a classic example of, you know, you have to try to categorize these things. So what is it? Right. Right.

And I can't think of the examples right now, but there, you know, there are other situations where like the logic, I mean, it's kind of like, you know, I've never been a lawyer, but I imagine some of these things, you know, when you're making the rules and trying to classify them and categorize them, you know, you're trying to find what, what's the fundamental logic behind this rule. And, and sometimes that changes over time as we've seen. But so you kind of classify things based on the logic, which may not be apparent to somebody who doesn't really know the rules inside and out like an official one.

Yeah. It's, it's right up there on par when, if you have somebody let's say somebody punches a player and it's during live ball. Well, that is a personal foul.

If they do it during dead ball, it's an unsportsmanlike foul. They're both 15 yard penalties, but you know, the enforcement may be different depending on the style of play. I'm not sure.

I don't think I recognize that. Yeah. So it's, so you have, but that's why there's two different signals, one for unsportsmanlike, one for personal foul.

Personals are always live ball fouls, unsportsmanlike are dead ball fouls. All right. So, but you can do the same action.

It's illegal. It just depends when you do it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it makes sense.

Right. Right. Right.

You know, you need, you need the distinction, but, but again, I would guess 95% of football fans don't know that. No, that's, that's true. I didn't know it until I officiated.

I mean, I was kind of surprised when I, I did that when I learned that. So kind of, kind of an interesting aspect though too. So, you know, Tim, that's a great thing.

And I, I'm glad that you shared this with us and wrote about it, and you know, how the rule came about. And it's just interesting how it, for a totally different predicament and they turn it into something with the modernization of the game and how the game flows. So that's pretty cool how they tied that in and how you brought the story to us.

But you have a lot of unique stories like this that you share on a regular basis. And maybe some of the listeners out there and viewers would, would like to be interested in hearing what you have to say on, you know, as you, as you're saying them and your tidbits and how, how can they participate in something like that? Yep. Just, you know, go to footballarchaeology.com and subscribe. You'll get an email every time I send out a new post.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Substack or the Substack app or on threads, or just go to the site, you know, whenever it suits your fancy. Okay. Hopefully, hopefully very often.

Yeah. And folks, it's, you know, Tim said in a segment we had last week, keep watching the social media and footballarchaeology.com for his new book coming out on the history of the football. It's going to be a great read and something I'm sure you'll all want on your bookshelf.

So, Tim, we thank you for sharing with us again, another piece of football history, and we'd love to talk to you again next week. Okay. Look forward to it.

Thanks, Darin.

One of the most hated/loved calls in all of football is the Offensive Pass Interference call or OPI. It is football at its finest with one player against another battling for position and ultimately the ball.

The calls on OPI and even DPI have changed like the wind over the years to the point that today, it is hard for the average fan and coach to even know what exactly constitutes a foul and what is fair game.

Timothy Brown did his research and went to work on the Changes of Pass Interference in September of 2023. Tim also paid us a visit to chat about the subject.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on Changes to Pass Interference

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

It's good to see you and hear from you. Oh, wait, I'm getting a little interference. Yes? No, okay. I didn't think you'd have. Okay, I'll stop doing that.

I didn't have a segue into this one, but folks, he did it again. His tidbit was titled, back in September, changes in pass interference penalties, and that's why Tim was really stretching it out there to get the interference for his customary intro into his tidbit.

So, Tim, pass interference has really been a big play for decades. I think that in our generation, that's probably the biggest penalty, where people gain the most yardage in our era, and people almost anticipate every time a long pass is being thrown; they're hoping for one of two things. Either if you're on offense, pass interference on the defense, or the guy catches the ball.

So, what can you tell us about the pass interference back in this era that you're talking about? Yeah. So, one of the most interesting things about pass interference is that the forward pass was legalized in 1906, but for the first two years, they did not have a pass interference penalty. So, they just didn't foresee the need to have a penalty.

And part of it is, I mean, again, you got to go back to, okay, what were they thinking when they introduced and legalized pass interference? They were not thinking about the downfield passing game that we have today. They were thinking about a short toss to somebody who's ahead of you, kind of like an option quarterback who's flicking it to the guy behind him. They were thinking the forward pass would be like that: just little dumps and basketball shots to somebody.

And initially, the ineligible receivers were not limited in terms of where they could go. They could go downfield, they could block. I mean, they could block defenders.

And so, some of the initial pass plays were basically guys who the offensive line would let everybody go. And then, the receiver would get in the middle and be guarded by his teammates. And then they kind of took the ball into the middle of that circle.

And then he'd catch it, and they'd block for him. So, the defensive players were coming in there, flying in, trying to break it apart, break it up because there wasn't any defensive pass interference. And the offensive guys were blocking like they would because there was an offensive pass interference.

So, it took them two years, but then they figured out, okay, well, maybe we shouldn't allow this to be the case. And while the linemen still were able to go downfield, that didn't change. Blake and I would say it started changing in the 30s.

So, there was a long time when linemen could be downfield. And so, in 1908, they said, okay, pass interference was like a 15-yard penalty on the offense and a five-yard penalty on the defense. And I forget exactly why they distinguished the two.

Maybe it's just because the offense was the one who's throwing the ball. And so, they had more control. But then in 1910, then pass interference became a loss of a down for the offense and a 10-yard penalty on the D. So, that became the norm.

One of the things that I always find interesting is that there are bits of the game and elements of how players make decisions, as well as things that are considered unsportsmanlike in an earlier era. But then, now we treat it as, well, that's smart play. And so, one of those was as when there was a loss of down for the or a 10-yard penalty on the defense, they kind of figured, okay, hey, if I'm getting beat on a pass, I'm just tackling a guy.

I'm just going to tackle the receiver. And because I'd rather take and accept the 10-yard penalty than allow a touch pass. And so, I mean, we do that today, right? I mean, a smart D-back is going to do that.

But at the time, once they started doing that—I mean, it took them a few years to do that—it was viewed as really unsportsmanlike. You're cheating, or you're, it was outside the spirit of the rules.

So, in 1916, the colleges increased the penalty to 15 yards from 10. And then, in 1917, they made it a spot. So, you tackle somebody 35 yards downfield, or you interfere 35 yards downfield, then that's where the ball's spotted.

That stayed the case for a long time, but then they started having concerns. Another regular recurring theme in football is the idea that the officials don't want to make calls for really long penalties, severe penalties, or questionable penalties.

So, they swallow their flags. And so, on these long pass interference penalties, when it's a spot foul, people felt like the referee swallowed flags. And so, they finally said, no, you know, we got to get rid of that situation.

And so, in 1984, then the colleges went to a 15-yard penalty, whereas the pros retained, you know, it's still a spot foul, you know, in the pros. So, and let me, I'll just interject by saying this whole issue of the long penalty or that it doesn't even have to be a long penalty, but one that, you know, feels like has an impact on the game. That was one of the reasons why they got rid of, you know, the penalty for what now is being called the tush push, you know, that aiding the runner and helping the runner.

One of the reasons they got rid of that was because it was difficult. You know, sometimes they called it, and sometimes they didn't. It's a judgment call. And obviously, it's, you know, it's either somebody's going for a first down or somebody's going for a touchdown.

So, it had a big impact. And so, and, you know, they just felt like, you know, the referee's officials were reluctant to call it. So, they basically got, took that out of the game, you know, and then later, you know, add it back in.

But it's just, you know, those things are kind of interesting to me. So, both the idea of people like you, referees who swallow their whistles or their flags when, you know, on a long, you know, longer, you know, important penalty situation. So, just that idea.

And then, you know, the change from unsportsmanlike behavior to, hey, that's a smart play. You know, hey, guys, you know, tackle the receiver, do whatever you got to do. Don't let them get the long one.

Yeah. It's interesting when you're talking early in this conversation, and you were telling, you know, how the evolution of the forward pass in the first couple of years of bringing this about. And you sit there, and you got to think back, you know, with these folks, these rules makers, they had no idea, like you said, what the forward pass was going to end up being.

And they had no idea what people were going to try to do to gain an advantage. And so, that's why you see these changes in everything. So, it really is kind of fun to go back and try to look at it from their perspective.

And I think you do that in a lot of the articles that you put on here and, you know, by explaining the rules the way you do. And it's really an interesting endeavor to go back and think that way. You know, God, these guys didn't even think the ball was going to go downfield.

So, why would anybody interfere with them? You know, you're just playing football. Yeah. And so, it's funny.

I've got it; it's an article I've been making notes on for two years, probably. But it's basically, the article is, the gist of it is, what were people thinking in 1906? So, if you were a coach and, you know, speculating on how the forward pass is going to work, both, you know, offense and defense, you know, how did you prepare? You know, because you hadn't seen it. It hadn't happened, right? And so, there's a lot of really interesting newspaper articles from all these experts, you know, respected people who said, oh, here's the way it's going to work.

You know, most of them are wrong. You know, their conception of what a forward pass was going to be and how it would change the game was just off. And most people, you know, thought that the onside kick from scrimmage was going to have much more, you know, substantial effect.

And, in fact, for the first couple of years, it probably did. But, you know, the other thing about, like, rules like this is, it's a reminder that when you're playing a game, no matter if it's Monopoly or Parcheesi or, you know, Hopscotch or whatever, but football, there are lots of rules and every one of them is arbitrary. You know, you could change that rule tomorrow.

And, you know, it's like the tush push, you know, it's a considerable controversy, but you can change it tomorrow. And there's nothing sacred about it. There's nothing preordained.

It's just that people decided to make the rules. And so, change whenever and however you want. And for penalties as well, what's a penalty, and what's the relative punishment that should be tied to each penalty?

All arbitrary. Right. I tell people all the time, you know, it's the most complicated athletic event in the world.

It's got the most complicated rules. Let's say that. And the most complicated of those rules of the game are the plays that only happen once in a while, the kicking game.

That's where all the crazy stuff happens. It's the offensive defense. That's, you know, a piece of cake.

It's you get in the kicking game rules. It's, you know, bar the doors because it's some craziness is going to happen and we see it all the time. And so it's interesting.

Yeah. All right. Well, Tim, you have some great articles, you know, just like this every day that talk about an aspect of football, mainly from antiquity and, you know, explaining how it got to the point of where it is today, or maybe an advertisement or piece of equipment, you know, how can other people share and read your tidbits? Maybe you could give them some information.

So the easiest thing is just to go to www.footballarchaeology.com. You can subscribe here and get an email every night at seven o'clock Eastern. And with that day's story, if you don't want the emails that can follow me on Twitter or threads, because I posted both those or, you know, set up a Substack account and, you know, they've got a reader. And so you'll get, you know, whichever Substack you, you know, apply to or follow, you'll get those coming through your feed as well as the ability to browse for others.

So, you know, that's a great way to do it too. So, whichever one works for you, have a look at it. All right.

Well, Tim Brown, www.footballarchaeology.com. Your link is in our show notes. You know, listeners, you can go there and look at Tim's stuff and enjoy his work. And we will talk to you again next Tuesday.

Thanks, Tim. Thank you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

-Transcribed Loyola Chicago Train Ride Team with Timothy Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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We travel back almost 120 years and revel in a phenomenal play that changed the course of history in the gridiron realm.

Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology joins us to tell the saga of the 1905 Michigan Wolverines and Michigan's Goal Line Punt Return of 1905.

Michigan's Goal Line Punt Return of 1905

The 1905 Chicago Maroons and Michigan Wolverines clashed marking a turning point in college football history. This epic matchup, also known as the "First Greatest Game of the Century," held immense significance for both teams and the sport as a whole. Michigan's Point'A'Minute teams had a rather lengthy unbeaten streak and the U of Chicago wanted to break it.

The scoreless affair came down to the final minute when the Wolverine punter could not get a kick off nor escape the rush and a safety won the game for the Maroons.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on the Michigan Goal Line Punt Return

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal for positive football history. Welcome to another football archaeology day with Timothy Brown on that website. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, thank you, Darin. Look forward to chatting. And I was going to say this subject is kind of about my back-to-the-future game.

So that's a kind of fits in really well with your, the broader sports history network that you are a part of. But this is definitely my back to the future game. Well, that that's a great way to look at it.

I'm going to try to hold that line. And as you talk here, the title of your recent tidbit is Michigan's goal line punt return of 1905, the era that I love of football. For some reason, I'm just enamored with the early years of the 20th century and the ball game that was played.

So I can't wait to hear what you have to say about this. Yeah. So, you know, if any listeners aren't as aware, Pigskin Dispatch is part of the Sports History Network.

And, you know, Arnie runs that, and one of his, you know, kind of themes of the things that he uses, you know, consistently when he does his own podcast is he says, okay, get hop in the DeLorean and let's go back in time. Right. And so, you know, this was asked recently in another context, but it's like, if you could go back and watch one football game in history, what would that game be? And so I actually named two.

I said, if it was NFL, I'd go to the ice bowl, but if it's college or just general football, I would go back to the Chicago, Michigan game of 1905. And it's just like, you know, you just can't even imagine how big a game this was, you know? So it's, it is literally the last weekend of college football when the whole system is under attack because of the violence in the game and the number of deaths. And there's not going to be a whole; there's going to be a revolution before the 1906 season.

But so this is still, it's the last of the old guard. And you've got two teams entering the game, Michigan, who has been running roughshod over everybody, including Chicago for the most part, you know, in the most recent years, you know, Michigan was in the first Rose Bowl in 1902. They got their point-a-minute offense on their field in Yost, and leading into the game with Chicago, Michigan had outscored their opponents, 495 to zero, 495 to zero, you know, reasonably dominant, right? Now, Chicago was nowhere near as impressive. They had only outscored their opponents 269 to five.

I mean, they'd given up; they'd given up a touchdown, right? I mean, so they couldn't have been that impressive. Um, so anyway, it's just one of these things where it's just like, you know, these two just dominant teams. And I think that was probably the first time, you know, maybe some of the earlier Michigan teams where people were like this game, but for sure, this is the first game where it's like, this is a game that's better than any game being played that was played in the East all year long, right? Michigan had some great teams, and they were national champs, but this is the first game where the Midwest has the two best teams in the country.

And I, you know, nobody would have doubted that at that point. So it's a huge game, huge game. And just to add onto that, you probably have two of the biggest innovators of the game of football in history, but, you know, fielding HOs, as you said, and Amos Alonzo Stagg for Chicago, they don't get any bigger than that for college coaches.

Yeah. And so, and so, you know, they're playing in Chicago because that's where the big stadium is and that's where the big crowds can be, you know, and so they, you know, they get more, the gates bigger in Chicago. And so it's zero, zero in the fourth quarter, you know, it's a back-and-forth type of game, obviously, if it's zero, zero, and Walter Eckersall is the quarterback of Chicago.

He's also their punter and their drop kicker. So, midway through the fourth quarter, he's punting from the 55-yard line. Cause they still had a 55-yard line there.

Then he boots the ball, and it lands somewhere close to the end of the goal line. Michigan had two players back. One of them was a guy named Denny Clark.

He fields the ball on the two-yard line and apparently, you know, took a step back. And as he steps back, a guy named Mark Caitlin hits him. The hit carries over the goal line into the end.

Well, it wasn't the goal-end zone yet, but you know, it was past the goal line for safety. And so, you know, at that time, football did not have forward progress. So if you got hit on the one-yard line and carried into the, into the, you know, behind the goal into touch, you know, behind the goal line, then you, you know, if you got down there, there was safety.

And so Chicago goes ahead to nothing, and then fundamentally, nothing else happens the rest of the game. And Chicago wins two to nothing. And they're the national champs because of that play.

And two points were scored against Michigan for the season, out of safety. And so, you know, one of the things that happened in 1906 was that the football rules initiated forward progress.

So, that play would not have counted as a safety in 1906, but it did in 1905. So it's just one of these, you know, like great moments in college football. So, you know, it just would be really fun.

And unfortunately, I think Denny Clark was kind of a troubled guy his whole life, you know, even before any of this happened. But he, you know, he just was so distraught. He may not have even gone back to Ann Arbor with the team.

I'm not sure about that. But he literally he transferred, you know, he couldn't stand being there. He transfers to MIT graduates, you know, he's a smart guy.

And then, but he never really got over it. He ended up committing suicide in 1932. But, you know, it was just one of those things where, you know, forgetting about the Danny Clark or Denny Clark issue, you know, just the atmosphere at that game just had to be crazy.

You know, it's just, you know, just the best football that was being played in the country, and for it to end the way that it ended was just something else, you know. That was a humongous rivalry back then because the Chicago Maroons were part of the Western Conference Center that was called the Big Ten. But they were part of that.

Ohio State really wasn't anything to call home about it as a football program yet. And that was that was Michigan's big rival. And the other thing about that was there was a guy, and I'm going to leave his first name blank, but I think his last name is Elbels or Ebels.

Anyways, on the way back. No, no, it was a year or two before that. On the way back from a game when Michigan beat Chicago, a guy who was a Michigan student is taking the train back, and he writes this song that is now, you know, the victors.

So Michigan's fight song was written in response to a victory over Chicago. So that kind of gives you a little bit of a sense of, you know, Chicago's stature and the nature of that rivalry. And even like, you know, on Wisconsin, there's a line in on Wisconsin that now says, take the ball clear down the field, boys.

You know, we're going to win this game. But it used to take the ball clear around Chicago. We're going to win this game or along those lines.

So Chicago was a big deal for Wisconsin, too. You know, so they were a, you know, they're a big deal back then. Yeah, most definitely.

Well, that is a great story. And I'm glad you shared it with us today and just brings back, you know, get your blood boiling a little bit to watch some live football. And I can see why it would be one of your wishes with Arnie to go back and watch that game.

Did he ever show you his DeLorean when you were on with him? I don't think, you know, so when he and I did one or two podcasts, we just did it by telephone. So I didn't; I wouldn't have seen a visual. I think I was; I was probably one of his early Zoom video calls.

And he decided to show me the DeLorean as he was telling me. And here it was a little matchbox car. I was a little bit underwhelmed.

And I was a little bit disappointed. And it's like a, there wasn't a buzz, you know, he's all a smoke and yeah. Yeah.

Don't look at the DeLorean behind the curtain. Tim, Tim, that is a great piece of football history. And you share for pieces of football history a lot on your website.

And maybe you could tell the folks where to go into to look at some of your stuff. Sure. You know, the site is footballarchaeology.com. It's a Substack site.

So you can, you know, just go to footballarchaeology.com and subscribe. You know, I'm also, you know, I basically post everything on Twitter and on threads, and then, you know, you can also use the Substack app if you just want to follow as opposed to subscribe. So anyway, those are the kinds of options, or you can just go out to the site whenever you want.

And there's an archive now with about a thousand different, you know, articles out there. So have at it. All right, Tim, we thank you again for sharing with us and, you know, telling that great story.

Like I said, the hairs are still on the back of my neck. I have to go back and comb them after we're done here. But we thank you for that.

I'm going to hit the cold shower, and we will talk to you again next week. Hey, very good. Thanks.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

-Transcription of Davey Obrien and Standing Tall with Timothy Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.