Football History

The scarlet and gray Buckeye helmet is more than just headgear; it's a symbol of tradition and fierce pride. Its evolution reflects not just changing safety standards, but also the team's identity and artistic expression.

-Early Days (1890s-1940s): The journey began with simple leather helmets resembling oversized baseball caps. They offered minimal protection and quickly evolved into leather helmets with ear flaps and metal bars for the face. The iconic scarlet stripe made its debut in the 1940s, solidifying the helmet's visual connection to the university.

-The Plastic Revolution (1950s-1970s): Increased concerns for player safety led to the introduction of hard plastic helmets in the 1950s. The gray base color was established, and the stripe received a makeover, becoming wider and bolder. Numbers appeared on the sides, and the iconic "Buckeye Leaf" sticker tradition arose in the 1960s, earning its place as a symbol of individual and team achievements.

-Modern Era (1980s-Present): Technological advancements brought lighter, stronger materials like polycarbonate. Face masks became more sophisticated, and stripes experimented with width and color variations. Special edition helmets emerged, paying homage to anniversaries, specific games, and even the state of Ohio.

Long before the era of bright lights and million-dollar contracts, Louis J. 'Red' Salmon etched his name into the annals of American football, not as a mere player, but as a pioneer. His contributions laid the foundation for the powerhouse Notre Dame Fighting Irish program we revere today, a testament to his enduring legacy in the sport.

Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1880, Salmon arrived at Notre Dame in 1900. Standing 6'3" and weighing 230 pounds, he was a physical marvel on the gridiron. Nicknamed "Red" for his hair color, Salmon wasn't just imposing; he was a skilled athlete. Described as both a "slasher" and a "smasher," he could overpower defenders or dart past them with surprising agility.

Salmon's impact was immediate. As a senior in 1903, he exploded onto the scene, scoring a staggering 105 points, a record that stood for over eight decades. Even more impressive was his career total of 36 touchdowns, a testament to his offensive prowess in an era where touchdowns were worth only five points. These feats earned him the distinction of being the first Notre Dame player named All-American.

Salmon's influence transcended the stat sheet. Some historians speculate that he served as a de facto coach during the 1902-1903 season. His leadership qualities and profound understanding of the game were pivotal in Notre Dame's triumph. Under his captaincy in 1903, the team achieved an unprecedented feat, going undefeated for the first time in Fighting Irish history, a testament to his exceptional performance and leadership.

Salmon's legacy goes beyond Notre Dame. He is credited with being the "first great Irish back," a player who paved the way for future generations of stellar Notre Dame running backs. His dominance as a fullback helped establish the position as a crucial element of offensive strategy.

While his professional career details remain unclear, Salmon's impact on college football is undeniable. Inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1971, "Red" Salmon stands as a testament to the sport's early days, a player whose talent and leadership helped shape a national obsession.

The Boston Yanks, a team that flickered brightly briefly in the National Football League (NFL), represent a fascinating chapter in the league's early history. Although the Yanks existed for only five seasons, from 1944 to 1948, they left their mark on the fledgling league despite their struggles.
The Yanks ironically landed in Boston because owner Ted Collins wanted to bring a team to New York City's Yankee Stadium.

The Yanks, a team born out of unique circumstances, were initially intended for New York City's Yankee Stadium by owner Ted Collins. However, the name 'Yanks' stuck, a constant reminder of Collins' initial vision. Their arrival in 1944 coincided with a player shortage caused by World War II, leading to a unique situation for the 1945 season. The Yanks temporarily merged with the Brooklyn Tigers, another struggling franchise, becoming simply 'the Yanks' without a designated home city.

Despite the challenges, the Yanks showed glimpses of potential. They boasted players like Charley "Choo-Choo" Justice, a speedy halfback known for his dazzling runs. However, overall success proved elusive. Their first official season in 1944 yielded a meager 2-8 record, a trend that continued throughout their existence.

One of the Yanks' defining aspects was their home field situation. Primarily playing at Fenway Park, the iconic baseball stadium, they faced logistical hurdles. Sharing the field with the Boston Red Sox often meant scheduling conflicts. Braves Field, home to the Boston Braves baseball team, became a temporary home for games coinciding with Red Sox games. This lack of a dedicated stadium likely hampered fan engagement and team identity.

Financial struggles also plagued the Yanks. The league was still finding its footing, and attendance figures were often disappointing. Coupled with the team's lack of consistent winning, attracting top talent became difficult.

In 1946, the Yanks received a boost when they absorbed the remnants of the Brooklyn Tigers franchise, gaining a wealth of experienced players. However, it wasn't enough to turn the tide. Despite flashes of brilliance from individual players, the Yanks never managed a winning season.

By 1949, the franchise's future looked bleak. Facing mounting financial losses and a lack of on-field success, the Yanks relocated to New York City, becoming the New York Yanks. This move, however, proved temporary. After two seasons, the team moved again, becoming the Dallas Texans (later known as the Kansas City Chiefs), a franchise that thrives today.

Though their time in Boston was brief, the Yanks played a significant role in the NFL's growth. They brought professional football to a new city, showcasing the sport's potential to a wider audience. Their struggles, though challenging, also served as a catalyst for the league's evolution, highlighting the challenges faced by the NFL in its early years. The Boston Yanks, in their brief existence, serve as a testament to the league's perseverance in its journey to becoming the national phenomenon it is today.

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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.

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Have you ever wondered how the game of football shapes the American presidency? Today, we delve into the fascinating intersection of sports and politics with author Chris Calizza, whose book, Power Players: Sports, Politics, & the American Presidency, explores the surprising connections between the gridiron and the Oval Office.

Chris Calizza joins us to unpack the ways presidents have used sports to connect with voters, build their image, and even find inspiration for leadership. We'll discuss iconic sports figures who have interacted with presidents, the evolution of sports fandom in American politics, and the lasting impact athletes can have on the national conversation.

Whether you're a sports fanatic, a political junkie, or simply curious about the unexpected links between these two seemingly disparate worlds, this episode promises a captivating conversation. So, grab your favorite jersey (or political hat!), settle in, and get ready to explore the fascinating world of Power Players with Chris Calizza!

-Transcript of Power Players Interview with Chris Calizza

Darin Hayes
Sports history friends, this is Darin Hayes of the Sports Jersey Dispatch Podcast. Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal to all things great in sports history. And welcome to another edition where we are going to bring on a very interesting author of a recent book that he has released. He is a person who has been a lot in journalism and politics and is now writing a little bit of books on sports. His name is Chris Calizza, and he has written a book, Power Players, Sports Politics and the American Presidency. Chris, welcome to the Pigpen.

Chris Calizza
Thank you for having me.

Darin Hayes
Now, Chris, you have a very well -known career, you've worked for CNN, the Washington Post, and we know how you've reported on politics and things like that, and what brings you into crossing over a little bit into the sports world?

Chris Calizza
Totally. Great question. Well, so I would say that once I gave up my dreams of being in the NBA at about 13 or 14, I had to look for another career. And what always interested me was journalism. Honestly, sports journalism was what interested me most; I wound up going into politics, and I got jobs in college that were sort of in political journalism, and I wound up going into that space. But I always sort of kept my interest in and love of sports there. So when my editor and the publishing house came to me and said, Hey, you want to write another book, I knew that that was the space I wanted to be in because I've always been so passionate about sports and politics. Now, the question was, how do we get into a space where we touch both of those fan bases? You know, how do you write about sports and politics smartly? And honestly, it took a long time to sort the seed to germinate and think of the right way to do it. And you know, we eventually came up with this idea that what we would do is we would look at the sports that presidents played both as kids, and then also as they age, sports, they love sports, they watched on television or listened to on the radio, and what that could tell us about who they are and how they governed when in office. Now, that was the idea. And I think anytime you launch a book, you're like, here, here's my idea. Let's do some research, editing, and writing and see if that bears itself out. If it doesn't, we'll scrap it and try something else. Lucky for me, that first idea came true, and it worked in a way that made me really happy with the final product.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, I mean, it's really very clever that you married the two. These are, you know, the things that you see on the headlines of the front page of newspapers, you know, anything that the President does, anything big in sports that happens, you combine the two into one, uh, segment and put it in this book, it's just very interesting, and I guess it almost models what you did in the book with the presidents to your enjoyment. You, you, love politics. You combine sports in it and, uh, sort of marries up very well.

Chris Calizza
Yeah, no, it was entirely a selfish idea on my part because I wanted to write I wanted to write something I was interested in. I mean, I think the best books, in my experience, and the best journalism, generally speaking, come from a place of people who are passionate about it. I always say that if you're not passionate about what you're writing about, it's hard to get somebody to pay, you know, whatever $25 for a hardcover copy of a book. So, I really wanted to make sure it was a topic I felt passionate about and that I could bring that passion to the writing. So yes, no question. This was a reflection of my own interests, and then thinking hard about, you know, are there enough people who have those two similar interests? And then what can we say that is interesting about sports and politics? I just didn't want to write a book that was like, there's sports, and there's politics; I wanted to say something interesting about the connection between the two. That was the focus and the goal.

Darin Hayes
Well, you did very well at both of those. And I think just to give the listeners a little idea about the general dynamic of the book, you're covering the last 12 or 13 presidents. I think you have them all included, from Ike all the way to Joe Biden.

Chris Calizza
13 presidents. There are great stories about presidents before the modern era, basically since World War II. George Washington has great stories about how he bent an iron bar in half. He threw a ball over the Potomac River. There's some really good stuff in there, but ultimately, I thought I wanted to have something that was not a thousand pages long. That was my one thing. I don't think I could, and I didn't want to write a book that was that long. I wanted it to feel manageable. I wanted it to feel like, even though some people, I'm 47, I don't remember Dwight Eisenhower's time in office, it was like post-World War II was a manageable and digestible group of presidents, 13 presidents, all of whom had some connection or other two sports that we could tell those stories about.

Darin Hayes
You get into some details. Uh, you know, I don't remember Dwight Eisenhower, other than the history books myself, but I, I'm a little bit older. I can remember Nixon, uh, being present. That's sort of the first one I have, but you touch base and, uh, their connection to sports, whether they were a great fan or participated in, uh, some amateur activity or maybe played major college football as some of the presidents did. And I found that really very entertaining.

Chris Calizza
Yeah, you know, one thing that was cool about doing the research and that encouraged me was, with the exception of Lyndon Johnson, all of the other presidents played or spectated or loved sports in some way, shape, or form. So, you know, Eisenhower loved golf. He played more golf than any president before Orson. Nixon loved to bowl, which is a little bit weird, but that was Nixon. He was a little bit of a loner. You know, one of my favorite stories is Nixon told the White House press corps that when he felt stressed out, he would often at night go and bowl at ten o ''o'clock or not at night go and bowl that he had lanes put in the White House and he would bowl between seven and 12 games a night, which is remarkable. This idea of the President of the United States just kind of rolling frame after frame after frame. I found it pretty compelling, particularly because I think it's revealing about who Nixon was. Nixon was a little bit of a loner. He was socially awkward. He was not good at small talk. And this idea of him bowling literally alone, I thought, was a powerful image.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, it wasn't speaking of image. You have an image of Nixon bowling a game. And when you said, you know, he's bowling like a dozen games. And I have family that owns bowling lanes here in Western Pennsylvania. So I do quite a bit of bowling. And I know how tiring it is after three games where you're bowling in a league. It's not ball after ball after ball. And you have an image of Nixon wearing a white button-down shirt with a tie all the way hooked up. And I'm like, my goodness gracious, that's that's quite a workout.

Chris Calizza
He was, he was, he was, he was, he was, he was, he was, he was always sort of formal, I think Nixon. And yeah, you know, one thing that's interesting is he, as kind of makes sense, he actually got pretty good at bowling, uh, over time, uh, he bolded 229 at one point, seven strikes, including four in a row. That was his best game ever. But I mean, that's pretty good for an amateur. He's not a professional bowler, right? But for an amateur bowler, that's not bad. But again, he bolded a lot.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, he definitely got a lot of practice with us. So, can you talk to me and mention a little bit about what you have? We have quite a few of these 13 presidents who love to golf. You know, you talked about Ike, who is probably one of the better golfers. You talked about some guys that maybe weren't so good but still enjoyed the support. I guess, um, you know, no, having the knowledge that you have of these guys golfing and sharing that with the audience, if you had to pick up three guys to be in a foursome, you know, these presidents that they're all in your prime and could golf, who would be the three presidents that you would want to golf with from this group?

Chris Calizza
definitely, Eisenhower, not because he was particularly good. He was fine, you know, he played a lot, but the reason I would want Eisenhower is that he was a member in Augusta, and I would. I'm not getting on Augusta otherwise, so that's what gets me on Augusta. We're playing a foursome in Augusta, and you have a place to stay.

Darin Hayes
There, too, with the cabin built for him

Chris Calizza
how we're having them build it for him. And there's a bunch of that in the book, too, about how that came about. But yes. And then I think Trump would probably be interesting to play with. He's quite a good golfer. He's not as good as he says he is, but he's probably a five or six handicap. I mean, for someone his age, he's pretty good. The last one, I would say, is John Kennedy. John Kennedy is probably the best natural golfer of the 13 I looked at. He really downplayed how much golf he played and how good he was at it because he was concerned that this sort of idea of golf is an elitist sport. He already had that image of his father, being from a wealthy family and sort of patrician and blue blood. He didn't want to play into that, but he was quite a good golfer. So I would like to see Kennedy. I think that would also be hilarious for some of the military heroes, the guy from Camelot and the pro wrestling President, Donald Trump.

Darin Hayes
have indeed been very interesting. And I found that you know, you're, what you did with Dwight Eisenhower, you know, I knew about the Eisenhower tree, at least the basic story, but you did tell you went on about that and about the cabin, Augusta building it because he attended so much and like the played house.

Chris Calizza
all the time. Yeah, he was literally there all the time. So they built the house for him. I mean, it's nice. And it was, interestingly, made to look like a replica of the White House. He painted there pretty regularly. I mean, he sort of made, in a lot of ways, Augusta Augusta, right? The way that we think of it now is that it is probably the most exclusive golf club in the world, right? But you know, back in the 50s, it was a little bit actually 40s; it was a little bit different than that. Eisenhower brought a sort of fame to it and a level of attention to it that it didn't already have. And I think Augusta recognizes that that's why they built him the Eisenhower cabin, right? They loved having a president or a former president and a former military hero on the grounds, playing and talking about Augusta and being a member.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. And, you know, Eisenhower was a much deeper athlete than just golf in his older years. You know, we know from our website, Pigskin Dispatch, and you've mentioned in the book quite a bit that he was quite the football player back in his days at the Academy.

Chris Calizza
He was, and you know, it's so funny you think of it. I always think of this in relation to Bo Jackson, who was not a president of the United States, but like Bo Jackson had, Bo Jackson injured himself. Bo Jackson was a hero of my, you know, I'm 47. So right in my wheelhouse, you know, with the Raiders and the Royals. And if Bo Jackson had injured himself the way he injured himself and basically ended his career now, you know, he's probably out for a year, and then he comes back, you know, medical technology being what it is. Well, go back another 35 or 40 years; Eisenhower hurt his knee playing football, and that's it. I mean, he no longer plays football, even though that was sort of one of the reasons he was at the Naval Academy in the first place. So it's, you know, talking about being blessed to live at certain times. I always tell my kids that they're lucky to be living right now, as opposed to 100 years ago, and that is the perfect example of that.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, absolutely. He wasn't the only football player who had some success at the collegiate level. You had another president that had quite a career in college.

Chris Calizza
Yes, so I would say, you know, people always ask me when they find out you've written a book about sports and presidents. Well, who is the best athlete of all the presidents? That's one of the first questions people usually ask. And I always say the answer to that's pretty clear, and I think inarguable, and it's Gerald Ford. So Gerald Ford played offensive line and a little bit of defense at the University of Michigan. He was an All-American. When he graduated, he had offers from both the Bears and the Lions to play professionally; he turned those offers down to go to law school, which, by the way, talks about how things were different back then. It very rarely, I think, would you see a college athlete have an offer to play professional sports and turn it down to go to law school, at least immediately. But that's what Ford did. One thing that's really interesting about Ford is, without question, our best athlete as President; at the same time, he didn't like to talk about his athletic accomplishments during his political career because he was afraid of being categorized as just a dumb job. So Lyndon Johnson, President of the United States, often referred to Ford; when he referred to Ford, he said, oh, Gerald Ford, he got tackled one man too many times without a helmet on. So, he would play into the idea that Ford was just an athlete. And I think Ford really overcompensated in a lot of ways and didn't talk about his significant athletic achievements. I mean, without question, the most athletically accomplished President that we've ever had, Ford, and that is the reason that he wanted not to be typecast. He wanted to be more than just an all-American football player at the University of Michigan.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's definitely true. And you know, many people are aware that he played, but I don't think they realize how good he was and being the captain of that team.

Chris Calizza
I mean, he was, I always wonder, I mean, you know, these debates, I think, are fascinating, like, could Gerald Ford play on the University of Michigan offensive line now? No, probably not, given what his build was and what his stature was. But at the time, he was a standout.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, most definitely. Now, you know, staying on the football theme, I think maybe the biggest surprise to me by reading this book is, you know, Joe Biden in his football career. I never realized that you know, he had been successful as an athlete at the high school level, but maybe you could talk about it.

Chris Calizza
Yes. Absolutely. He goes to Archmere Academy, a private school in Delaware, and his senior year, he's a wide receiver, and his senior year, they're very, very good. They go undefeated. He goes, at least in part, to the University of Delaware to play football. His freshman year, and I think a lot of people who have either been kids or have kids can relate to this. During his freshman year, his grades were pretty poor. It's my freshman year of college. So, excuse me, his parents say, you're not playing football. But by the summer after his sophomore year, he's played spring football, and he's sort of set to be on the team the following year; what happens? Well, he goes on spring break that summer spring of his sophomore year, and he meets a woman named a girl at the time; she's 19, I think, named Nellie. Now, people who are familiar with Joe Biden's background will know that his first wife was Nellie. So he met his first wife on spring break, the summer of the spring of his sophomore year. So he's forced with a choice. She goes to Syracuse University. He wants to play football at the University of Delaware. If he plays football, he doesn't have his weekends free to go visit her. If he goes and visits her, he can't play football; he chooses her as a good choice. They got married. But yeah, Biden was a pretty good wideout from everything I could read about was written about him when he was in high school. He's actually a pretty good golfer, as well. He's not a bad overall athlete. He doesn't play nearly as much golf as Obama or Trump is, you know, his predecessors in office. But he is a pretty natural, good athlete. Overall, though, you know, at this point, we're talking about his age, you know, he's 80. We're probably not talking about Joe Biden going out and, you know, playing football anymore. But at one time, he was a pretty good athlete.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that really, really surprised me. Now, another part of the book that I really loved was the aspect where you sort of sneak up and surprise me. I would get in the rhythm of the reading on it. And all of a sudden, there's a pop culture reference, you know, like a Ron Burgundy quote, or, you know, I try. It was great. It was very entertaining. And I love being kept up a little bit pertinent to the story. So, what was your strategy when you were writing the book? You want to have a little bit of that pop culture come in.

Chris Calizza
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's sort of how I write generally, you know, is I've always written, I've written mostly, I should say, for the internet my whole life, whether it's at CNN or the Washington Post, most of my stuff has appeared online first. And yeah, I wanted it; I think what I didn't want is for the book to feel like required reading, that it was something that, you know, well, I better read this book. I wanted people to be excited about reading it and have fun while they were reading it. So I tried to make the writing, the anecdotes, and the stories there as fun as possible. One thing that I was really lucky with with the book was that there was so much raw material. Honestly, I was surprised by this; not that much has been written about it. So, there have been books written about presidents in golf. Rick Riley wrote a famous book, Commander in Cheat, about Donald Trump, and he always cheats at golf. But there hasn't really been a broad look at the sports the presidents played, what they loved, and what it tells us about them. And so I was mining a lot of ground that hadn't really been mined before. So, it made for fun research and a fun writing process. And I hope it makes for a fun read.

Darin Hayes
Well, it most definitely does. Okay, now I shared with you what I found to be the most surprising element as a reader. What was the most surprising thing to you during your research that you wrote in a book?

Chris Calizza
Well, you know, I spent the last five years at CNN covering Donald Trump every single day, writing about him most days. I did not think that going into the book, the thing I would have been surprised to learn would be something about Donald Trump. I thought maybe it'd be about Eisenhower or Ford or, you know, someone from a time past when I was less familiar with it, but it wound up being Trump, and I'll tell you what it was. So, Donald Trump actually played sports in college. It wasn't baseball. It wasn't golf. It was squash. So he played squash for one year at Fordham. And I talked to his biographer, a guy named, well, a guy at the Washington Post who was wonderful and a former colleague of mine. He told me a great story about Trump as a squash player. And he essentially said Trump wasn't a great squash player, not because he wasn't athletic, but because he didn't have the patience to sort of pound out points. He would get frustrated and just wail the ball as hard as he could. And, you know, that often would lead to an error, and he would lose the point. One other fun story about Trump and squash. He didn't like to take the team bus to and from games. So he would drive his sports car with his friends from the team with it. Now, the coach gave him transportation money for that, but he also charged his friends tolls and gas. So he pocketed that money, too. On one trip, they had just lost at the Naval Academy in Maryland. On the way back, Trump pulls into a department store. I think it was a Montgomery Wards. This will date him a little bit, but generally, in the department store, he emerges from the department store with a brand-new set of golf clubs, teas, and balls. They proceed to drive to this bluff overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. He and his friends just blast ball after ball into the water until they get bored, leave the golf clubs by brand-new golf clubs by the side of the road, and drive off back to Fordham. So I felt that I just, I didn't know that about him. I love that anecdote, and Mark Fisher is sorry; it is the name of the Washington Post reporter whom I talked to about this. I love the idea of Trump not being patient enough to succeed at squash despite his athletic ability. I think it's an interesting metaphor for how he approached politics, too.

Darin Hayes
Uh, yeah, I think a lot of maybe some of his business dealings, too. He sort of has television programs, which seems to be part of his personality. So yeah, very, very interesting. Well, Chris, why don't we take this opportunity to give the listeners, let's once again, the name of the book and where folks may get a copy of it?

Chris Calizza
So it's called Power Players Sports Politics in the American Presidency. If you type Power Players, you should be able to find it. It is on Amazon. It is on Barnes and Noble. It's on bookshop .org. There's an audiobook that I read. So, if you like my voice, buy the audiobook because it's me reading it. It's on Kindle. You also can go to, in real life, brick-and-mortar stores, any brick-and-mortar store that sells books; it should be there by now. If not, ask for it, and it will be there within a few days.

Darin Hayes
Well, Chris, we really appreciate you coming on and sharing the stories from this book and, and sharing this book for the world to, you know, not only capture, uh, you know, sports history but capture American history and world history in the process. And I love the mix of all the elements: the entertainment of pop culture, the history of the presidents, and, of course, sports. So it was a great book, and I highly recommend it. Thank you, sir, for joining us today.

Chris Calizza
Thanks for the kind words. It was really fun to write. I hope it's as fun.

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

Timothy Brown:
Okay, good.

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

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

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

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

Timothy Brown:
What?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

The Washington Huskies, a powerhouse in college football, have proudly displayed their iconic purple and gold colors for over a century. But beyond the striking uniform, the evolution of their logo reflects the program's rich history and evolving identity.

-From Sun Dodgers to Huskies (1900s)
In the early days, the Huskies' athletic teams went by the name "Sun Dodgers." Reflecting this, the first recorded logo in 1919 depicted a man standing under an umbrella, facing away from the sun. This historically significant logo lacked the ferocity and spirit that would later define the Huskies.

The shift to "Huskies" as the official mascot in 1922 ushered in a new era of visual representation. The iconic "W" logo was introduced in 1924, featuring a bold serif font and a classic block design. This simple yet powerful symbol quickly became synonymous with Husky athletics and has remained constant.

-Modern Adaptations and Variations (1900s onwards)
While the "W" remained the centerpiece, the logo underwent several stylistic changes. In the 1950s, bolder fonts and playful designs emerged, reflecting the changing aesthetic of the time. The 1959 logo, for example, featured a whimsical Husky mascot alongside the "W," offering a more lighthearted representation.

By the 1980s, a more modern approach was adopted. The 1983 logo featured a sleek, sans-serif font for the "W," set against a contrasting blue and white background. This streamlined design emphasized the power and strength of the Huskies brand, reflecting the program's growing national prominence.

The 21st century saw further refinements to the logo. The 2001 iteration introduced a subtle gradient effect to the "W," adding depth and dimension. This version and the 2016 logo featuring a bolder, more aggressive font solidified the Huskies' visual identity in the modern era.

-A Legacy in Purple and Gold
Today, the Washington Huskies logo is a testament to the program's rich history and enduring legacy. With its simple yet powerful design, the "W" symbolizes excellence, representing generations of talented athletes and passionate fans. As the Huskies forge their path in college football, their iconic logo will undoubtedly remain a cherished emblem for years.

Check out the logos and more at the 1000logos.net link below.

---

There are a handful of early coaches who have had such a resounding impact on the game of football that they actually changed the game, and took players to the upmost sides of their God Given talents. Percy Haughton, not a household name by any means, is one of these rare individuals in gridiron lore, whose story needs to be told.

Author Dick Friedman joined us to chat about his book on the Harvard coaching legend.


Percy_Haughton_D_Friedman_1

⏰Sat, 06/01 05:45AM · 48mins

Transcript

Darin Hayes
Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes at pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal into positive football history. And we're gonna stare down that portal today and go way back, probably 125 years or so back into the East Coast of football, where football started. And we have a gentleman who's written a book called The Coach Who Strangled a Bulldog, How Harvard's Percy Haughton Beat Yale and Helped Reinvent Football. That's, of course, author Dick Friedman. Dick Friedman, welcome to the program.

Dick Friedman
Thank you very much, Darin. It's great to be here.

Darin Hayes
It's very interesting to have this talking about Coach Percy Haughton because we have not covered him in our program and we have, you know, probably about 1000 different podcasts and I can't believe I've never had anybody talk about him before so I'm really excited to hear a little bit more about coach.

Dick Friedman
Well, I gotta say, I think I won't say he's totally lost to history. He is, of course, in the College Football Hall of Fame. So if you're in the College Football Hall of Fame, you're out there, you know, you're a figure. But he's, because he did most of his coaching before World War I, before the age of the newsreels, I think to some degree he is lost to history. You know, for instance, he's not nearly as famous as Newt Rockne, who followed him along and is now the most important coach in American College Football, arguably. I mean, I guess you could also, you know, invoke Bear Bryant and maybe even Nick Saban at this point. But in any event, Percy Horton was a figure who did his greatest work really by 1915. And, you know, and then the United States went to World War I, and after that, things changed. And then Percy, except for a very brief stint in Columbia, was out of the game. So, in any event, he is kind of a distant figure, maybe more distant than he should be.

Darin Hayes
OK, yeah, that's very interesting. I think, and I can see, that your passion, and you're talking about the passion of Coach Haughton. And I'd like maybe to get some of your background to tell us why Percy Haughton is a person of interest that you would write a book about.

Dick Friedman
Well, it's very interesting, Darin, because I grew up eight miles from Harvard Stadium in Newton, Massachusetts. I started going to Harvard games when I was seven years old in 1958. And then I actually went to Harvard and graduated in 73 and, of course, went back most seasons to see games, either at the stadium or when they were on the road. But interestingly enough, it took an assignment when I was working for Sports Illustrated, which I did for 18 years. I was working on the college football coffee table book that Sports Illustrated did about 12 or 13 years ago. A piece of copy came in front of me written by my colleague, David Sabino, and it was Harvard's Percy Haughton, who was 71, 7, and 5 in Cambridge from 1908 through 1915. And I looked at it and I went, holy. And then I won't say the next word that I said, holy blank. I've known this my whole life. Has anybody ever written a book about this guy? And I did a little investigating. And the answer was no. Nobody had written a book about him, although he had been part of a few other books. And I said, wow. I said this has got to be worth something. This particular era, especially of Harvard football that he coached, was an amazing era with some amazing players. So there's got to be something there. A lot of people that I talked to didn't really think there was anything there, and they were sick and tired of hearing about Harvard. And there was a lot going on. Nevertheless, when I did a little more investigating, the thing that I found was, aside from the Outnet record, which is amazing, there was really a great story about this guy and about the players that played for him. He turned out to be an absolutely seminal figure in the beginnings of what I call modern football. And the more I got into it, the more fascinated I got. And then I discovered that he had written a book which is now a hundred years old, exactly this year, called Football and How to Watch It. I read the book, and it's actually available on Google Books. And I recommend that anybody read it because it's fascinating. And basically, the book holds up amazingly well a hundred years later. I mean, the one thing that is not as big a part of it as it is now in the game is passing. That was not nearly as big a part of the game. It was just coming in in the twenties and certainly was not as well developed as it became even 10 to 15 years later. But the rest of it, it's as if he could write it as if he had written it last week. And so the more I looked, the more I looked, and the more research I did, the more I was convinced that there was something there. Then, I found one of his great assistant coaches, who was actually his backup fullback at Harvard. He was a guy named Reggie Brown, who was his advanced scout and did notebooks. And these notebooks were suddenly hiding in plain sight of all places Notre Dame. I got in contact with the librarians at Notre Dame, and they sent them to me on loan. And again, reading, what he did was he had all sorts of diagrams and plays, like if he would be scouting Yale for the game and he would be scouting and he'd go to Yale practices and he put their formations down and everything. And again, the more you look at it, the more I am going, wow, what a treasure trove this is.

Darin Hayes
There's got to be there's got to be a story behind it. How did the assistant coach at Harvard's notebooks and playbooks basically end up at Notre Dame? There has to be a Knute Rockne who had to do something about this.

Dick Friedman
Well, it's possible the other thing that's that's, and I asked I asked he actually asked that question of a few people. And what they said is that often things go are sold to collections, various collections and then the schools will buy the collection. And that's probably what happened.

Darin Hayes
That makes perfect sense, though.

Dick Friedman
Yeah, yeah. But anyway, you look at these things, and these things are, you know, 110 years old now. And you're amazed at the sophistication of the game already. Right. I mean, that, that, that, in fact, every, everything as I as I kept researching, that was one of the main things that, that, that came through to me was how even back in 1910 1915 the game, the scouting, the media, of course, called the press then was already amazingly sophisticated. And, you know, again, I said, there's a lot going on here that, that, that's plenty for me to write about. And sure enough, you know, I almost got lost in the research; as you well know, that happens to all of us. We go down the rabbit hole and, and the next thing you know, you know, we forget to write the book. But luckily, that didn't happen. And, and, you know, that's how the coach who strangled the bulldog came to be. So, anyway, it was a great, great experience for me. And, you know, the other thing is that it got me some cred among the Harvard Athletic Department. And I ended up being, I now, for the last, since 2014, I've been the Harvard Magazine football correspondent. Really nice. Yeah, I mean, I've been, I, when I was on the East Coast, I would go to as many games as I could. Now that I've been on the West Coast, I've been streaming the games on ESPN Plus. I have to say it's not a bad way to be a correspondent. You know, I mean, you get it, but you get it almost as much as you need. Almost better than being there. And, you know, I write up a little report every, after every game and, and, you know, it's been a lot of fun, and it's also, you know, kept me in touch with a lot of people back at the school, which is wonderful.

Darin Hayes
And that's going to be fantastic to be in your alma mater, too. That's really special.

Dick Friedman
Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's been great. And, you know, the other thing is, I've gotten to meet and talk with the coach at Harvard. Now, Tim Murphy is a tremendous coach, and I have judged him as the greatest coach in Harvard football history, even greater than Percy Haughton. And I give him the nod, partly because Murph has been added for 28 seasons now, whereas Percy only did it for nine, you know, or eight. So no, I guess it's nine. So, you know, Murph has won like nine Ivy League championships and is a tremendous football coach. But anyway, so between one thing and another, it's been a tremendous experience for me.

Darin Hayes
Well, yeah, congratulations. That's a great honor. And, uh, something, you know, especially to be staying in touch with your Alma water and, uh, stay in touch with football, even though you're on the other coast. The Dick, let's get it a little bit into the Percy Haughton's background. How did he get involved in football?

Dick Friedman
Percy went to Groton, the fabled prep school. Percy was a member of the class of 95, that's 1895, at Groton, and then went on to Harvard, where he was in the class of 1899. Percy was a star athlete at Groton, one of the greatest athletes; even today is still ranked one of the greatest athletes that Groton ever had. He was a big, tall guy, very lean, very limber. He was a tremendous punter, but his actual favorite sport remained, and so was baseball, where he was a great center fielder for both Groton and the Crimson. And he loved baseball players for his football team. That's what they always said, that as soon as he saw a great baseball player, a lot of them already were great football players, but he would try to convert them into football players. Anyway, he went on to Harvard and played fullback for the Crimson. This was a time when Yale was totally dominant in football in the 1890s and early 1900s, a really great golden age for Yale. They were the Alabama of their day, really. He was involved in one game in 1898 when his punting helped Harvard win a rare victory. But again, when you have a rare victory in these series, people really do remember it. And then he went on after college, after Harvard, he went on and coached at Cornell for a couple of years. And he actually succeeded a coach that you may have heard of named Pop Warner. And then Percy went back to Boston, coaching not being a well-paid profession at that time. Percy went on back to Boston and worked in the bond business. And at the time, Harvard was kind of struggling, losing to Yale and finally people in Cambridge got fed up and they went after Percy and they said, how would you like to take over? He said he would with one condition, and that condition was that he had total control. He was not gonna take it if people were gonna be kibitzing over his shoulder. And sure enough, they were so desperate that they grabbed him. In the first year, he beat Yale in some polls back then, and some newspapers named him the national champion, Harvard national champion. There were seven, oh, and one; they were undefeated, and Percy had achieved his cred. From there on, he had a successful run. But again, it was his way or the highway. And he really systematized football. He really broke the game down and kind of modernized it. A lot of the things he innovated or made popular, at least, are things that we see coaches still doing today.

Darin Hayes
OK. Now, now with that story there with him, uh, you know, beating Yale sort of right out of the shoot with the coaching, is that where the title to your book came from, strangling the Bulldog?

Dick Friedman
Yes, it was that particular game that Yale game in 1908 when Percy, they went to Yale, they traveled to Yale the game was at Yale Field back then, there was the Yale ball was still a few years away from being built, and Percy, always a great motivator, he decided that he would strangle a bulldog, of course, that being Yale's mascot. What he did was though he had a bulldog being towed by I think back of a car and this, however was to allay the PETA fans who might be listening right now, this was not a live bulldog, this was a paper mache bulldog; and Percy grabbed it by the neck, said this is what we're gonna do to Yale and the team laughed like crazy but the legend grew that Percy strangled the bulldog and of course then he did so metaphorically three days later when they upset Yale with the mighty score of four to nothing thanks to a field goal by a guy named Vic Canard. So that was the whole birth of it, but whenever I would tell people that I was working on this, people would say, oh, isn't that the guy that strangled the bulldog? So after a while, I began to think, you know, maybe I should make more of this than my working title was things like Crimson Autumns and whatever, and I went, you know something, this strangled the bulldog thing, we got to get it right out there, you know front and center and sure enough that's what we did.

Darin Hayes
catchy title, and it's one that's unique and different from anything else you read, especially in a football book. So that's great, though. It really caught my eye when I saw the title.

Dick Friedman
Well, you know, that was the editors were happy that I came up with it, the editors of the book, you know, because they were starting to worry that this thing was going to sound very, very plain vanilla, you know, so, you know, I understood what they said being an editor myself for many years. You know, you got to you got to get something to grab the reader in, you know, pull the reader in.

Darin Hayes
1 .8 seconds to grab their attention. And once you do, you got them, right?

Dick Friedman
That's right. That's it. Exactly. That's it. Exactly.

Darin Hayes
Now I find it, it's a real interesting going back and looking at some of these, uh, records of some of these teams, especially the Eastern teams. And you see, you know, Yale and Harvard and Princeton and Penn, especially Yale and Harvard always being that last game, you know, sort of right around Thanksgiving last game of the season. And usually, you know, everything was hinging on on who was going to be, you know, the top team in the land, especially when they, you know, people like, uh, Park H Davis and the Billings report and Helms report and the rest of them went back retroactively and looked at these teams that sort of came down to that game would, uh, determine who would be the national champion or co-national champion at the time. And is, uh, Harvard and Yale, still like the last game of the season on their, OK?

Dick Friedman
Yes, that is called, still called the game, right? You don't even need the big game, which is what Cal and Stanford have out here. But no, the game is the last game of the season. And a lot of years, one or the other of the teams has a mediocre record or worse. And if they can upset the other, the hated rival, then the season is a relative success. And it's still the one that really counts. And for many years, you're right. It did have implications, either in the early days or national championship implications. Nowadays, since 1956, since the formation of the Ivy League, often it has had Ivy League championship implications of one or both teams involved with the chance for the title. So there's a lot at stake. I know the coaches feel it tremendously, the pressure tremendously. They think about it. They probably worry about it because they know that's the one the alumni think about. And it's a yardstick for the alumni. And it's also the biggest attendance in the Ivy League almost every year. It's the biggest attendance when it's at Yale especially. Because at Yale, you might have as many as 55 or 60 ,000 people at the game. Harvard's a much smaller stadium, but usually is sold out nevertheless. So it's quite a rivalry. I will say this though. Princeton and Dartmouth lately have been terrific. And before that, Penn had quite a run. And so in fact, a lot of years Penn and Harvard was the game for the Ivy League championship, which is the next to last game of the season. A lot of years like in the 80s and 90s. So it goes back and forth. The Ivy League fans, there aren't that many of us, but we're intense. That much I'll say.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's it's a tremendously is very interesting. I had a great opportunity probably about 10 years ago to go and tour the Yale Bowl and some of Yale's campus with a former player and a former coach that my wife's related to. And we got to get to experience. I got to talk to the former player and I told myself, you know, what was that? Like the biggest day, you know, of your career, you know, coming out of this Yale tunnel, what was what was the game that you remember the most coming out of there? It was all the two times that we played Harvard here. That was the thing. So they feel the same way up at Yale. I'm sure that you folks at Harvard do, too. So it's an interesting rivalry.

Dick Friedman
Well, you know, we consider Yale our safety school. What can I tell you? You know, only kidding, only kidding. Yeah. No, I mean, that one. I must say the other great thing is that I've had a real good chance to observe and, in some cases, to meet the other Ivy, some of the other Ivy coaches. And, you know, it's a it's a terrific group right now. I mean, they're the same same as the same group as last season, which is really rare, right, to have nobody in a conference lose their jobs. And but I think it's merited because they're they're it's a very impressive group of individuals and they're really good teachers. That's the other thing that I like about all of them, you know, very, very, you know, when you when you hear them talk, you know, you feel like you're learning something from all of them, which is great. So, you know, all of this has been very fascinating to me in my old age, you know, getting to, as you know, getting to meet and briefly sit in the press box with with 22 year olds or 19-year olds who could be my grandchildren. You know, it's great. It's a lot of fun.

Darin Hayes
Interesting. But let's get back to Coach Haughton. I'm sorry, I took you down a couple rabbit holes there. Coach Haughton had the big game beaten Yale early on in his career. Was that sort of the biggest game of his career or was there some other games that maybe are equal to that or maybe even surpassed it?

Dick Friedman
There were a couple of Yale games later on that Harvard won in big fashion, in convincing fashion. They won in 1914, I believe, was a 39 to six. And the following year, in 15, they also won by a very big score. And when you won, when you scored 39 points in a game back then, that was like scoring 75 points today. That was just, it was a low scoring era. So for you to pile up that many touchdowns in a major game was awesome. And a lot of it was just that he had a well-drilled group that executed brilliantly, especially in their blocking. And they were just unstoppable. They were unstoppable. So, they also won a major game in 1913 at the stadium, again against Yale, in which one of the most famous players, a fellow named Charlie Brickley, kicked five field goals. Now this had been done before, but never in as major a game with this kind of a spotlight. And Brickley, who might call the da Vinci of the drop kick, is still one of the greatest, if not the greatest drop kickers in football history. I mean, we talked earlier about, you know, Percy Haughton being a lost figure in a way, drop kicking certainly is a lost art in football. But Brickley, who also could place kick as well, drop kicking was a crucial element in a team's attack back then. And Brickley was the greatest drop kicker. And he was from nearby Everett, Massachusetts, but he kicked five field goals at the stadium. And this received totally national coverage. It was almost like the Super Bowl, you know, if somebody had done something great in the Super Bowl. And, you know, so all these games were receiving total saturation coverage. And again, the whole Haughton legend got burnished with every year that he achieved this kind of result. And, you know, but those were some of the results that happened and they did stick around one extra year in 1916 and Yale did win 63. So, you know, it wasn't foolproof, you know, that's the nature of the beast. But anyway, that was when you read about the coverage about, you know, Brickley, you know, Brickley was a God at that point, you know, Brickley was like, you know, any great athlete, you know, Joe Namath or, you know, Tom Brady or you name it. That's the level of celebrity that he had achieved.

Darin Hayes
Yeah. Isn't it interesting that, you know, back in that era, you know, that the kickers and punters were sort of the stars of the teams, of the great teams. And, you know, like you say, like Brickley and, you know, hot and hot and before him and, you know, Thorpe and it was all these, all these players, because the kicking game and the punting game was so important to the offensive before, you know, the forward pass was really prevalent. So it's fascinating.

Dick Friedman
Yeah, and Haughton, you know, was having been a great punter himself, really paid tremendous attention to it. What we today call the measurables, you know, he was already onto it. He would put a stopwatch on his on his kickers to see how fast they would get the punt off, you know, after the after the snap of the ball and, you know, that he drilled them to try to get it off, you know, no less than like one one in five, seven seconds or something like that. I could be misquoting. The other the other thing that he was a fiend about was back back then, you know, covering kicks was very, very, a very big part of the game. And what he said to his kickers was, you know, I want the ball kicked 40 yards. I'm not talking 41 yards and I'm not talking 39 yards. When I say 40, I mean 40. And one of his greatest players, besides Brickley, a guy named Eddie Mahan, kicked one 60 yards and Brickley yanked him from I mean, Haughton yanked him from the game and said, that 60 yard punt does us no good at all, because we can't cover 60 yards. You know, that's the kind of guy he was. He was a nut. Look, he was a bit of a nut. There's just no way around it.

Darin Hayes
You hear about it all the time. Even today that punters out kicking their coverage. So maybe he was on to something back then.

Dick Friedman
Oh, he definitely was, I mean, and he he had, you know, he wanted football played played a certain way. And, you know, a big part of the game was was exchange of punts to gain territory gain yardage. And the other thing is, he loved exchange of punts and and playing for the breaks. You know, back then, let the other team could fumble. They might throw an interception if the rare forward pass you know Harvard guy could intercept it, and they would gain territory that way and then they had Berkeley to kick a field goal. Three to nothing win that was fine by him, you know, but they had so much better material by that point than the than most of the other teams that they were winning by reasonably big store big scores. And they won. They were 33 they had a 33 game unbeaten streak from 1911 to 1915. Wow. And then a couple of ties in there but you know they just outclassed other teams, you know, so much better. And the team that beat them before the end of the, the beginning of the streak was Carlisle with Jim Thorpe. And Jim Thorpe put on a day for the ages back at the, you know, at Harvard Stadium, and Haughton said, you know, I've now seen the Superman in the flesh, you know, he was convinced so you know, and Berkeley and Haughton became good friends great kickers you know they do kicking contests and stuff. So, you know, if there had been more of an organized pro football in the in the late teens and early 20s, there'd be a lot more have been a lot more money for those guys.

Darin Hayes
Hmm. Interesting. Now, OK, besides the contributions that Coach Haughton did, you know, for just his record at Harvard and, you know, winning some national championships in there in the kicking game, what are some other contributions that you can sort of look back and say, you know, Percy Haughton, he's a guy that started that or has a lot of responsibility for that. Some things that maybe in modern football that we should be thankful for to him.

Dick Friedman
Sure, I mean, I don't know about being thankful for, but the whole organization of practice, you know, I mean, the way practices today are scripted to the minute, you know, he started, I don't know whether he started it, but he certainly popularized it. He had the players helmets lined up, you know, in front of, at the field, right? Didn't want to waste a second. He gave out the players knew exactly what was going to be worked on that particular day. You know, he'd had at three o 'clock, they were going to do such and such. At 3.15, they were going to do such and such. At 3 .30, such and such. He broke the team down into four segments. He had the varsity, then an A, B and C team. And it was a bit of a ladder in the sense that you could work your way up or work your way down depending as the year went on. Very big on drill and execution. You know, we've heard a lot about Vince Lombardi telling his team to run the power sweep 11 times or until they got it right. Well, that was, Percy Haughton did the same thing. He didn't have a big playbook. He had only 25 plays, but he could run them from five different formations. So he really had 125 plays. The other thing that he did was, I think was very, very important. He decided at a certain stage that the future of football was not to the heavy, to the weight, to the heavy guy. It was to the athletic guy. And that really, he figured that out early on. You know, that again, he loved baseball players, but what he wanted was really the athletic guy, not that, or as what they called it back then, the 200 -pound fat boy, you know, which now we would call the 400 -pound fat boy. But that was really important to the Harvard system, was to have really kind of raw boned great athletes who were fast, quick, as well as strong, not a big guy on weight, you know, working with the weights. Instead, he would rather guys be eased off and come in rested and, you know, be keen rather than work them and scrimmage them to death and practice. So all these things that have become common and standard and most coaches, you know, quivers today, you know, are what are a big part of the Haughton system. And because of Harvard's prominence, you know, they got a lot of publicity. And then he wrote the book and even more of his stuff. And then the one other thing I should talk about, which I think is very important, was that he decided also that deception was gonna be a very big feature of the game. And his teams were very, very skilled in deceiving the opponent. He really wanted the opponent to sweat hard and worry about what the next play is. He loved it when passing came in because he would pitch out to one of the triple threat backs that they had and the triple threat back would hold the ball up. And, you know, the defensive backs were wondering, what's gonna happen here? Is it gonna be a run? Is it gonna be a pass? You know, what's gonna go on? And he loved that, you know, he wanted that guy on an island just worrying and letting the Harvard guys get the jump on them. And again, this was all not totally new, but again, became much more standard with what he did.

Darin Hayes
Uh, very interesting. Uh, and you know, when you say we should be thankful to, I think, uh, us as fans and the players themselves should be thankful for having the organized practices and I'm sure coaches today sort of take it for granted, but somebody had to start doing that and organize those and having the drills and everything. And, you know, I, I think that's definitely something that you can hang, uh, Percy Haughton's hat on, uh, to, to, uh, you know, credit him for that. So I think that is something to be thankful for.

Dick Friedman
So yeah, yeah. And you know, and he even had like each week, you know, was given a name, you know, like, like, would be like, joy week, you know, break before the Yale game, he wanted the team really loose before the Yale game, he wanted them to have fun that week, you know, not to be have the entire season planned out. And, again, this was, you know, very contrary to what the image of football was of a bunch of guys in a scrum, you know, and it's fascinating for me to read it was fascinating for me to read about it, because, you know, again, I had a total image of guys in a scrum, you know, guys with a lot of hair and a scrum. And then you read about it, and you see, well, you know, what a method that this guy had, you know, he called it human chess. Right. And it's just the whole cerebral aspect of the game was brought to the fore by person.

Darin Hayes
Uh, I'm sure if he could see the game being played today, he would, he would really be excited, you know, being, having all the other formations in the passing game, be more prevalent and what it, what a chess chess match it is today. That's for sure.

Dick Friedman
can't make the case that he's any better than Rockme or Frank Leahy or, you know, Bud Wilkinson. You know, you just go down the line of all the tremendous coaches in college football. But I do think that he's lost to history in a way. And again, I think this is a big part of it is because he was early. He was too early, right? If there had been newsreel footage of him, he would have a better chance of being really famous. Now, I would say that he went to Columbia in the 20s. He took the job there and was starting to build that program. And one day after practice, he said he wasn't feeling too well. He laid down and he died of a heart attack. He was 48 years old.

Darin Hayes
Oh, well.

Dick Friedman
he had been in New York, in New York, where he was, if he had been able to continue in New York through the, you know, the war in 20s and into the 30s with all the celebrity of the of the New York Press, you know, then then maybe we would all be talking a lot more about it. You know, so that I think I think that's that's kind of what happened. But I but I do think given his record and given the various innovations that I've talked about, that he should be better known and should be given more, more credit than he has. Again, he's in the Hall of Fame. You know, you're in the Hall of Fame can't really get much more credit than that. But as I say, in terms of like the average fan, knowing who he is, very, very few would know today. And, you know, it's a shame. It's a shame, because I do think he was very important figure in football.

Darin Hayes
Well, I, that's why I'm glad that there, there's people out there like you that are preserving the football history. And we thank you for that and preserving, you know, coach Percy Haughton and some of his great contributions, his history, uh, you know, everything that he did for the game and for, for Harvard football and, uh, make, make some a legend. And we're glad that, uh, somebody recorded that in a person's user. And we thank you for that.

Dick Friedman
Well, the labor of love for me, going back through the archives was wonderful. I should, one more thing to add, I was able to get back into the archives and after a certain amount of time, you go back into the student folders and I was able to see various things about the players, including Percy who had been a player, of course, including their grades, which was fascinating as a former student myself. And the other thing that I saw of a very sobering aspect was that I think that we had one of the earliest cases, not recorded, but the earliest cases of CTE with one of the players, a guy named Percy Wendell, who was a terrific fullback for Harvard in the 1911, 1910, 11 seasons. He was known as the human bullet for his headfirst running style. And as time went on, Percy Wendell started to falter. And finally, in the late 20s, and he had served in World War I, and so they ascribed some of his problems to the war, but in the late 20s, he was described as being not the man he used to be, kind of a euphemism, and he died at age 42. And reading between the lines, it sure sounds like CTE, right? And we don't know for sure, but boy, every single symptom was there. And very sobering about the game and I'm sure that he was not the only one suffering from that illness back then, especially given that they were not wearing the, either not wearing helmets or wearing the leather helmets. And you run into that, and so that takes you aback when you're seeing it in the files. I also saw in the files, players who almost all of them from that era went on to World War I and served in World War I. And one of the players who was Brickley's backup got killed in action. And when you read this stuff, you feel like you know these guys, you've been on the football team with these guys, and then you see that they're gone. And at age 23, you see photos of them and it's heartbreaking, it really is.

Darin Hayes
And we thank him for the service like we do everybody else that's fought for our country over the years. But yeah, true. It had to be a scary war.

Dick Friedman
Oh, that was terrible, terrible. I mean, and pointless. But anyway, that's a whole nother topic that we could get on someday. But yeah, but anyway, the whole aspect of the game back then, so many things that pull you into the present. And you know, again, that was, to me, I keep using the word fascinating, but it was fascinating to be mesmerizing, really. It's a good thing that the library closed five o 'clock, or I just would have stayed there all night, you know, because it is, I mean, I'm sure everybody who has, who has done this kind of research, you know, can, can relate. So but again, just, just fascinating.

Darin Hayes
I fully understand it, I tell you that. So why don't you tell us again the name of your book and where folks can get a copy of it.

Dick Friedman
OK, the name again is the coach who strangled the bulldog, how Harvard's Percy Haughton beat Yale and reinvented football. The publisher is Roman and Littlefield. Roman spelled R -O -W -M -A -N. It's on Amazon, very, very available on Amazon, and it's available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle. So no excuse for people not to buy it and read it, and there will be a test. Now, only kidding. So yeah, but it's readily available on Amazon.

Darin Hayes
OK, great. And folks, if you're driving a car or something, don't can't write down the information right now. We will put it in the show notes of this podcast. Just look at the notes. It'll also be on pigskin dispatch for this article that's going to accompany the podcast. So you can find it either place and get you connected to Dick Friedman and his wonderful book. Sir, do you have any social media or anything you'd like to share where people can keep up on what you're doing? If you're writing anything new.

Dick Friedman
my website is being is is under reconstruction right now and when I when it is ready I am going to send you a note and you can put it in the in the show notes absolutely but yeah we have one of the many things that's fallen by the wayside during these last couple of years has been reconstruction of the website so it will happen and you know I am noodling with other book ideas and I can guarantee you that it will not be about Harvard football if I write another book enough already you know I've written enough about Harvard football in my lifetime so but you know but I've thought about other things too now that I'm on the west coast you know there might be a west coast oriented story about the early days of football and um you know we'll see could be something else you never know you never know but it but as I say it's been a tremendous um you know a tremendous uh project for me um this the book and um I like a lot of people I was kind of wondering what the heck I was going to do after I retired and it turned out I never really retire you know and so it's been you know so that's where I am but it's been it's been fascinating and much very enjoyable to meet people like yourself and and other people um you know who are who are in the uh world of college football history which is a you know a great history and um you know my dad went my dad went to Michigan so you know I I had heard a lot about that and uh he played um freshman football and he's a little guy like myself and the freshmen back then at Michigan were pretty much just cannon fodder and he was very proud though that he got knocked on his rear end by a fellow named Gerald R. Ford Jr and uh he said Jerry Ford was a tremendous football player and uh and and for my father to say that my father was a staunch liberal democrat so Jerry Ford must have really been great so

Darin Hayes
Yeah, he definitely was a great football player as well as, you know, in politics, as we know now, did, uh, did your father play for, uh, Fritz Crisler then? Is that.

Dick Friedman
No, the year that he that he played freshman ball was under a guy named Harry Kipke, K -I -P -K -E. Yeah, OK. Yeah, had to be.

Darin Hayes
pretty close, so I'll bet.

Dick Friedman
Yeah, yeah. And he and he was in the they played they were great. And when my father was a freshman, then they had several down seasons. And then my my father graduated. And then Tommy Harmon came in, in the late 30s. And they were great again. So my father would tell me about the great Tommy Harmon runs against Penn and schools like that. So he got me he got me very interested in an early age.

Darin Hayes
And the Harmon was definitely a great player too. So that's very interesting. Well, sir, we appreciate your time. We appreciate you coming on and preserving the football history and sharing it with us folks. Like we said, you can find a Dick Friedman's books where have the information, the show notes and on pigskin dispatch .com. And soon we'll have information on a Dick's website too, that you can go and see what he's got going on here in the near future. So Dick Friedman, thank you very much for joining us in the Pig Pen on Percy Haughton.

Dick Friedman
My pleasure. Thank you very much, Darin.

They're blockers, they're receivers, they're touchdown machines – tight ends have become a force to be reckoned with in the NFL. But who reigns supreme in the tight end pantheon? A new book dives into the gridiron archives to unearth the all-time greats at this dynamic position. Join us on this podcast episode as we crack open the book and explore the careers of the legendary tight ends who redefined the game. We'll discuss their dominance on the field, the plays that etched their names in history, and the impact they had on the evolution of the tight end position. So, buckle up, football fans, because we're about to get tight with the greats!

Image is Courtesy of Cole Holcomb chasing Travis Kelce OCT2021 is courtesy of All-Pro Reels via Wikimedia Commons.

We were proud to have the chance to sit down and discuss a football topic on How the Tight End Is the Sport Itself Distilled to One Position with Tyler Dunne Author of the New Book THE BLOOD AND GUTS: How Tight Ends Saved Football. Tyler is a veteran NFL journalist who covered teams like the Green Bay Packers and the Buffalo Bills for some significant publications. He now has his own gig writing some fantastic long-form gridiron posts on GoLongTD.com.

You can follow Tyler Dunne on Twitter @TyDunne

-Transcript of Conversation with Author Tyler Dunne on Blood and Guts Tight Ends book

Darin Hayes
Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes at pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal to positive football history. And we have a very interesting look down that portal of history today as we are going to be talking to an author who has a new book out called Blood and Guts, How Titans Save Football. His name is Tyler Dunne, and we'll welcome him right now. Tyler Dunne, welcome to the Pigpen.

Tyler Dunne
It is a pleasure to be here there. Thanks so much for having me.

Darin Hayes
The pleasure is all ours, sir. We appreciate you taking the time here to talk a little bit of football history with us here in the Pigpen, and your book is extremely fascinating. We're going to get into more detail on that in a second. But first, we could share a little bit about you with the listeners. What started your football fandom to get you to the point of writing a book on tight ends?

Tyler Dunne
Yeah, yeah. I grew up in Western New York, about an hour South of Buffalo, and played football my entire life. I guess that's part of it, right? It was an elegant bill, small school. We actually had our sectional championship right where the Bills play raffles in the stadium, so that was a ton of fun. But then, yeah, you eventually got to move on from the plane and go the journalism route. Syracuse University loved it. It was just an unreal experience working at that student newspaper, covering big-time D1 sports, and then covering the Green Bay Packers and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for about four and a half years. Just talked about a crash course on how to cover pro football, Bob McGinn, Tom Silverstein, Laurie Nichol. That was an unbelievable experience and definitely helped me get to this point in the long haul. Buffalo Bills covered that squad, Rex Ryan's first year at the Buffalo News, and then Bleach Report reached out. They were expanding their features department, so it was a really good opportunity to still live in Western New York but kind of travel the country and just do long-form takeout stories for BR. Amazing experience. It really helped me learn the game and just tell some long-form stories. That's absolutely what I love to do more than anything. So that was great, and that ran its course, and I decided to launch my own site, golongtd.com. So I just do profiles, long-form Q&A, deep dives on the inner workings of teams, and that kind of stuff, and it's part of the sub-stack platform. So far, so good. People want to read, which is great. That was the fear, right? When you branch off and start a subscription website, is this something people want to pay for? But they do. So it's been a lot of fun, and yeah, if people want to sign up, they can. Right there, there's a free option, too. You can get stories for free on a different list, and if you like that, you can always upgrade.

Darin Hayes
All right, wow, that's that's quite a background. I mean, you have some very interesting people that you get to talk to every day. You know, both at Green Bay and, you know, God Rex Ryan. He was a story a minute. I'm sure when he was at Buffalo.

Tyler Dunne
Yeah, so the 2015 season was wild. That was Rex Ryan's first in Buffalo, so to be there in that locker room for the ups and the downs and all the absolute mayhem was just... You know, honestly, that was one of the more fun seasons on the job, just because you never knew what was going to happen to your point.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, your pen would probably run out of ink just covering him, I'm sure, you know.

Tyler Dunne
Literally, you got that, everybody.

Darin Hayes
Now, he was quite the quote machine, that's for sure. So very interesting. In Green Bay, you had some great teams there. What era did you cover Green Bay?

Tyler Dunne
So that would have been 2011 through 2015, I believe. So right after they won the Super Bowl and through several seasons where they probably should have won another Super Bowl, hotel short, yeah, it's very similar to Buffalo in terms of just the town kind of embodying the team. I mean, if they win, like literally everybody at the coffee shop, the bar is in a good mood, and if they lose, everybody is in a bad mood. So there's something really cool about that where, I mean, there's something not good. So there's not, like, outside of the football team, there's not a lot to do, which is fine because I just want to, you know, drink a few beers and watch football. But when that's the number one activity for everybody in the town, they definitely take on the persona of that team in every way.

Darin Hayes
I'll bet. Now, I guess that brings you right into your football book here on tight ends and blood and guts. How did you come up with the premise of covering the tight end? That's probably a position that, other than the offensive line, sort of doesn't get the love that they probably should because these guys are doing some pretty awesome stuff.

Tyler Dunne
No doubt, I mean, they have to do it all, right? It's a little bit of everything. You do have to operate in the trenches. So, you know, I guess to answer your question, I just want to do a book on real football. Like, what is real football? It's high intensity; it's a high level of violence. It's that adrenaline rush you get, you know? And when you're back in high school, and you're playing with the lights, and everybody's in the crowd, there's just something really cool about the game. And I just wanted to try to get to the heart of it, you know, search for the soul of it. And the more you think about it, yeah, that tight end, you have to do everything. Like, literally everything. So, that's how it started. And once I really started talking to Mike Jekka, Jackie Smith, Ozzie Newsom, and then even the contemporary guys, Rob Gronkowski, George Kittle, Tony Gonzalez, you really learn that this tight end position, yeah, it's football, it's the sport itself. But I think as people read this book, it doesn't even matter if you like football or not because you're gonna learn how, like, this position, this profession, most directly reflects our own lives. I mean, our own lives, whatever our job is, I mean, it is felt through that tight-end position, which is really cool. I mean, yes, it saves football, and you'll find out why, but I think you're also gonna see how, holy cow, playing this position makes you a better person.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, wow. When you're talking to some experts about the position, I think you hit the Hall of Fame of tight ends right there with those names that you talked about. It doesn't get any better than those guys. They each brought a different perspective to the game and the history of the game. You actually had different eras of the tight end and the development of it. Going from Dicca, who's probably helped develop the position as much as anybody did in football history, right up to these contemporary guys, like you said, like Gronkowski and even Tony Kinsallis, I still consider him a contemporary. He's probably been retired for ten years now, but now those are some greats that you got to talk to.

Tyler Dunne
It was just unbelievably fortunate. I wasn't sure about embarking on this cross-country tour, and I really wanted to talk to as many of these guys in person as I could and make it as real as possible to just sit down at a bar with Jeremy Shockey and get in his environment, right? Or hanging out with Tony Gonzalez right in Austin, Texas, where he moved into town. Mike Dicka, down at his golf course with a cigar nearby. I feel like I really got to know these guys, and it was important to get on their turf and go through their lives. I mean, I think that really each of the 15 chapters is a long-form profile of the 15 people who really were uniquely qualified to preserve the sport that we love, right? I mean, this is, it's a special sport. It's, you know, you don't just pick up a football and gather on your buddies. I mean, you can't play pickup, obviously, but when it comes to the physicality and the violence in an actual football game, you know, it's harder to get a group of friends together, put on the pad, put on a helmet, and have a full-fledged game. I mean, there's attrition in football that other sports just don't have, and I get it, you know, you gotta watch the violence, and they are trying to make it safer, but it's not safe, and I think that's okay. That inherent risk that the sport has, honestly, is kind of what makes it different, and kind of going on a soapbox here, but it does kind of bother me when the league almost pretends to be something it's not and do you want guys getting maimed in the defense of secondary? No, but do you want Chris Jones to tackle, you know, a quarterback, Tom Brady, and literally just fall on top of him and get a flag bet? That's ridiculous. So I think that preservation of what the sport is, what makes it great, is unbelievably important, and these are the 15 dudes that are those modern-day gladiators who I think era to era, you know, decade to decade, year to year, making sure that, hey, you know, if things are gonna be changing all over the place, you know, quarterback play, and what you can do with strong safety, which isn't even really a position anymore, but that tight end, you can still hit, and guess what, you're gonna be very, very visible, because when it's third and eight, and everything's on the line, that quarterback's gonna be looking for you, Dallas Clark, you know, in the playoffs, or you, Tony Gonzalez in Atlanta, or you, Rod Brankowski in the Super Bowl. I think that's a differentiator from the linemen, too. If you have a good game as a lineman, nobody's talking about you in three hours.

Darin Hayes
Right, yeah, you're preaching to the choir here on some of this what's going on with the quarterback, especially this year. You know, they've talked about that in decades passive, you know, putting skirts on them. I think it might be really amplified, and it's a bad situation like what's happened with it in Miami. That's a horrible situation, And that's more of a policy that needs to be changed than what needs to be changed play on the field. I think that the guys are cognizant of this. There's a brotherhood in football, as you well know, and they want to protect each other, But they also want to do their jobs, and you know They're there to make a living and them hitting people very hard and taking to the ground That's how they make their money. So you have to respect what the defenders are doing. That's for sure.

Tyler Dunne
Oh, that's perfectly put. Yeah, I just couldn't agree more. I just wanted to tell you that.

Darin Hayes
Now, with this wide array of people that you got to interview, all tight ends, legends of the game, all well known in every household that knows professional football, was there a common thread that they all said like a certain aspect of the game that they all loved or was it a variety of different things? I'm sure there had to be some common core theme to what they each said.

Tyler Dunne
I think a common thread with these tight ends is you have to do stuff that you don't want to do. And that's the case in all of our day-to-day lives. You don't get to wake up and just have a party every day. You got to run the kids to school, you got to pay some bills, you got to do some chores around the house. That's the tight end position, and that's always been the tight end position is, yeah, there's some glitz to it, there are touchdowns, and if you're a good-looking dude like Tony Gonzalez, your life's going to be pretty sweet. Maybe you will be a little bit of a celebrity, but even Tony Gonzalez says that's why the tight end is different from the other positions. It forces you to do the stuff you don't want to do. You still have to go over to that nine-on-seven inside run drill at training camp and bash people in. You're not with the wide receivers and the cornerbacks running one-on-ones and working on your routes, but there's an element of physicality here that's inherent to being a real tight end. Now, if you're a receiver, if you're receiving tight end, maybe you're doing less of that, but if you're still a tight end, that's still going to be an element to your game that you're going to need at some point or another. I think that's why the tight-end position almost chooses you. You don't necessarily choose the position. You have a certain set of traits and characteristics as a human being. You're Jimmy Graham, and you're basically growing up an orphan because your mom doesn't want you, and you're in a group home, and you're fearing for your life, and you're getting beat up in a van, and your will is being tested to the extreme before you're finally saved by a church leader who takes you in and gets you to school. It's no coincidence that Jimmy Graham has the intestinal fortitude to play four years of basketball at Miami, play one-year college basketball, go to New Orleans, and help evolve the position themselves. He didn't go out to be a tight end. It kind of chose him. It was the same with Dallas Clark at Iowa and everything he went through; he was a linebacker, like six, seven string, just getting the space beat in and pinching pennies together to even pay his way through school. Eventually, Kirk Baron says, hey, you're a tight end, and that indomitable drive was just a perfect fit for Dallas Clark. I think that's what's special about it. It definitely taps into your innermost traits as a human being. If you're going to work hard, if you're the type that's just going to put others before yourself, there's a good chance you'd be a tight end.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you brought up that topic because so many tight ends were something else before they became tight ends. It's not something that in high school, hey, I was a tight end in high school. You never hear that. But most common, at least in past times, tight ends were former offensive tackles or maybe a running back every once in a while. But as you said, Gonzalez, Antonio Gates, and some of the others are Jimmy Graham, basketball players who were converted to be tight ends. And now you're talking like Dallas Clark being converted from another position. It's just wild. I think you're right about the money when you say a tight-end position chooses you because that's kind of cool about that position.

Tyler Dunne
It is. I mean, it really is just about the case for everybody, except for, um, you know, Rob Gronkowski, growing up here in Buffalo, New York, he's, he's fallen in love with the Jeremy Shockey. He sees, you know, he's a young teenager, and he sees this, uh, this dude in New York City with the blonde hair and the brass style, just saying whatever's on his mind, living it up, you know, in the nightlife in the big city. And he's thinking, man, I want to be that one day. I just want to party hard, play hard, and live like there's no tomorrow. And boy, it sure looks like I can do it at tight end. So I guess that's maybe what makes Rob Gronkowski the greatest tight end ever. He kind of knew all along that he was made for it. And by God, the way he grew up in Buffalo, as people will read in this book, it all prepared him, uh, to be that tight end.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, he's he's definitely a unique specimen at the position because you know Generally your tight ends you could almost put in one of two groups either They're a great pass catching tight end a threat down the field or they're just a road grader blocker And he was sort of you know, the best of both worlds, especially in his prime You know i'm a Steelers fan and you know He he on the Patriots just owned my team for you know, as long as he played they were just killing it You know, you got Brady, but he was definitely a big element of what they did And uh, you know, there's there's other instances of that too where you have a you know Great blocking tight end that can catch a lot of great passes and everything too But uh, you know, like but Gonzalez I never really think of him as you know I'm sure he had to share blocks But I think the general perception is this dude could get open and you know It was a big target when he showed his numbers to a quarterback and made some big plays that uh, Some of the others so I guess that takes a sort of the other end of my question Um, yeah, everybody had a common thread. Well, how about what was the most surprising? A unique story that one of these legends told you about the tight-end position

Tyler Dunne
Oh my goodness, there were a lot. You know, if we're gonna get, if we're gonna get heavy, I mean, I would say Jackie Smith, and it's kind of two-fold. His upbringing is remarkable. Growing up in Kentwood, Louisiana, didn't really, didn't even barely play any football. He was just like a little spinner back in their wing T. He was a track guy. And by the way, at their school, their track, they just kind of ran around the football field. One time, they didn't really have a track, and there was one part of it that would flood, and it was like running in a bunch of wet dirt, but the dude could fly. He could run and run for days. He eventually worked his way to playing in college or running track in college. The only way he got a scholarship was because he said he would join the football team. It was just that he was kind of on the football team because the St. Louis Cardinals took a shot at him. And the football stories around Jackie Smith are remarkable. I mean, he's kind of forgotten in the history of the game, but yards per reception, he still has a record of a full two yards, I believe. He was a tough, tough, tough player. There are some remarkable stories of just being injured in one game. Terry Metcalf, I believe the running back, takes a cheap shot, and Jackie just runs right out on the field. Just runs right out and goes after the player for the Washington Redskins and gets to his face. And the ref is, you know, screwing him up. He thinks the fan is like a great fan running out of the field. It makes Jackie sit in a chair, far away from the team. Now that following up season, Jackie's mother down in Jackson, Mississippi, greets him at the door and says, hey, Jackie, there's a player for the Washington Redskins who had just moved in, and he said he wants to see you. And Jackie's a God-buried man. He's like, oh my gosh, Jesus Christ has delivered me my revenge. And so he goes over to the guy's house. He's ready to punch him, slug him, and get his vengeance. He's got a clutch fit behind his back. The player answers the door, and it's somebody else. And they have themselves a beautiful chat. He was a, you know, that those Cardinal teams, I mean, they had Conrad to Ober, right? They and Deardor. There were some tough tough guys on that team. Yeah, they are all to a man, really.

Darin Hayes
Jimmy Hart at quarterback, those teams, I believe, too.

Tyler Dunne
Yeah, yep, yep, good call. Yeah, but God, the name escapes me. They had somebody that competed like one of the world's strongest men, too. I mean, you're talking about gnarly, mean, nasty human beings, but Jackie Smith, they told me, is he was the bad, bad dude of mine. He was the man in charge. You feared him. He had a toughness to him. And it was great to just tell his story because, sadly, you hear that name and you think of 5.5 seconds in the Super Bowl, where that drop that he had in the end zone in 1979, there was so much more that went into it. Yeah, it wasn't like he just dropped this easy pass. The play call, where they called it, Rodgers, Staubachs, Thoreau. There were a lot of moving parts, let alone the fact that it was in the third quarter, they got a field goal that drove, and they gave Randy White a plumb of the kick-off return, and Staubach threw a bad pick that led to a tough hit. Many other factors were why the Dallas Cowboys lost that game, but I think the stories out of that on how he had to deal with this in his post-playing days, that's where it gets heavy because Jackie Smith is sitting down with him. I was like, sit with my grandfather, an unbelievably kind human being, great, great soul, and you can just feel his pain and how that moment affected him, and more so affected the relationships that he had with so many of his loved ones. It took a while. He was pretty honest. It took until about a couple of years ago for him to really look in the mirror, face that man in the mirror, and say, let's quit letting this bother you, like really cherish these relationships, and I think that's a huge element to the tight end position too. So many of these guys kind of had that man-in-the-mirror moment and bettered themselves as human beings.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Jackie and his previous, uh, you know, history because, as you say, he sort of gets a bad rap for that Super Bowl thing. But I have a little bit of theory on that. You know, first of all, he came from the Cardinals, which, uh, that way back then, uh, the Cardinals and the Cowboys were in the same division. Uh, sounds kind of foreign to us now, but I can remember those days. I'm a little older, but, uh, so, you know, he really, by Cowboys fans, he's a very passionate fan base now and then, um, you know, they've probably had a little bit just like from way back when, cause he, he heard them so much, you know, when he played against the Cowboys twice a year and then, uh, you know, him doing that and they needed a scapegoat, uh, you know, playing at the Steelers that year. And, uh, I think he just sort of, he was the, the donkey, they were going to pin the tail on, and the poor guy got a bad rap. But like you say, there was a lot of football left after that. And a lot of, uh, plays that were left on the field that, uh, could have changed the outcome of that game. So a great player, though. And I'm glad that you bring him up and, uh, talk about his, uh, being such a great player instead of being a scapegoat of a Superbowl loss.

Tyler Dunne
thank you. Yeah, you know you're right. There were other factors at play, too, like Vern Linquest's call. Bless his heart, we all people who were who remember watching that game can remember the imagery right of even like Roger Staubach Tom Lance or just the despondent look on their faces it was just heavy and right in the moment it was just played up to the extreme where oh my god so much other stuff happened and I just I think if everybody listening out there if you were judged by something that happened in your life that was such a fleeting moment in time I can't imagine

Darin Hayes
Yeah, it's not like he, you know, it was an easy catch that should have been made, not saying that. But I believe he's down on his knees as a result of a low throw by Staubach and a high-pressure situation. And what one of us can honestly say that you haven't made a mistake on the job when you're under a little bit of pressure, you know, in a unique circumstance, I can, I don't think anybody's going to be raising their hands says it's never happened to them because it's happened to all of us. I'm sure. He's just on the big stage of the most televised program in the country for the year, and everybody is watching at a critical point. So yeah, he deserves to get more credit for being the great player that he was.

Tyler Dunne
And you know what, just while we're on him, that play, Jackie broke it all down. Granted, we didn't just open up our conversation with that play. We were gently kind of easing into it because I think it is still a sore subject for him, obviously. Some of his closest friends haven't even brought it up. But that play, Roger Staubach, when he threw it, he kind of fluttered it, he floated it. Like normally, he'd zip it in there. But Jackie was so wide open. Unexpectedly wide open, like the fourth or fifth option on the play. It's not even for him that he thought he wanted to make it easy, where Jackie was running his route fast and like he always would. And that's what kind of made him flip, and then he dropped it, and also was called it like the 10-yard line. Typically, when they run that play, which was just put in, I mean, they just put the play in, it was supposed to be a goal-line play. So he'd go to the back of the goal line to catch it. And this time, it's just different, the dimensions of where they're calling; that's why, like Tom Landry, one of the best coaches of all time, whose fingerprints are all over the tight end position, too, as people will read. It's crazy that he called that play where he did. It doesn't make much sense for one of the smartest coaches ever to do that.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, but it actually worked though. He was hoping they could get an advantage on it.

Tyler Dunne,
regardless, he was open. Yeah, you're right.

Darin Hayes
You're right. Interesting. Now, I'm interested in hearing a little bit about Ozzie Newsom that you sat down with because that man's mind, I mean, as a player, he had to be one of the smartest football minds in football on the field. And definitely his, you know, general manager duties, he's, you know, off the charts. A guy had success with everything he did in the game of football. So I'm just interested in, maybe, some of the interesting things that you got out of your conversation with him.

Tyler Dunne
Oh, my goodness. He's so different than, you know, if you're talking common threads with these tight ends, it'd be personality, right? So many of them have just explosive, loud, fun, energetic personalities. I mean, Ozzy, when he was the GM, he went after Jan and Sharp. Jan and Sharp often went to the Super Bowl, so he welcomed that person. That wasn't Ozzy. I mean, he is, as Joe de la Melora says, quiet as a mouse. I mean, he really didn't say much privately. He doesn't say much publicly. To sit down with him for this book, I'm surprised that he was up for it, but he was. We talked for about an hour about his remarkable life. You know, I think it's a product of where he grew up, the segregated South, where he's living so many of the experiences we just read about in textbooks, really. I mean, he was there, and then he saw it, and he's on a youth baseball team, and their team is forced to just stay somewhere else because people at this establishment did not want African Americans there. So, yeah, I mean, I think the fact that he then decided, okay, I'm going to go to a white school, and I'm going to compete academically and athletically and prove that I'm just as good, if not better than everybody, and he did. He crushed everybody in that department. Gift of Alabama, Bear Bryant is like a father figure to him; he just wants to make him proud that they had unbelievably important conversations that he still holds near and dear. And I think that all the play of heartbreak in Cleveland, I mean, he just endured so much heartbreak, and those playoff losses, the Red Right 88, the Drive, the Bumble, the theme would be just calm and chaos. That's the title of that chapter. He's just so unbelievably calm. And even the way he caught the ball, he was smooth. I mean, he looked at him with his eyes. And after he had it dropped early in his career, he just dropped another pass. Practice games didn't matter. He never dropped the ball because he's just so dang calm and quiet and productive. And yes, that's absolutely how he ran the Baltimore Ravens. You know, that first draft when it's all bare bones. My God, they didn't even have a logo. They're working on the police barrack. Their rosters gutted. You know, the city of Cleveland wants Art Modell dead. Ozzy was just a de facto GM when he was like Bill Belichick. Whatever you call him, he just gopher before for the Phyllis Brown scenes. He was just a scout scout, you know, working on the card to practice. But now, all of a sudden, he's entrusted with running the Baltimore Ravens. And he had the foresight at that moment to just trust their draft board in 96. They had Nohner and Art Modell, and they had Coach and Ted Marcia Broda, who won the Lawrence Phillips. They want to make a big splash. They're running back out of Nebraska, talented, obviously troubled, very, very, very troubled, historically troubled. And Ozzy knew some; all he said was that we had done all this work on these college prospects. Our scouts have Ogden and Jonathan Ogden, and number one, we're going to stick with Jonathan Ogden. And the pick obviously worked out. They take Ray Lewis later in that first round, and the Ravens, for two decades, are a gold standard for how you run a team.

Darin Hayes
Absolutely. Yeah, that's fantastic on that. Now, why don't you take this opportunity to say the name of your book again and where folks might be able to get it?

Tyler Dunne
Absolutely. It's the blood and guts that tight ends save football. Amazon's probably the way to go, right? That's where everybody is anyway. So, hardcover, Kindle, and Audible are all available there. Obviously, Barnes& Noble, Walmart, Target, Indie Books, and your local bookstore are good options. It should be all over the place. So, yes, you'll get all these stories and a hell of a lot more; I promise you that. It was a passion project. Loved every second of it.

Darin Hayes
Well, that's great. Okay, one last question before we let you go here. Now, you know, the tight end position, we know how it's morphed into what it is today. You know, it's a dynamic position. It's always changing. But where do you see the course of tight ends going further? I mean, do you see any more changes to the position for the good of the game, or do you think it's gonna be pretty much what it is today?

Tyler Dunne
No, I think it is changing. I mean, you're seeing the athleticism just reach extremes. I mean, what Kyle Pitts does in Atlanta is unbelievable. Really, to have that kind of athleticism, that kind of speed, to run a 4 -4 at 250. I mean, he's unbelievably productive. We'll see how, you know, the quarterback play shakes out there. And if you can kind of develop as a blocker, blocking is obviously his weakness. But I talked to him about actually working on a story right now with Kyle Pitts. We just caught up a couple of days ago. So, I go along to you .com. People can check that out. I think this guy's got an inner drive, like Gonzales has, like Gates has like all of these greats really possessed. And as much as you really do want that do-it-all -tight end that can block and drive somebody into the dirt 15 yards field and make a play in the passing game, you know, George Kittle is the best of the best today. Kittles don't grow on trees because that's not a tight end that you're really going to find in college anymore. You're going to find athletes, and then you have to try to coach them up and teach them how to block. But that's okay. You know, I think Pitts is going to take this tight end position into a new realm that is hopefully going to get these guys paid because they're some of the most underpaid professional athletes in any sport. And it's kind of terrible. I mean, fullbacks and specialists only make less of them.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's very true indeed. Now, I really appreciate you coming on today to talk about the Titan position. I'm glad that you wrote this book and gave them the love that they deserve and told their story in football history. And Tyler, it's an amazing book. And folks, I highly recommend it. Like you said, you know, Amazon and the Barnes and Noble of the world, I hear they both sell a few books. So, definitely get Tyler's book there. Probably, it makes a great Christmas gift. We've got that season coming up for the football fan in your life who loves to read about football history. I appreciate that. Tyler, do you want to share any of your social media with folks so they can keep it? I know they can keep track of you on the website, but, you know, social media is always a good thing, too, for people who only have a couple of seconds in their pocket, you know, the phone in their pocket. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tyler Dunne
Just at Ty Dunn, so T -Y -D -U -N -N -E on Twitter, Instagram, and all that good stuff. So yeah, follow along, and we'll be spreading the tight end of love and uncovering pro football best mechanics that go along

Darin Hayes
All right, Tyler Dunne, book Blood and Guts, How Tight Ends Save Football. We appreciate you coming on here today, sir, and sharing and preserving football history.

Tyler Dunne
No, thank you, man. I really enjoyed the conversation. I hope we can do it again.

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Identifying the top five players in Notre Dame football history is a subjective task, as different criteria can be used for evaluation. However, here's a list of five widely recognized legends who have left their mark on the program:

-1. Paul Hornung (1954-1956):

A versatile athlete who excelled as a running back, defensive back, kicker, and punter, Hornung won the 1956 Heisman Trophy, the only Notre Dame player to do so. He led the Fighting Irish to national championships in 1953 and 1954 and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1985.

-2. Joe Theismann (1967-1970):

A talented quarterback known for his athleticism and strong arm, Theismann led Notre Dame to a national championship in 1966. He was a three-time All-American and finished second in Heisman Trophy voting in 1969. He went on to enjoy a successful NFL career, winning Super Bowl XVII with the Washington Redskins.

-3. Jerome Bettis (1989-1992):

A powerful running back nicknamed "The Bus," Bettis rushed for over 3,000 yards for Notre Dame and was a two-time All-American. He won the Maxwell Award in 1992 and was drafted 10th overall by the Los Angeles Rams in the 1993 NFL Draft. Bettis later became a Super Bowl champion with the Pittsburgh Steelers and is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.

-4. Tim Brown (1984-1987):

Considered one of the greatest wide receivers in college football history, Brown set numerous school records at Notre Dame and was a two-time All-American. He won the Walter Camp Award in 1987 and was the Heisman Trophy runner-up the same year. Brown went on to a stellar NFL career with the Los Angeles Raiders and is a member of both the College Football and Pro Football Halls of Fame.

-5. Raghib Ismail (1988-1990):

Nicknamed "Rocket," Ismail was a dynamic running back and kick returner who revolutionized the college game with his speed and agility. He won the 1990 Heisman Trophy and led Notre Dame to a national championship in 1988. Ismail also enjoyed a successful NFL career as a kick returner and is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.

It's important to note that many other Notre Dame players deserve recognition for their contributions to the program's rich history. This list is just a starting point for further exploration of the legendary figures who have shaped the Fighting Irish into one of the most storied programs in college football.

Honorable Mention: Joe Montana, Elmer Layden, Knute Rockne, George Gipp, Johnny Lujack, Angelo Bertelli, Tony Rice, George O'Connor, Ross Browner, Johnny Lattner, Leon Hart, Emil Sitko

Check out the BleacherReport.com article for their top 50 selections of Irish Greats of the Gridiron.