Football History

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The LSU Tigers football logo history reflects the program's progression from its formative years to a modern athletic power.

Early Days (1930s-1950s):

-No official logo existed, with various emblems depicting a stylized tiger head often accompanied by the letter "L" or "LSU."

The Charging Cat (1955-1990s):

-1955: The iconic "Charging Cat" logo debuts, showcasing a fierce feline with open jaws and arched back, symbolizing the team's fighting spirit.

-1984: A modernized version emerges with smoother lines and a slightly less ferocious expression.

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Calling all football fans! Take a quick dive into the gridiron's rich past. This video packs a punch of history in under a minute, exploring the origins of the NFL and the legendary moments that shaped the game we love today. From humble beginnings to the modern marvels of the sport, get ready to be surprised and inspired!

We post these quick-hitting quiz questions quite often to keep the gridiron history alive and breathing. These tests fire up the brain cells in the football minds across the globe to help preserve the history of the game and its fantastic people.

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The Big House, as Michigan Stadium is affectionately known, has witnessed countless gridiron epics since its opening in 1927. Here are some of the biggest, most memorable football games played there:

-1942: Upsetting Notre Dame and Launching a Dynasty
With legendary coach Fritz Crisler at the helm and Tom Harmon, the "Golden Tornado," throwing touchdown passes, Michigan faced undefeated Notre Dame under the glare of national attention. The Wolverines pulled off a 35-10 victory, securing their first national championship and launching a decade of dominance.

-1950: The Snow Bowl
Blistering snow and bone-chilling winds transformed the Big House into a winter wonderland for this showdown with Ohio State. With the score tied 3-3 late in the fourth quarter, Willie Heston's iconic touchdown run through the blizzard secured a 9-3 victory and the Big Ten title for Michigan. The "Snow Bowl" stands as a testament to Wolverine resilience and the magic of college football's most unpredictable weather.

-1964: The Comeback in the Snow
Another snowy clash with the Buckeyes, this time with Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler on the sidelines. Trailing 10-0 in the third quarter, Michigan staged a furious comeback, capped by Jim Harbaugh's touchdown pass with 47 seconds left. The 10-10 tie preserved Michigan's undefeated season and cemented the rivalry's legendary intensity.

There are so many more to choose from with the rich history of this program!

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Put your knowledge to the test with this quick-fire Football History Quiz! In less than 40 seconds, you'll answer a trivia question that spans decades of the sport.

This edition challenges you to know the jersey number history of marquee players. From legendary players to iconic moments, this video will challenge your memory and leave you wanting more!

Test your gridiron history knowledge with our video about American football history

Here is a transcript of a conversation Darin had with Dr. Randall Balmer and his book Passion Plays which unveils the history of the influence of religion on football and the other North American Sports.

Darin Hayes
Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal to positive football history. We had a very interesting discussion that I think will commence here. We have a gentleman writing a book on a topic I don't think we've ever had here in the Pigpen: football history. His name is Dr. Randall Balmer, and he has written a book called Passion Plays. It's got a very interesting subject and a very interesting theme. I think we'll bring him in right now. Dr. Randall Balmer, welcome to the Pigpen.

Dr. Randall Balmer
Thank you, Darin. I'm happy to be here.

Darin Hayes
Well, we are sure glad to have you here, sir. Before we get into the subject of your book and its title, maybe you could tell us a little about yourself and your background, especially regarding football history.

Dr. Randall Balmer
Okay, well, I grew up as a kid loving sports, trying to play sports, and not doing all that well, I suppose, but I did my best. And so I'm a sports fan; I wouldn't say I'm one of those diehard fans I keep hearing about, but I follow it fairly regularly. And I have my sports allegiances and so forth. And that was part of my background. The immediate catalyst for this book was discovering talk radio sports talk radio in the early 1990s. I taught at Columbia University in New York when W NBC transitioned to W F A N and became a sports talk station. And I was just riveted. I was just fascinated that these hosts could sustain conversations and debates for hours and hours over whether or not Joe Torrey should have lifted the starting picture with two outs in the bottom of the sixth inning. And I became hooked. I loved it. The book attempts to understand why Americans have a peculiar passion for sports. I'm aware that there are sports fans elsewhere in the world, especially when the World Cup runs, comes around, and so forth. But it seems to me that we Americans are unusually dedicated to sports. And I wanted to try to understand why that is.

Darin Hayes
Well, that is a lot of truth to that. I can just raise my hand right now and say, you know, I'm, uh, I'm guilty of, of that pleasure. And, uh, you know, of course, having a podcast, you're talking about sports daily. And it is very addictive to listen to or to talk it, or just, even if you're not on the radio, just to have, have, uh, some of your friends or cohorts that you're sitting around, uh, at work or on a cup of coffee, just talking, and the subject always comes up about the latest game where some sports topic. And it's very intriguing to get into this and talk about that. First of all, I guess before we get going here, uh, maybe you could again tell us the full title of your book and where maybe people could purchase it, and we'll talk about it again at the end of the program as well.

Dr. Randall Balmer
Sure, the book is Passion Plays, How Religion Shaped Sports in North America. And it's available, I guess, wherever books are sold. Bookshop .org is a good place to buy books because it supports local booksellers, but also a local bookseller's storefront brick-and-mortar store is a good place. Amazon, of course, has it, as does Barnes and Noble, so it's widely available.

Darin Hayes
Okay, well, let's get into the topic of your book. I guess you sort of gave us your background, and I'm assuming that's probably some of the gist of why it motivated you to write this book as well.

Dr. Randall Balmer
That's right. Yes, in a way, I want to try to understand myself. Why was I so passionate about some of these sports, even though I'm maybe not quite as passionate as those who call into these programs all the time? But yes, I'm fascinated by the fact that in my field, actually my academic field, I probably should say that as well. My academic field is American religious history. So, I have studied religion in North America for a long time. What's distinctive about religion in North America is that historically, we Americans have been off the charts in terms of religious devotion and religious adherence. And I think that's begun to change. I'm one; the polling data suggests that it has begun to change over the last couple of decades. That is, religious devotion adherence and affiliation have been going down over the last several decades. And there are a lot of reasons for that. But at the same time, I think that passion for sports and devotion to sports has been rising. And I think there's probably a correlation between the two.

Darin Hayes
Well, that, you know, you've caught my ear, especially with the title. And I, when I saw this a few weeks back and, you know, cause I'm, I'm a man of faith, and I'm passionate about my faith, but I'm also passionate about my sports. So you have my, my world's colliding two things that I've always sort of considered separate and, you know, don't, don't, uh, cross the streams, uh, you hear to say, but, uh, you know that you are sort of bringing those worlds together and we're very interested in hearing how, how those two merge.

Dr. Randall Balmer
Yeah, what happens? First, I will focus on North America's four major team sports: baseball, football, hockey, and basketball. All four of those sports developed, for the most part, roughly from the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. By the middle of the 20th century, those sports had more or less assumed their current form. However, as these sports developed in the 19th century, they developed against the background of the Industrial Revolution. And what's happening in America, North America, more generally, is that men, in particular, are beginning to work outside the home and the farm. They're no longer engaging in subsistence living. They're beginning to work in factories, textile mills, etc. Many of them also work in sedentary office jobs. So, there's a great deal of concern in the Anglo-American world, both in North America and Britain, that men are becoming too passive. That is, they're becoming, they're not getting outside enough. They're not engaging in athletics. They're becoming weak and even "sisified." And several religious leaders are noticing that. And they, very cleverly, I think, try to combine religion, Protestantism, with athleticism. They came up with a movement known to historians as muscular Christianity. That is to say that we want to appeal to men to be athletes, virile, and in the churches. One of the complaints is that the women have been in charge of the church work for a long time. And we must find a way to lure men back to the faith and the churches. Part of the strategy for doing that was to combine religion with sports or athletic endeavors. Probably the best example of that institutionally would be the YMCA, the Young Men's Christian Association, which provided both religion and YMCA were quite religious. They're not less so today, but in the beginning, that was at the core of the YMCA, to combine religion with recreation. For example, it's no accident that basketball was invented by a Presbyterian minister at the YMCA training school in Springfield, Massachusetts, today, of course, Springfield College. His instructor charged him with inventing a game that would occupy young men between baseball and football seasons. So it had to be played indoors, in a very confined space. And, of course, I argue in the book that basketball is a symbolic metaphor for urban life. That is when Americans were flocking to the cities in large numbers in the 1890s when basketball was invented; James Naismith came up with a game that, in many ways, replicates urban life. That is, it is the challenge of maneuvering in a very constricted space without impeding the progress of others, much like walking down Fifth Avenue at lunchtime, Michigan Avenue at rush hour, or Times Square in the evening. And so basketball becomes a metaphor for urban life. As African Americans began to move into northern cities, including Manhattan, including New York City, after the turn of the 20th century, they began to gravitate to YMCAs, which is when they learned basketball and then played it and began to excel at it. So again, I'm not sure where your question got me to this point. So, I need to retrace my steps a little bit.

Darin Hayes
No, you know, you're you're you're laying out the groundwork and telling it very well. So the YMCA sort of that catalyst or that meeting place of religion and sports, that's their vehicle, I guess, to portray what you're saying, you know, during the Industrial Revolution to bring men into getting a little bit fitter. We probably need some revival to this day with the video games going on with our children, everything, too. But, interestingly, you talked about Dr. Smith in Springfield YMCA and, you know, because also one of his students and also want to believe one of the first participants in his basketball game was a young man named Amos Alonzo Stagg, who had quite a bit of the foundation of early football. So it's interesting that you are bringing those two. You have two major sports that are sort of sprouting from that one YMCA building.

Dr. Randall Balmer
Yes, Nate Smith and Ayman Solonzo Staggs were teammates on the football team at the YMCA training school. They were undersized compared to the other football powerhouses at that time, which were Yale, Princeton, Harvard, and the Ivy League schools. The football team at the Springfield School came to be known as Staggs Stubby Christians.

Darin Hayes
Well, I'm sure they could have been called worse, I'm sure. So, well, I expect they probably were very interesting. Okay. So, I mean, I liked the metaphor, how you say that with a basketball sort of being that, you know, going through without getting each other's way and avoiding each other, and that's a very interesting insight.

Dr. Randall Balmer
Well, I want to talk about football in particular. So, let me talk about that as well. Sure. Football, of course, evolved from really two games, rugby and what we know today as soccer. These are also, in their early days, known as mob games. And in fact, all of these games are mob games in that you have a lot of participants. Sometimes, you don't even have delimited fields. And so everybody is just kind of crowding on this onto the field. However, one of the common characteristics in the evolution of these four major team sports is moving from mob games to a more regulated field and rules that govern behaviors. So for example, with football, one of the major points in the evolution of football is when Walter Camp, who's usually called the father of American football, finally persuaded other schools, meaning Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, and others, to reduce the number of players on a team from 15 to 11. He also disliked the rugby scrum. So he got rid of that in favor of a line of scrimmage. And so that's why we have a line of scrimmage in football. And he did that in part to try to mitigate some of the violence associated with rugby. However, I'm not sure that worked all that well because, with the line of scrimmage, the lineman can get a head of steam before they run into the other players. But in particular, he wanted to introduce strategy into the football game.
What's important to remember about the game of football in terms of its history is that football is more or less the current form in which we know it was developed by the sons, brothers, and nephews of Union Army soldiers in the Civil War. So, it developed at Northeastern schools, such as Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and so forth, as well as Penn, in the years after the Civil War. Football is the quintessential war game because it involves the conquest and the defense of territory, much like the battle at Gettysburg, Antietam in the Civil War, or Manassas or Bull Run. These are all battlefields. Again, this is how you determine the winner or survivor in these battlefields who could take the most territory from the opponent. So football is a war game. In the early years, there are all sorts of quotes in the book about this; the war imagery and language used to describe football are just all over the place.
Another characteristic of football, as we know very well, is violence. You have violence in hockey, of course, when you have the fights. But violence in football is scripted into the game itself. So you have a lot of violence, which is part of the reason it's attractive to a lot of Americans. We are a violent society; I think we have to come to terms with that. And football, in many ways, is the quintessential Central American game because because of its violence. So football is war, and we see that to get today. You're watching a football game, and the announcer refers to the quarterback as the field general or the quarterback is launching long bombs or bullet passes. They talk about trench warfare, that is, between the offensive line and the defensive line, much like you would use in military language and other terminology in football, training camp, and scouting. These are all military terms that apply to the game of football.

Darin Hayes
That's, I've never really thought about that way, but you are right. And we, you know, often we hear announced or saying, you know, the, the battle of these two teams on the field or, you know, and it's the strategy, a lot of it, you know, you're trying to outflank your opponent just as you would a platoon in, in battle in a war. So that's a very, very interesting insight.

Dr. Randall Balmer
The other thing is that as the strategies on the battlefield have changed over the 20th century, so have football strategies. That is to say, in the early years of football, it was a running game for the most part. And, you know, you had trench warfare just like you would have in World War I. Beginning in the 1940s and 1950s with the Korean War and the Vietnam War, that's also the time that you had much more passing in professional and college football. So, as warfare strategies changed over the 20th century, football strategies changed in the same direction.

Darin Hayes
We are going more to an aerial game, with aerial attacks in both instances. That is a very, very, very good insight.

Dr. Randall Balmer
And you used the term aerial attack again just now, which is military language.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, you're right. Wow. I guess I've never thought too much about the correlations between them, but I think you definitely are on to something. Doctor, so you, religious part, you said, you know, it started at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Now, how does religion still affect the games of sports, particularly football, to this day?

Dr. Randall Balmer
Yeah, I think it is in many ways. And I wanted to go into the book, I wanted to go deeper into this, but you have these kinds of surface similarities. For example, you have sacred space, right? For religion, it's the holy city of Mecca, or a cathedral or a synagogue. In sports, you've got Fenway Park, or Wrigley Field, or Lambeau Field, or the Big House in Ann Arbor, Michigan, particularly places that have more historical meaning, more history to them; you have this sort of sense of sacrality in those places. You have rituals, you know; as a football fan, there are certain rituals, such as the national anthem, for example, the players running onto the field amidst all sorts of pyrotechnics with fire and smoke and so forth. Well, in religion, you've got a liturgical procession that begins worship with the bishops and the acolytes and the priests processing, along with the choir, and very often with incense, smoke coming along with them, very similar to what you have in a football game. You have authority, you have a sacred text, you have the Bible or the Quran or whatever it might be. For sports, it's a rule book. And everybody agrees on these premises that this is how the game is supposed to be played. You have authorities: head coach, bishop, cardinal, and priest, and ultimate authority would be the Pope, for example, or the commissioner in baseball. And you even have saints. Certainly, you have saints within religion. But for sports, the saints are the members of the halls of fame because they're the ones who are exemplary and have excelled over the rest of us. So you have those kind of commonalities as well. But again, as I, in the book, I wanted to go a little bit deeper than that and say, look, there are instances in the development of these sports where people with religious convictions were part of the evolution of these sports but also brought those values to each sport.

Darin Hayes
Okay. So, if you take that further, the crowds, fans, and stands would be the congregations. Is that the correct correlation?

Dr. Randall Balmer
Yeah, absolutely. One of the best examples of that is hockey. I think it is because hockey is Canada's game, as we know it. What's interesting about hockey is that it emerges out of lacrosse. Lacrosse is the immediate predecessor to hockey. In lacrosse, there was a big effort in 1867, the year of the Canadian Confederation. That's when Canada became a country rather than a British part of the Commonwealth. There was an attempt in 1867 to designate lacrosse as the real national game of Canada. So you have that connection, and I was going to make another point, but I forgot whatever it was about that, so maybe I'll circle back to it. I apologize.

Darin Hayes
Oh, that's not a problem at all. Okay. So you, you, I mean, you got my wheels spinning here. So you've got, uh, you know, the fans that are, are, are passionate about their teams, just like, uh, you know, parishioners are, are passionate about theirs, their faith and practicing their faith and talking about their faith and, uh, you know, spreading they're, trying to spread their faith onto others and, uh, join the congregation. So I guess that would be like bandwagoning, uh, you know, that we have in sports, so very interesting.

Dr. Randall Balmer
Yeah, and I did remember your comment; it reminded me of the point I was trying to make. So, hockey being Canada's game, the real congregation nationally is telecast every Saturday night during the hockey season, called hockey night in Canada. And you know, it's a kind of call to worship work for Canadians to gather around their television and watch two hockey games as part of their coming together. And that, again, speaks to the need for community. That is, we're looking for some sort of attachment to others. At one time, and it still does for a lot of people, religion was that place of congregation or place of attachment. I think now, more and more, it's tribal loyalties to teams. I mentioned in the book I have a friend here in town who said, in our conversation, that if I'm filling my car with gas at the station, gas station, and a pickup truck comes up alongside me with a New England Patriots bumper sticker, we immediately have something to talk about. Even though we might be very different regarding our socioeconomic background or class, we may have politics utterly opposed to one another. But being Patriots fans, we have that commonality; we have that bond that eludes us, I think, in many other areas of American life.

Darin Hayes
You're right. I guess even if you're the opposition, after this past Sunday and last evening, I'm a Steelers fan, apologetically. And after that, even if I saw a Patriots fan or a Browns fan right now after losing to him, there's still a commonality of discussion that you could have about the game. Maybe it's the opposing sides of an opinion, but you know, you still have a bond between that game and the ritual of the game. Yes, exactly.

Dr. Randall Balmer
you do

Darin Hayes
Well, very interesting. Now, how about, I guess, if we stay in the realm of professional football, you know, Sundays sort of being that holy day where most of the games are played and, you know, it's football Sunday. Is that another one of the correlations that you make?

Dr. Randall Balmer
Yeah, it is. And I think that also provides a way of understanding how we've moved away from organized faith to athletics. Of course, in the early days of each of these sports, there were strict Sabbatarian laws, that is to say, that these games could not be played on Sundays because this was the day for church. You know what happens, of course, is that the owners, in particular, push for the repeal of those laws for their own economic interest and well-being. I use an example in the book of East Lake Community Church, which is in the suburbs of Seattle, Washington. Seattle is in the Pacific time zone, and Sunday morning worship was at ten o'clock, as it is for many other religious groups in America. Well, when the Seahawks were playing in the Eastern time zone against the Bills, the Steelers, the Giants, or whomever, the Dolphins, for that matter. The game time, one o ''o'clock Eastern, is exactly ten o 'o'clock Pacific time. So what are you going to do? And what they did, as is true of many religious groups, was they canceled their ten o ''o'clock Sunday morning worship service and rescheduled it for five o ''o'clock on Sunday afternoon after the games were over. So that's an indication of who is determining or dictating the schedule. And these days, athletic events seem to be taking precedence over religious gatherings.

Darin Hayes
It's interesting, and I'm sure that when they developed Sunday night football, it put another angst into their schedule.

Dr. Randall Balmer
I expected it. I hadn't thought about that, yes, but I expect so.

Darin Hayes
Well, very interesting. Now, how does, with all this going on, and you know, I know they're working around schedules for worship services. Now, is there anything else that religion is doing to embrace or to repel, you know, some of their parishioners and the faithful from going, you know, over the edge and being a total fanatic, and be, you know, stay a fanatic towards their religion. Are there some measures being taken?

Dr. Randall Balmer
That's a good question. I'm not aware of anything. I think many religious leaders are just kind of throwing up their hands and saying, we can't compete. We can't compete with this. It's a major cultural force for so many people that if we try to stand against or denounce it, we'll lose credibility with our followers. And we simply can't compete. Again, like this church out in Washington. And again, that's not an unusual story. A lot of places of worship have made those sorts of concessions. And I think the other way you see this sort of accommodating is that the muscular Christianity movement, which I mentioned earlier, but you also have, for example, among Roman Catholics, the CYO, the Catholic Youth Organization that begins, I believe in the 1920s, don't hold me to that, in Chicago. Again, it provides athletics for young Catholics to participate in this muscular Christian movement. Even among Jews, the young men's Hebrew associations were trying to, in effect, replicate the YMCAs, also offering recreation along with religious instruction. And by the way, this goes way back, and I don't spend much time with this in the book. Still, I do mention it: way back to the ancient Greeks, the ancient gymnasiums that were founded in ancient Greece were a place of athletic pursuits and competition, but also a place where people came to discuss ideas, whether religious or philosophical. It was a place where both the mind and the spirit, as well as the body, were exercised. So this has a long history, even dating back long before muscular Christianity emerged.

Darin Hayes
Okay, now you just brought the, I'm picturing like the Roman Colosseum and I believe I've seen photographs or maybe I've read it where they had statues of the gods that they believed in incorporated into the design or maybe in the arches or something of the Colosseum. Is that what you're also talking about with the Greek arenas?

Dr. Randall Balmer
Yes, I think that would be an example of that sort of thing, but you know that, and the Greeks had this idea. I don't want to get philosophical here because I'm not a philosopher, but Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics argued that individuals can develop virtues within themselves by practicing being virtuous. So, similarly to an athlete, a placekicker becomes a good place kicker by kicking the ball by being a placekicker over and over again. You're building this muscle memory and so forth. And so, the cultivation of virtues was intertwined with athletic development in ancient Greece.

Darin Hayes
Okay, I guess it may be the epitome that comes to my mind today. I think it's probably accidental that this happened, but at the University of Notre Dame, you know, the football field, I believe the one end zone looks at a building with a picture of Jesus with his hands up. They've deemed him touchdown Jesus, who affectionately called around them.

Dr. Randall Balmer
Exactly. And it looks right over the football stadium. Yes, I've been there. It's quite remarkable.

Darin Hayes
Like I said, it might be somewhat accidental, but I'm not sure how exactly that whole thing came about. It's a fact of life in the world of football today. Well, Doctor, I appreciate you coming. This is very intriguing. Now, I guess you said something early on in our discussion about how the mid-century, the 1950s, culminated in where we got to modern athletics and modern sports with the big four. Now, I'm assuming this was a gradual, I guess, competition, maybe for lack of a better word, between, you know, religion and athleticism leading up to that. So, there was some point where they were probably fairly equal. Would that be like the World War II era between World War I and World War II?

Dr. Randall Balmer
Yeah, it probably would be the zenith for American religious affiliation. Religious life was probably in the 1950s in the Cold War era. And I think it's only really been in the last several decades that that's begun, again, to shift more in the direction of athleticism. And again, I, you know, I, I'm not suggesting that the two are mutually exclusive. I mean, a lot of people attend church and then head off to the stadium for force for a Sunday afternoon, watching a baseball game, or whatever, whatever it might be. But it is striking me that the level of religious adherence has dropped rather dramatically over the last several decades, and at the same time, athletic passion, I think, has increased.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, I definitely agree with you. I'm not saying it on an individual basis, but if you're looking at it from 50,000 feet and, you know, studying everything, you're absolutely right. The trends are sort of going in opposite directions, but the similarities are uncanny. I'm glad that you pointed those out and let us know about them. Why don't you let us know again what title your book is and where people can find it again?

Dr. Randall Balmer
It's called Passion Plays, How Religion Shapes Sports in North America. It's available, should be available in local bookstores, but also bookshop .com, I'm sorry, bookshop.org, Amazon.com, of course, Barnes and Noble, and other places as well. I should say that we've been talking about a lot of the elements of this book, but I also try to look into the symbolism surrounding each book. I'm sorry, each team sports. We also already talked about basketball as an urban game. We talked about football as a military game. Hockey is Canada's game for all sorts of very interesting reasons. Baseball is the quintessential immigrant game because it's the only game where the defense controls the ball. And it's the object of the offensive player, the batter, to disrupt the defense's control of the ball. He's outnumbered nine to one, just like the immigrant coming into the country at that time, who was very much outnumbered in his attempts to make a place in American society. And as he looked out into that hostile territory from the batter's box, he saw three islands of safety out there in that hostile territory. And the greatest triumph for the immigrant, as for the batter, is to return home. Therefore, homecoming is a very important part of baseball. And it's also true that immigrants and outsiders have always excelled at the game of baseball. In the 19th century, it would be immigrants from Germany, Italy, or from Scandinavia. Later on, of course, it's African -Americans who finally broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson in 1947. And more recently, of course, as you know, a lot of players are coming from the Caribbean, particularly the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, and now Asia. So it's immigrants who have always excelled in this game of baseball, and the game of baseball itself really replicates the immigrant experience.

Darin Hayes
Well, Doctor, you have a very interesting lens and are very philosophical. It's very, very intriguing. So, folks, I greatly suggest that you get a copy of Doctor Randall's book. Randall Balmer's book is here. Make sure you read this. It's a very compelling and interesting subject matter indeed. Doctor, do you have any before we let you go? Do you have any social media or websites or anything that you'd like people to know about so they can follow what you have going on?

Dr. Randall Balmer
Yes, I do. I have a website. It's www.randlebalmer. I'll try to keep it up. I'm not really good at keeping up on this sort of thing, but I'll try to do that. But the book is listed there.

Darin Hayes
Okay. And folks, if you're driving the car or don't have a pencil or pen, don't worry about it; we're going to put it in the show notes of this podcast. You can also find it on pigskindispatch.com for later reference so you can get connected to Dr. Balmer's information and to his book. And Dr. Rainer Balmer, thank you very much for joining us today and telling us about this very interesting discussion and for recording it in your very interesting book.

Dr. Randall Balmer 
Thank you, Darin. It's been my pleasure.

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The history of football is filled with surprising twists and turns! From wild rule changes to iconic rivalries, there's a story behind every play. Want to learn more about the fascinating evolution of America's favorite sport? Tune in every day for a new bite-sized nugget of football history you won't want to miss! #FootballHistory #DailyFacts #StayTuned

Our daily YouTube Shorts video trivia is a great way to stay connected with the game's history and keep your football quips in full tune with the NFL and the college game.

You will have a blast testing your knowledge and maybe learning something. What a great way to preserve the heritage of the gridiron past.

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They say there's a great woman behind every great man, and the world of professional football is no exception. NFL wives have played many roles, from supportive spouses to savvy businesswomen and even philanthropists who leave their mark on the league. Today, we'll test your knowledge about one such power couple.

This legendary NFL player dominated the gridiron for over a decade, striking fear into the hearts of opposing defenses with his unparalleled passing ability. He was a multiple-time Pro Bowl selection and a cornerstone of his team's success. But who was the equally impressive woman standing by his side throughout his career?

In today's fun look at football factoids, we will have those questions posed to you.

Collecting football memorabilia is an extremely fun and rewarding hobby. In this episode Ray Durbin1 of Row One Brand visits the Pigpen to share with us his unique collection of both ticket stubs and game day programs and the reason he collects them.

-Transcript of Ticket Stubs and Programs Collectibles with Ray Durbin

Darin Hayes
Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of pigskidispatch.com. We are in the Pigpen today, and we are here to talk about the hobbies, games, toys, and collections that are associated with the game of football. And we have a very interesting topic today. We have Ray Durbin. Do you remember him? We had him back on Memorial Day, talking about the salutes of the great football players who had military service and their military service. Unfortunately, they passed in their service, and we honored them on that day, Memorial Day, as we should. Today, Ray is going to talk about collections with football, and we'll bring them in right now. Ray Durbin, welcome back to the Pigpen.

Ray Durbin
Well, I'm glad to be back here.

Darin Hayes
Ray, you know, you have a very interesting story that you were sharing with me before we came on and recorded here, and you were telling me a little bit about how you got your passion for row one, which we'll talk about in a little bit what you folks do there, but maybe your childhood memory of a collection you had, how it got you sort of into the sports memorabilia.

Ray Durbin
When I was a kid, a common activity was going out and playing a little baseball during the summer, getting up, and gathering up a bunch of kids to play. And then, if we had a little sandlot game, we would swap baseball cards. And back in the mid-50s, I remember, you know, having Hank Aaron cards, Mickey Mantle cards, Stan Musial, all the, you know, stars at that particular point in time. And also, we'd have some, you know, players who are probably not too noted. One that sticks in my mind because we always used to laugh about it is at the back of a baseball card; they'd have noteworthy achievements from that particular player. And there's a guy, I'm trying to think of his name. It was something like Scooter Malpmus or some name like that, and his nickname was Scooter. And about all they could say about this guy was one day stole a base or somebody or some really mundane achievement they could put down for Scooter. But anyway, we would, you know, try to swap the cards, and maybe 250 Scooter cards would be worth maybe one Wally Moon card. But anyway, that was our common activity. Back then, we would keep all the baseball cards and little cigar boxes. So it wasn't intended that this is something you're going to keep forever, or that we couldn't visualize, you know when you're eight, nine, 10, 11 years old, you don't visualize something like that having tremendous value the way it would now. And I mean, I know for a fact that we had Mickey Mantle cards. And now I think I'm not Mickey Mantle card, the rookie card or early card, you know, selling up in millions of dollars, we would be happy to trade a Mickey Mantle card, you know, for maybe half a popsicle or something. I had

Darin Hayes
similar experiences when I was younger. I was a little bit younger than you, a little bit different decade. I can remember we'd take the football cards, baseball cards, and the teams we don't really like. And in Western Pennsylvania, back then, the Raiders were sort of the big enemy of the Steelers. And I can remember, I think it was like a Phil Villapiano football card. I said I'm going to make my bike sound really cool. I'm going to connect it to the steering mechanism of my bike. So it hits the spokes and sounds like a motorcycle. You know, I'm sure all kids do that. Well, the curse of the Raiders got me because I was driving, driving my bike. I was going all the place with this card in there and ended up taking a couple of spokes out, and my whole tire collapsed. And I went flying over, you know, ass over 10 cups over the handlebars into the street. And I'm like, those doggone Raiders, they got me again, you know?

Ray Durbin
Well, I know back in the early days of Raiders, and that maybe it's continued, they had kind of a reputation of being so much like he sure outlaws, and There was sort of the bane of Western civilization, and it for a while. So I didn't know they also had sabotaged old kids' bicycles.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, he got me good. He got me good.

Ray Durbin
At any rate, the story with baseball cards and little cigar boxes, I had an older brother, I had a younger brother, we all collected baseball cards, everything. And sometime in the early sixties, my mother thought that this was enough, and we hadn't done anything with him for years. So she wound up discarding a lot of these baseball cards. And while I was saying earlier, if I had been able to come up with some legal theory to sue her, I would have. At the time, no one knew these things were going to be, you know, the value they are now. An interesting thing about baseball cards, and you're talking about football cards too, is that we used to collect football cards. And I don't know what it was like when you're collecting, but in the early mid-fifties, on the back of a football card, they would have a diagram of a play. Oh, okay. It might be like they'd have the lineups, and they'd have an offensive scheme and a defensive scheme. We're trying to work through that. You get over there, and you run this way and that way.

Darin Hayes is
running the X's and O's in the backyard. Exactly.

Ray Durbin
that was on the back of the card set. Wow, that's interesting. We always used to focus on the quarterback sneak because that was the easiest concept for us to understand.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, it's just one player in a straight line, right? In A -gaps.

Ray Durbin
But, but anyway, that that's, you know, I think a lot of kids go through that collecting baseball cards, and then it was popular for a while. I know in the late '70s and early '80s, a lot of people were collecting baseball cards again; my son probably taught me to spin and go anywhere to maybe have my retirement savings on baseball cards. But they still didn't have the value that some of these older cards did. The thing about, you know, baseball cards versus tickets, or any kind of sports card versus tickets, those are created with the idea in mind, you're going to collect them, you know, a baseball card, a football card, a basketball card. The idea is that that's something that's collectible, and they're intended, of course, you may get a lousy stick of bubble gum or something with it, but they're actually intended to keep and collect.

Darin Hayes
Ray, I just have a question for you. I know how the bubblegum tasted in the 70s in the baseball cards and football cards. It wasn't very good. Actually, I think maybe the cards tasted better than the gum. How was it back in the late 50s and 60s when you were collecting?

Ray Durbin
I think it was about the same. A lot of times, the bubblegum, of course, back then, the cards just came in a wax paper wrapper. So, a lot of times, bubblegum was pretty stale. And you're right; sometimes, it is hard to tell. They've come in like little squares about the size of a sports card, you know, a piece of bubblegum like that. And they were generally pretty stale.

Darin Hayes
They were consistent on the cards; they got more consistent through the years.

Ray Durbin
control. But anyway, you know, some of the difference between collecting tickets and scorecards and programs versus baseball cards, that sort of thing, or football cards, is the cards are intended to be collectible. When you go back to the 20s and even earlier 1910s, we have a couple of tickets from the 1800s. Wow. Those were not generally intended to be a collectible. They were to get into the game and be admitted to the game, and then people would stuff them in their pockets. They would, you know, get sweaty if it was hot. They would spill cokes on them, get mustard on them, all that kind of stuff. Very few people actually hung onto those. And if they did, they'd be tucked away in a scrapbook someplace. One main difference between collecting tickets and scorecards is that they weren't intended at the time they were created to be collectibles. They were basically intended to get you into the game or the sporting event, and you also have information about the players, the teams, and that sort of thing. So I think that's the main difference between collection and, you know, documentation of a historical event. Now, there are more people collecting tickets, and some of these things, particularly, I know, are sort of counterintuitive. But during the pandemic, a lot of people went back and started even making more of a demand for sports cards because there wasn't that much to do. They're more interested in going back and revisiting their old collection of sports cards. And the same thing with tickets. Tickets people started getting interested in collecting tickets, everything, because they had a lot of time on their hands, and at least there for a while, disposable income. And it was an interesting hobby, something to do. Now, the other thing about tickets, well, it's just like baseball cards. I think a lot of baseball cards or football cards or anything like that are focused on the individual. In other words, you can always go back in and try to collect the New York Yankee personnel, but it's sort of individual player-oriented. You collect Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, and Al Kaline for the Tigers, and Bill Mazeroski, I think, played on the Pirates. It's sort of oriented toward the individual player. Tickets can be sorted, organized, and rearranged in a lot of different ways. For example, someone might want to focus on their favorite team. For example, if your favorite team is a Pittsburgh Steelers or Pittsburgh Panthers or Penn State or whatever your favorite team is, you can focus on trying to collect for that team. That's one way of doing it. Other people like to collect by conferences and in college, such as Southeastern Conference or Big Ten. Again, getting back to the team thing, if you're talking about college or maybe people focusing on the University of Michigan Wolverines, like the Ohio State Buckeyes, Texas Longhorns, whatever. They can have the team. Normally, on these tickets, you don't focus on an individual player, except you might say, well, Bobby Lane played in this game for the Lions, or Bobby Lane played in this game for the Steelers, or something like that. But a ticket generally doesn't feature a particular player, if that makes any sense. So the tickets, you can focus in on so many different aspects of if you're collecting to collect them. You might try to get your favorite team, as I understand, the Oakland Raiders. Where were they located now? Los Angeles, or where the heck are the Raiders? Las Vegas now. Las Vegas. So, you know, you can focus on the team. You can focus on the vent if you want, Super Bowl. Same in baseball. If you're looking at tickets, you can focus on the World Series. You can focus on all-star games. Focus on a significant event like the game where Hank Aaron hit the broke, tied, no broke Ruth's record. And I remember what that was. It was 515 or whatever his record was. I remember watching that on Publish as I washed my car and told my wife to call me in when he was up and back. So that was, I want to say it was in April 74. So, I mean, when you're looking at tickets or scorecards or anything like that, you can focus on the event, a particular event, a conference, a team, or the World Series Super Bowl. We have a lot of Pro Bowl tickets, some Super Bowl tickets, just a wide variety of items. So, you can narrow it down if you want to. If you're a collector of tickets or scorecards, something like that, you can narrow it down if you want to. We have, in the nature of row one, what we do; we approach it from the standpoint that we want tickets that have some historical significance. We also look at the graphics, the artwork on the ticket, as we were talking about before, you know, if it's something like, admit one, even that can be interesting because even these ticket stubs that are really kind of plain, they'll have the date on it, they'll have the price, they'll have the location, the teams that are playing off, and so even those can be real, interesting from a historical standpoint. So it's all in the eye of the beholder, I guess, what kind of graphics they like or what kind of historical information they have.

Darin Hayes
No, Ray, in the case of collecting ticket stubs or scorecards or the smaller items like that, how do folks display their collection? Is it like in a book? Do they put it up on a wall somehow? What's a common way to?

Ray Durbin
I, you know, I don't display the tickets as such because we enlarge them. But I know for a fact a lot of people will have them. They'll put them in an acrylic or hard plastic container. Other ones will get a little easel and put it on there. For example, if they have a desk in our office or something, I want to put it up. I'll put it in a case of some type and maybe put a little easel. Not too many people are going to hang a little thick it up on a wall, but anything is possible.

Darin Hayes
If they want to hang it, if that ticket means a lot, and they want to hang it on the wall, they can go to row one and buy a big lithograph of it to hang on the wall, right? Exactly.

Ray Durbin
some of our items have blown up. I mean, it's unlimited. It'd be an entire wall, but you know, some of the canvases and everything go up to 60 inches wide by whatever. So they're really pretty striking when you enlarge these tickets. And when you look at them, they have some really, really interesting artwork and graphics. So, you know, we look at it from a lot of different ways, a lot of different perspectives, and we try to have something for everyone. For example, we have a lot of Ohio State and Michigan games because that's a big rivalry. One way you can group these, we're talking about teams, conferences, that sort of stuff. Another way is rivalry games. And so we have a lot of Ohio State, Michigan, as well as just Michigan tickets and Ohio State tickets. We have a lot of Michigan and Ohio State rivalry games. We have, you know, other rivalries, California and Stanford. We have a lot of their tickets where they're playing each other, Oklahoma and Texas. In fact, we acquired one today, which is significant to me. It's the first OU-Texas game I went to in person. It was in 1963. So now they're getting back to why people collect these tickets. A big part of it is that it brings back an emotional experience they've had, a game experience that can relive it. It brings back memories. And I was looking at this ticket, and I remember that particularly because a whole group of us were driving down from Norman to Dallas for that game. And I was telling this story about a roommate who had sold Bibles that previous summer. So he had a gift for Gav. I mean, he was really, and as we're leaving town, we're driving out of Norman, we got pulled over by a policeman. So Joe hopped out of the car and ran up to the policeman. That was before, you know, the Taser you were shooting. He went up to that officer, got a car, ran up to his car so the officer didn't have to move or anything, and got his license for him. And then he wound up thinking, I didn't hear it, but he told us what had happened. He wound up thinking the officer was stopping. He said, you know, I'm a student at OU; I'm going down to the beginning with Texas, and I got a little excited. And I'm really, really happy that you stopped me. If you hadn't stopped me right now, I may have been speeding later on, and I could have heard someone. So, the cop wound up not giving him a ticket. Instead, he also pointed out where the speed traps were between Norman and Dallas. He said, now you want to watch it here; you got to be careful here. So I'm just saying that that's an experience I had. And so I was particularly happy to get that 1963 Texas-OU. So that acquisition

Darin Hayes
You got in 2021, and it takes you to have a memory back, and it was your buddy in the car. That's awesome.

Ray Durbin
And we have another; I have a ticket for the first game I ever went to, the Oklahoma game. I was Oklahoma Clemson. I already had that ticket. So you can go through anyone who is a college graduate or attended college or family, or maybe it's just someone who's always followed a particular team. Obviously, a team like Penn State has a lot of followers who didn't even attend Penn State, such as fans. So all these tickets, you get these old tickets, and they either relate to them because you saw the game on TV or you saw it in person or you attended college, and maybe the first bad hangover you had was the night before or whatever. And so it brings back a lot of memories. It's not nostalgic and all that kind of stuff. With that last comment,

Darin Hayes
you're bringing back a lot of my college days now.

Ray Durbin
I remember a ticket. I'm not going to bore you going over all these with some of my favorite tickets. I have a list and they we've already talked about some of them. We have the it's not actually the Super Bowl, but the first NFL championship game with the FC Green Bay and I think Kansas City Chiefs. We have that ticket. Wow. Have the first championship game. Yes, it's a football league game.

Darin Hayes
OK.

Ray Durbin
I have that one; there are just a lot of Pro Bowl games and different pro tickets.

Darin Hayes
What's the oldest ticket stub that you have in your collection?

Ray Durbin
uh, we have an 1876. It's actually a program, uh, but it looks sure I could take it that it's a program uh with Harvard and Yale, and what's interesting about that particular game, uh, I'm trying to think Harvard was undefeated, of course, yeah it was their second meeting a couple of things because I had talked about this before um 1876 teddy roosevelt was an uh freshman at Harvard so he was attending the game there's a guy by the name of Walter camp he uh was on uh yale and if I've told you this story before I really apologize

Darin Hayes
No, you, well, you did. We talked about this before, because I saw that one. And I knew the significance of the game, you know, making football history. And that was I purchased that cup that has that on there. I drink out of that, you know, a couple of times a week. So I love that one. That's a great one.

Ray Durbin
And, you know, the story is that Walter Camp was a freshman on the Yale team and the captain of the Harvard team; I think I have this story, right? Saw this guy only weighed 150 pounds. He said, you're not going to let him play, are you? He looks like a baby. He'll get hurt. I always liked that story because, you know, he went on to be instrumental in developing American football rules and everything. But some of the other tips you asked about are the oldest ones, a ticket, and a couple of really cool ones. One is an 1893 pin versus Princeton. Wow. University of Pennsylvania versus Princeton. That's a really good ticket. Those are kind of ornate. They're really fancy and elaborate things. Another early ticket that I like a lot, one of my favorites, is an 1896 Cincinnati versus Carlisle Indians. Oh, my goodness. Carlisle school, you know. And I think some of the language is really funny. It's like, you know, see Wild West Indians; they're really playing it up, and the graphics are pretty good there. Then, some of the earlier tickets are from 1907, Princeton, Yale, 1909, you know, Harvard, 1910, Dartmouth versus Harvard. Those were big.

Darin Hayes
games in that era. Those are organic games in the season.

Ray Durbin
And a lot of times, the teams would be undefeated or one way and go on and claim the national championship.

Darin Hayes
That's your Ohio State, Michigan and your LSU, Alabama games of this era. That's Yale, Harvard.

Ray Durbin
Exactly. There is Nate, a really pretty ticket. I'd like a ticket if it's. Yeah, I have it here. It's a 1923 Navy Penn State ticket. I like all these old tickets because you look at them and they have football and two different words. So it says, you know, see Navy Penn State College football. They have F -O -T -T in the space B -A -L -L. And a lot of the old tickets have it, you know, two separate words. But I like that ticket because it's just an attractive ticket and they have a little football shape on it and they show an actual photo of some action, you know, from 1922 or thereabout.

Darin Hayes
Before we go any further on your description, maybe the listeners can see the photos of these tickets because you have them in your artwork on row one. Maybe you could tell us where to look so maybe they could go to there while they're listening to this. Yeah.

Ray Durbin
that would be great. In fact, I have about two tablets and a cell phone here, too. They just want to look up and type in row one brand, all one word, row one brand.

Darin Hayes
W -O -N -E brand.

Ray Durbin
right .com, and they'll be able to pull that website up, and then as you scroll down, you'll come to a place where it says to go to the gallery, and there are currently about 6100 items on there of images, so they're not all tickets a large number tickets, but there's also scorecards and remixed artwork things like that, but that's a good way to do it, and also if you have a favorite team like Notre Dame or Penn State or Alabama or whatever up at the top of that when you go to a pictorum you should get on the pictorum gallery when you go to that there's a search box up top, and you just type in your favorite team it should pull up depending on the team it might pull up I just checked earlier baseball pulled up about 12 pages of different artwork on that I go to a team like Michigan or Notre Dame you'll pull up a lot of artwork old tickets and

Darin Hayes
Uh, and let me just give the listeners a real quick tip. If you happen to be on the Pigskin Dispatch site, we have an ad on the front page for row one; you can click on that. It takes you to the sports history network link. Also, if you're on sports history, network .com, click on the row. One link, it'll take you through there. And when in the pictorium gallery, uh, that Ray is talking about, uh, he's offered a special code for a sports history network listeners, she 15, get a 15% discount in the pictorial gallery. So, uh, take note of that and take advantage of it.

Ray Durbin
Yeah, that's a great point. That's a really good point. So, you know, there's just a lot of football tickets. We're talking about rivalries, Army Navy, and those are really interesting. We talked about Ohio State, Michigan, Southern California, Stanford, Alabama, Auburn, Oklahoma, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and just any college rivalry you can think of. Plug it in, and see what you come up with. You might just have to go to one team or the other. Like, if you go to Army, you're going to pick up all the Army Navy tickets. You can try it now, and you can try the Army and Navy, too. But it's just fantastic artwork, in my opinion. And when you blow this stuff up, it makes really a unique piece of art. It's a historical, significant, interesting conversation piece.

Darin Hayes
It's so neat what you do on row one. You show different views of the ticket, but one of the images that you can click on of that ticket is to show it what it looks like hanging on your wall, and that's really cool. It really brings it to life, and before you buy it, it shows you, hey, that would look great in my living room or my den or something. That's a great feature that you have, too, so make sure you folks out there take advantage of that, too.

Ray Durbin
Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm pictorial, too. I'm, I'm glad you brought that. The other thing about that is that you can get these in various mediums, like, uh, you can get them printed on wood, which looks good. Uh, uh, metal signs. If, if you're, you know, have a game room or something and your crowd control, it's not quite up to par. You might want to get a metal sign. I'm kidding. Uh, so you don't have the cameras destroyed or anything, but there are all sorts of me a good medium chair, acrylic, wood, uh, canvas, paper, prints, it can be framed by us, all that kind of stuff. Do they? I would just end by saying we have a lot of different sports, uh, baseball, basketball, football, soccer, boxing, race car, any 500 tickets, Kentucky Derby tickets. There's a wide variety of sports. And we're, we're adding things daily. We're getting there, but we have a lot more items to add to the website.

Darin Hayes
Now, you mentioned a little bit earlier that during Covid and during the pandemic, there seemed to be a lot more people that started collecting again, you know, maybe having that extra time and they're scouring through the internet and say, hey, you know, I used to collect baseball cards or ticket stuff when I was younger. Now, did it drive the prices up for collectors because of the supply and demand type of thing, or did it help the collector?

Ray Durbin
You know, I can't answer that. I would suspect it would. But I've heard that in terms of the baseball tickets or baseball cards. I have come up a little bit. And my understanding is the same with the football tickets and programs and everything. A lot of our acquisitions were done prior to a couple of years ago. So.

Darin Hayes
OK.

Ray Durbin
uh you know at this point in time we're in the stage where hey if we see something unique uh that we're interested in and from a selfish standpoint you know we're talking about that 53 not 53 63 uh texas oklahoma ticket had a special emotional appeal to me uh so yeah we're in a daily basis but uh there for a while i mean you know it's just like uh had a special mail truck delivery where we're getting a lot of items in a couple years ago so i think the prices have gone up again we i'm i'm in a mode uh row one is in the mode and we're acquiring this we're not trying to resell them at this point in time uh different people have different approaches some people will buy something and then try to turn it sell it turn it whatever you want language i use we acquire the items from the standpoint of the uh how we think people will react to it from an emotional standpoint an artistic standpoint it's an interesting historical event but we're looking at from the from the standpoint of the image how how good a work of art will that make uh and the other thing we hadn't talked about we we also put these on other products uh i mean they're they look great on uh t -shirts and mugs uh shower curtains towels i i think one of the best items is is a beach towel or even a bath towel because uh uh the shape of a towel is almost like a a ticket

Darin Hayes
Right. I didn't even think of that.

Ray Durbin
and curtains and always just make really, really good designs if you're a sports fan or sports fanatic. Or if you like to take showers or baths.

Darin Hayes
Get it back. But we hope that our listeners like that. So

Ray Durbin
But there are a lot of good products out there, and they're interesting. I just like them from an aesthetic and a historical standpoint.

Darin Hayes
Okay, now, aside from I know you told us a feeling about the 63 OU Texas stub that you have of all your collection of program covers and ticket stubs. Let's just take that one, that latest acquisition, out of the mix here. What is your personal favorite, and maybe tell us why?

Ray Durbin
Well, it's tough. I guess. That's like telling you which was your fault.

Darin Hayes
favorite child, right? Exactly.

Ray Durbin
Exactly. I guess just from a, I fluctuate, here's another again, another thing, I look at these, and if I haven't looked at a particular ticket in a while, I'm like, wow, I always like that. You go to the head of the class. But I guess right now, while you're asking me, I think the ticket I really like is that 1896 Cincinnati Carlisle Indian ticket. It's so unique. The other ticket, from a personal selfish standpoint, is a good 1969 University of Michigan, Missouri ticket. And it's real free graphics. It shows the stadium, and I think, uh, uh, pennants with, uh, I believe, uh, Michigan, Missouri are on it. And, uh, Michigan needs that same theme for the home game. Show it the whole, whole year. They also have a ticket like that, a 69 Ohio State, Michigan ticket. But I liked the Missouri, Michigan ticket because a good friend of mine and his date, as well as my wife and I, went to that game, the Michigan, Missouri game. It was a beautiful day, a fall day, real nice weather. Uh, and we scrunched up in Ann Arbor's, you know, stadium. Uh, so I always remember that game, like it just happened, uh, yesterday, uh, another game. It's not all that aesthetic, but it's one of these tickets that has a lot of value. Uh, and it is a unique 1969 Texas OU ticket. That means a lot to me because this same friend of mine that we went to that game, you know, with Chris, my wife, and his date, uh, a few weeks later, he was getting ready to go into the Navy. I was going to be going into the Army at the end of October, and we decided on a lark. I think it will probably be a Wednesday or so. We found out that my older brother had a couple of tickets to the OU-Texas game. So we drove down from Detroit to Norman, picked up the tickets, and then headed back out, and then drove back. How old is that?

Darin Hayes
That's going to be quite a.

Ray Durbin
Oh, let me see. It's, well, we broke it up. We, uh, we drove straight through from Detroit to Norman. And at that time, I'm going to guess just about 21 hours a day, or, and then, it's about another six hours that I'll bet. It was, uh, it was a hike, but, uh, it was fun. It's well worth it. So those two tickets have a lot of meaning to me. Um, I guess that's not it. And my favorite, favorite tickets. I mean, there's a lot, though. Every time you look at it, really.

Darin Hayes
Right. Well, Ray, I appreciate you coming on today and sharing your collection and your passion with us. And again, folks, we have the row one links in our show notes. You can also find them on sports history, network .com, and pigskindispatch.com. Make sure you check out Ray's collection on row one and share that art with us. And I can hang it on your wall, drink your coffee out of it, and dry it off when you get out of the shower with it. There are many things you can do: put it on your car keys. So make sure you check those out. And, Ray, once again, thank you very much for joining us and telling us about this great collection.

Ray Durbin
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

American football, a game deeply ingrained in the cultural fabric of the United States, has evolved significantly since its inception. From its humble beginnings in the late 19th century to becoming the nation's most beloved sport, football has witnessed changes that have not only shaped the game but also the very society that cherishes it.

Photo by Dave Adamson on Unsplash |AD

Introduction

This article delves into the rich history of American football, exploring key milestones that have marked its evolution and its impact on fans and players alike. Join us as we take a journey through the gridiron's past, understanding the transformations that have made the sport what it is today.

The Birth of American Football

The origins of American football can be traced back to the late 1800s, a period that saw the transformation of rugby and soccer into a new, distinct sport. It was Walter Camp, known as the "Father of American Football," who played a pivotal role in shaping the early rules that distinguished American football from its predecessors.

The introduction of the line of scrimmage, the concept of downs, and the scoring system were revolutionary changes that laid the foundation for modern football. These early days were characterized by a rudimentary form of play, far removed from the structured and strategic game we see today, yet they were crucial in setting the stage for the sport's future development.

The NFL's Formative Years

As the sport gained popularity, the need for a formal organization became evident, leading to the establishment of the National Football League (NFL) in 1920. Initially comprising just 14 teams, the NFL struggled with challenges such as player recruitment, financial instability, and lack of public interest. However, it gradually overcame these obstacles, thanks in part to strategic decisions around NFL standings and the NFL Draft system, which was implemented to maintain competitive balance among teams.

This era also saw the emergence of stars who would become legends, individuals whose prowess on the field began drawing crowds and shaping the future of the league.

The Golden Age of American Football

The post-World War II era marked a golden age for the sport, as American football witnessed unprecedented growth in popularity. Technological advancements, such as the introduction of television broadcasts, brought the game into the homes of millions, creating a nationwide fanbase. Additionally, quarterbacks like Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath helped take the game from a run-dominated sport to a more balanced one.

This period also saw the rise of the Super Bowl in the late 1960s, an annual championship game that quickly became a cultural phenomenon. The NFL's savvy marketing strategies, coupled with the electrifying performances of its athletes, solidified football's place as a central pillar of American entertainment.

Modern Innovations and the Future of Football

In recent years, American football has continued to evolve, embracing technological innovations and addressing challenges such as player safety and diversity. The use of instant replay, advances in protective gear, and the implementation of strict concussion protocols reflect the league's commitment to safeguarding its players.

Moreover, initiatives aimed at promoting diversity and inclusion within the sport signal a progressive shift in the NFL's approach to social issues. As the league looks to the future, it remains dedicated to enhancing the game's integrity, competitiveness, and appeal to fans around the world.

Conclusion

The history of American football is a testament to the sport's resilience, adaptability, and enduring appeal. From its early days on college campuses to its current status as a professional sporting behemoth, football has captivated the hearts of Americans across generations. The evolution of the gridiron mirrors broader societal changes, reflecting the nation's struggles, triumphs, and cultural shifts.

As we look back on the journey of American football, it's clear that the game is more than just a sport; it's a piece of American history, a narrative of progress and passion that continues to unfold. As fans, players, and stewards of the game, we carry forward the legacy of those who have shaped its past, eager to see how the story of American football will evolve in the years to come.

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Choosing the top 4 players in Illinois Fighting Illini football history is no easy feat, given the program's rich history and numerous talented athletes. However, based on individual achievements, impact on the team, and lasting legacy, here are four contenders:

1. Red Grange (RB, 1923-25): Arguably the most iconic figure in Illini football history, Grange revolutionized the game with his dazzling speed and elusive moves. He won the 1925 Heisman Trophy, led the nation in rushing three times, and sparked the "Grangemania" phenomenon that captivated national attention.

2. Dick Butkus (LB, 1962-64): "Butkus" became synonymous with linebacker excellence. He won the 1963 Heisman Trophy, the Lombardi Award, and was a unanimous All-American. His ferocity, tackling prowess, and leadership anchored powerful Illini defenses.

3. Jeff George (QB, 1987-89): A controversial, yet undeniably talented quarterback, George holds multiple Illini records. He won the 1989 Sammy Baugh Award, passed for over 8,000 yards in just two seasons, and showcased raw NFL-caliber talent that landed him as the No. 1 overall draft pick.

4. Rashard Mendenhall (RB, 2004-07): Mendenhall rewrote the Illini rushing record books, holding the program record for single-season rushing yards (1,681) and career rushing touchdowns (44). He carried the offensive load during his time and was a key factor in the Illini's 2007 Rose Bowl appearance.

Honorable Mentions:

-Jim Grabowski (QB, 1964-66): Led the Illini to two Big Ten titles and became the NFL's first Jewish starting quarterback.

-McKinley Brown (DE, 1975-77): Holds the Illini record for career sacks and was a dominant force on the defensive line.

-Bobby Mitchell (WR, 1958-61): A pioneer for Black athletes in the Big Ten, Mitchell was a dynamic receiver and went on to NFL stardom.

It's important to note that this is just a starting point, and other players could be argued for based on different criteria.