Football History

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

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

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

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on Changes to Pass Interference

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks, Tim. Thank you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

-Transcribed Loyola Chicago Train Ride Team with Timothy Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

Michigan's Goal Line Punt Return of 1905

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

-Transcription of Davey Obrien and Standing Tall with Timothy Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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The American football playbook boasts an arsenal of throws, each designed to exploit specific defensive weaknesses. However, one unassuming play, the shovel pass, carves a unique niche. Unlike the glamorous deep ball or the precise drop pass, the shovel pass thrives in simplicity.

This post welcomes Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology as he delves into the murky origins of this deceptive play, exploring its evolution from a potential improvisation to a strategic weapon in the modern NFL. We'll examine the technical aspects of the shovel pass, its tactical advantages, and the impact it has had on the way offenses approach moving the ball downfield. Prepare to get down and dirty, as we uncover the surprising history and strategic power of the shovel pass.

You can find Tim's original Tidbit on this subject complete with images, at ESlowing The Pass Rush With A Shovel.

-Transcription of Slow Pass Rush with a Shovel with Timothy Brown

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

Thank you, sir. This is a good opportunity for us to go Dutch on this podcast. To go Dutch on this podcast.

Dutch Myer was the coach. Oh, okay. All right.

I had to think about that for a second. I thought, you know. Well, this shows that, you know, this is not rehearsed, right? Right, right.

You're name dropping already. I throw these singers out at you and you're like. Usually it's a dad joke segue into the title.

And the title, folks, and this is my confusion, is slowing the pass rush with a shovel. So I'm trying to think what Dutch, if he's doing a play on the word on ditch or, you know, I don't know. Dutch Meyer.

Dutch Meyer. Okay. Well, why don't you tell us a story about Dutch Meyer and what he has to do with the pass rush being slowed? Yeah.

So, I mean, this is, you know, I mean, nowadays we had a recent podcast about the draw play, which, you know, has, you know, is basically kind of shows up probably in the late thirties and then, but really became more commonplace. The draw play that we now know, probably more late forties, you know, kind of a play. And so this idea of, you know, but so the whole purpose of the draw play is to give the defense one look, you know, you're showing them pass when you're actually running it.

Well, before they develop the draw play, they still had the same need of trying to deceive the defense. And one of the ways that they developed best as I can tell, you know, around the early 32, 31, 32 kind of timeframe was the shovel pass. And so, you know, if you think about like a wing T formation at the time, they might've had a wing over on the, not wing T, I'm sorry, but you know, single wing.

They might've had a wing over on the right-hand side till back gets a deep snap, you know, from the center. And then the, the wing on the right-hand side crosses comes across the formation and the quarterback doesn't talk some kind of toss or flip, even a shovel pass to that guy as he's going right to left. So, so that was, you know, and it was one of those plays where, you know, as the defense is coming in, you're, you're, you're trying to get it to somebody who's crossing over just so that they have to be looking out is, is this a play that they're going to run? Right.

I mean, is this a, is this something I need to guard against? And so it was one of the, one of the ways to slow down the pass rush. And there weren't very many of them back then. There weren't very many ways to slow them down was to, was a shovel pass.

So in the 39 Cotton Bowl game, you know, this was a game where TCU had three players drafted the next year in the first 10 of the NFL draft. And, and what their, the number one pick in the draft was Davey O'Brien, who was TCU's quarterback. And you can see him in the background, but he was, you know, five, eight, you know, fairly stockly built guy, but, you know you know, he was a hell of a hell of a quarterback and just, you know, really smart guy, all that kind of thing.

So, so they were, you know, at the time TCU was one of the teams that threw the ball all over the yard, you know, now nothing like happens today, but you know, when they, they played Carnegie Tech in that game and you know, they, both teams rushed for about 150 yards, but TCU passed for on the order of 250, whereas Carnegie passed for like 60 or so yards. So it was one of those games where, you know, they just, TCU was clearly the better player, but, or the better team, but during the game, they threw eight shovel passes. Right.

So it kind of tells you, I mean, name a game nowadays where, where a team throws eight shovel passes, just doesn't happen, you know, doesn't happen. But for them, that was like one of their central plays because, you know, a lot of the other ways that we, you know, quarterbacks still had to throw the, in college, quarterbacks still had to be five yards behind the line of scrimmage to throw a pass. So none of our bubble screens and none of our quick, quick slants, none of those existed.

They were illegal. And so this was one way that they could slow down the pass was a shovel. So, so they completed five of the eight shovel passes.

And that was one of the ways in the second half, they advanced ball down the field. And because this is also in the days of, you know, essentially no or very limited substitutions. O'Brien, the quarterback kicks the game winning field goal in the fourth quarter.

Right. I mean, it's been a while, you know, since I remember a big time quarterback in a bowl game, kicking a field goal to win the game. Now, I mean, I don't know when the last time was, you know, when that happened, there were, there's been some punters like Greg Martin, you know, he's a guy that, you know, maybe some listeners remember he punted, but it's been, you know, Blanda probably was the last guy that most of us can think of though.

And yeah. But you had Doug Flutie do a drop kick one time, but it got no points. So I don't think it was more of a. Yeah.

I mean, that, that was basically a circus kick. Right. Right.

And which is fine, but you know, for a guy who did the regular kicking for his team, O'Brien was one of the last ones and he was, you know, place kicking, not, not drop kicking. So anyways, it's just, you know, I guess it's just one of those things where, you know, it's one of those period pieces where, you know, where they're using the shovel pass in a way that we don't use today, but make sense that they had developed it. And then the same guy who's throwing the shovel pass is a guy who kicks a game winning field goal.

So then he ends up, you know, he only played like two years in the NFL. He, he ended up, you know, I think he just didn't like the pro game very much. And he was on a really bad team.

And so he ended up, he left, uh, left the NFL and became an FBI agent. That's back in that era where you make more money, you know, working in a grocery store than playing in the NFL too. And you don't get hurt as much.

So, but yeah, the, the shovel pass. So that's, uh, you know, traditionally one of the safest passes to throw because it looks weird when it's an incomplete pass, but it's not a fumble because it's a forward pass if it's dropped and it's hard for defenders to see it because you're sort of hidden behind those, those big guys up front, uh, with the throwing actions. It's really not enunciated like, uh, an over the shoulder passes.

Yeah. The challenge is, you know, it's, it's hard to know now, like how much traffic there was coming in and coming at the quarterback as the guys crossing. Um, you know, I, I didn't find any game film of that particular game.

So, um, Gosh, you would think the defenders would start to get wise to it after a little while. So maybe they just were inept. And then it served its purpose, right? I mean, that's right.

It slowed down the pass rush if they got wise to it, but yeah. Um, or, you know, maybe they left some guy, guy to be a spy or something, but you know, they weren't that bright back then. No, no surprise, especially a Western Pennsylvania team.

God, Carnegie, you know, that's, they should be brilliant. Well, they lost. So yeah, no wonder they're, they don't have a D one program anymore.

Uh, interesting stuff, Tim. That's a, that's a great story. And to hear about Davey O'Brien and, uh, you know, some of his, uh, great feats of football.

So that's some cool things. So you have some very interesting things, not only about players like Davey O'Brien and teams like, you know, TCU and a concept of the shovel pass, but you have all kinds of different, uh, intricacies of the made football, the game that it is. And some are forgotten except by folks like you reminding us on your daily tidbits on your website.

So maybe you could share, uh, you know, where people can find, uh, your, your writings at. Sure. Just, uh, go to footballarchaeology.com. Um, you know, I've got a whole archive now, you know, about a thousand articles out there on different, different elements of the game.

And, uh, so I have added subscribe. If you want to get an email every time that I publish an article, otherwise follow me on Twitter, follow me on Substack or follow me on threads and, or just go out to the site whenever you feel like it. All right.

Well, excellent job as always, Tim, we really appreciate, uh, getting informed and educated on the, the arts of football from yesteryear. And we would love to hear more about it next week. And thanks for going Dutch.

Yeah. Thanks Dutch.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

There was once a power-house football eleven from St. Louis University. It was back in 1906 and these guys were so very good on the gridiron, however a trip to the West Coast tripped them up perhaps from immortal status.

Timothy P Brown of Football Archaeology joined us to tell the saga of this forgotten team and their great run and downfall, and maybe what could have been.

[-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on St. Louis University’s Trip West
Hello, my football friends. It's Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. Welcome to another Tuesday, when we will visit with our friend Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com to discuss one of his famous tidbits. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.
Darin, seeing and hearing from you in the new year is good.
Looking forward to a great 2024. Yeah, me too. It is a new year, and we're coming out swinging tonight to talk about this great subject matter you have from 100 and almost 120 years ago with a very famous team at a very famous time in football history.
You have it titled your tidbit from July of this year, 2023, St. Louis U's ill-fated trip west. So what can you tell us about St. Louis U and their ill-fated trip? Yeah, so I think one of the things that... I'm always intrigued by stories of teams that have since dropped football or de-emphasized football. And part of what I enjoy about all kinds of history, it doesn't matter what the subject matter is, is the kind of what if things had been turned out differently? What if they'd gone left instead of right? I mean, there are so many things in history that things could have gone differently.
And so I just find that when a school drops the ball, it's like, well, what if they'd done something? What if they'd kept it? What would the world look like now? So St. Louis U, most people don't associate with football, but right after the introduction of the forward pass, they were one of the top teams in the country. They were the first team to throw a forward pass in a regular season game. And that in 1906, they went 11-0.
They had a guy named Eddie Kokums coaching them. He played at Wisconsin and ended up at St. Louis U. He was just ahead of everybody else in terms of thinking about the forward pass. He also had a guy named Bradbury Robinson, who so happened to have learned how to throw an overhand spiral while he was playing at Wisconsin.
And then he transferred down to St. Louis U. And so St. Louis U. creates this offense. And this is just one of these things, it's just like, okay, when they first introduced forward pass, how do you throw the damn ball? And what do pass patterns look like? And what does pass protection look like? It's all that had to be invented. And so, you know, he was way ahead of his time, but their fundamental route was to send four guys out, and they ran button hooks.
When the quarterback was ready to throw the ball, he would yell and hike, and everybody would turn around for the button hook, and the ball would come to one of them, right? And so, I mean, somehow, that was their core pattern, and they ran it over and over again. And, you know, they were successful. They went 11-0.
And I mean, they beat a lot of really good teams. But they were out there in St. Louis, and so, you know, all you snobby people out East like you, you know, weren't paying attention to what was happening out in the great Midwest. So anyway, so then 1907 comes around.
Despite their success, they had only about 16 players on the team. At times, due to injuries and other factors, they'd only have about 13 guys show up for practice. They couldn't even scrimmage.
The other weird thing is that almost all the players on the team were in medical school. So I'm not sure back then, you know, back then, med school and law school were sometimes undergrad and dental school was the same thing. A lot of times, they were undergrad.
I'm not sure. At that point, it probably just dealt with leeches and bloodletting. Yeah, yeah.
So, but you know, you need that. You need that alternative medicine. So, so, so anyways, I mean, it's just an unusual roster and situation, but they still were really good.
They, you know, their first five opponents, they blog what's now Missouri S&T, Southeast Missouri State, Arkansas, Creighton, and Wash U. So then they go to Wabash, who at the time was a really good team. And St. Louis was down a couple of guys, and they ended up losing 11 to 12. And then, the next two weeks, they beat out. They beat Kansas 17, nothing, then Nebraska 34, nothing.
You know, so they ended up finishing seven and one, and they put away their pads and all that stuff. And, you know, the season's over, except then they, that's kind of announced that they're going to be heading out West for a couple of games over the Christmas break. So, and, you know, at the time, no one did that.
They were the fifth team to ever cross the Rockies to play a football game. Chicago did it in 1894, and Carlisle did it twice. Then Michigan went to Pasadena to play the first Rose Bowl in 1902.
So here it's 1907, they're the fifth one to cross the mountains. So they go, they go to play Washington State. And I would just say, you know, since you're a former football official, it sounds from the newspaper reports like the officials weren't all that impartial in some of their calls for the game.
At least that was the St. Louis U perspective. But so they ended up losing the game. And then, then two, then that was Christmas Day.
On New Year's Day, they played a team called Multnomah Athletic Club, which was one of the top teams on the West Coast through World War I. They just had a lot of former college football players. They had a great stadium.
Oregon, Oregon State used to play at Multnomah Stadium well into the 1950s, maybe later than that. Oh, sounds like, you know, St. Louis, you kind of disagreed with some of the officiating that game too. And they lose 11 to six.
So here they went all that way, you know, a couple thousand miles across the country. Took them days to get there and days to get back. And they end up, you know, losing two games.
But you know, great life experience for all the players and all that stuff. So, but it's, you know, so that's just one of those things where, you know, you think about it. Right after, you know, four passes were invented or made legal, St. Louis U is one of the top teams, certainly in the Midwest, if not the country.
And then, you know, Kochems stays on to coach for one more year, and then he leaves and basically, you know, leaves football for the most part. And, you know, St. Louis U basically never achieved the same level of greatness. I think they dropped football in 1949, something like that.
So, I know I wrote this in a different tidbit, but one other, what might have been a kind of story about them was that in 1914, a new graduate from Notre Dame, a guy named Rockne, was planning to go to medical school at St. Louis U and he wanted to help coach football. And the medical people said, no, you can't do that. If you're going to be in med school, you're going to be in med school.
If you want to coach, you can coach, but you can't do both. So, Rockne ends up staying at Notre Dame, and then, you know, we know what happens there. But, you know, you just think about that.
Had Rockne gone to medical school, maybe he just becomes a physician and we never hear the guy's name again. Maybe he coaches and, you know, has similar success. I mean, you got to believe he would have had success at St. Louis U, maybe not the same level, but very similar kinds of schools at the time.
So, you know, maybe today we'd be cheering on the St. Louis U Billikens in major bowl games instead of the Fighting Irish. But, you know, the four horsemen of St. Louis U. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I lived in St. Louis for 14 years, so I'm very familiar with the city, but yeah, it ended, St. Louis really became the prominent soccer, you know, hotbed in the States for decades and decades.
Both St. Louis U and Wash U were big-time soccer programs, you know, and there just was never the same, you know, now like Lindenwood is a D1 program, but, you know, until just the last two, three years, they didn't have D1 football in a city of that size. And they don't have professional football anymore, either. Yeah, yeah.
Well, I'm not sure they ever did. Well, they were in a Super Bowl with the Rams when the Rams were there. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. You're right.
You're right. I was thinking more of the St. Louis football Cardinals. Yeah.
Yeah. So, I went to a few of those games. Yeah.
I'll bet. I'll bet. Well, hey, that's a great story.
And, you know, on a great program that I love rekindling these programs from yesterday, just like you said earlier, and, you know, bringing some remembrance to them and, you know, sharing these memories of them. So really appreciate you doing that, Tim. And you have these tidbits that are coming out, you know, every night and, you know, maybe you could share with the audience how they too can partake in these.
Yeah, it's really simple. The best thing is to go to footballarchaeology.com and subscribe. You can subscribe for free, and then you'll have access to whatever's there.
I also, you know, post everything on threads and on Twitter, both under the football archaeology name. All right. Timothy P. Brown, footballarchaeology.com. We thank you once again for sharing this great story from football of antiquity, and we will talk to you again next week.
Very good. Thank you, sir.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

In the modern era of College football, the reward for a team at season's end is to make it to one of the big holiday bowl games and win it. Hoefully they are ranked high enough to be playing in the college playoff format for a National Title.

Timothy Brown of Football Archaeoloogy joined us in 2023 to tell the tale of the first team to win at least one of each of the "Major" Bowl games.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on the Georgia Tech Grand Slam

Hello, my football friend, Darin Hayes, of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history, and welcome to Tuesday at FootballArcheology.com. Timothy P. Brown joins us to talk about another one of his amazing tidbits on football history. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Thank you. I look forward to chatting once again about old-time football.

Yeah, this podcast airs in December, and we're getting into the college football championships, the end of the season, and bowl games.

And that's what we're thinking about as far as college football. And you posted a very interesting story back in June about the Ramblin' Wreck of Georgia Tech. And we'd sure love to hear about this old-time football.

Yeah, so this story is, uh, you know, I called it the, um, I forget exactly what I called it. It was basically about Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech hits football's first Grand Slam, which is your title.

Yeah. So football's first Grand Slam. I knew the Grand Slam.

I didn't know exactly how I worded it, but I also want to point out that they hit the reason; well, part of the contribution to the Grand Slam was that they hit a rare triple as well. And the rare triple was the fact that Georgia Tech, I mean, had three absolute stud coaches right in a row. Those three coaches have handled the team for 63 combined years.

You know, it's just one of those, like, you know, how many, you know, I mean, like, if you just think about, try to think about other places that have had phenomenally, or just very successful coaches, uh, and to have three in a row, I mean, Notre Dame has had some great coaches, but a lot of them didn't really last that long. No, not 63 years between the three of them. Yeah.

I mean, you know, Ohio State and Michigan, and you know, I mean, there's a USC, I mean, name, and whoever you want. There just aren't too many. Maybe Oklahoma or Texas or somebody had, you know, but they've tended to have somebody that just wasn't great in between or didn't last that long. But here are the three for Georgia Tech, which started in 1904 and ran through 1919 with a 102-29-7 record.

So, John Heisman won 70, nearly 78% of his games. So, most football fans have heard of him. Um, he was followed by a guy who played there and then coached under Heisman named, you know, Bill Alexander, who, you know, isn't as, uh, didn't have as great a record.

He had some uneven seasons, but he also had just some absolute stud seasons. So he went 134 and 95 and 15, um, you know, for 0.585, you know, a record. And then he was followed by Bobby Dodd, who, you know, was an assistant under Alexander.

And so Bobby Dodd goes from 1945 to 1966, and he goes 165-64-8. So, for 0.721 percent. So, basically, those three guys from 1904 to 1966 are the three coaches of Georgia Tech, you know, it's just crazy.

So then during, um, so of the three, just from a pure record standpoint, Alexander is the least successful. And yet it was during his time that Georgia Tech, I mean, think about it. He's the least in terms of winning percentage.

And yet, during his time, he won, and they beat Cal in the 1939 Rose Bowl. He beat Missouri in the 1940 Orange Bowl. They lost to Texas in the 1943 Cotton Bowl.

And then they beat Tulsa in the 1944 Sugar Bowl. And so his grand slam was that they were the first team to play in the Rose, the Orange, the Cotton, and the Sugar, which were the four games until, I don't know, uh, 85 ish or something like when the Fiesta started, you know, being considered along those lines as a, you know, in terms of the top four bowl games. So, um, you know, so at the time that, you know, it was, people considered it a big deal that they were the first ones to play in all four.

Now, some teams didn't go to bowl games at all. And conferences that didn't go to bowl games at all. And, you know, they were able to do some things, maybe other teams couldn't, but I don't care what, you know, they were the first ones.

And so, you know, really an impressive feat. Just think about that. What are, I mean, you have to have many things fall into place to be invited to each of those particular bowl games because they're looking for certain criteria each year. You have to fall in that to get an invite first of all, and then to go and beat an opponent who is a worthy opponent that's, you know, looked upon as your equal because they're trying to get the best matchup they can in those games and, you know, and to win each of those.

I mean, that is quite a feat if you really sit there and think about it. Yeah. And I think, you know, these, you know, like last week's podcast, we talked about warriors.

And so this, you know, a couple of these wins occurred during war years. So, they probably chose Southern teams a bit more than they would have otherwise, just to reduce travel and, you know, easier access for their alums to attend the game. But again, make up any scenario you want.

They were still the first ones playing in a game, so it's a big deal. And, you know, they ended up. He stepped down after winning, or no; he then took Georgia Tech to the 45 Orange Bowl.

So he ran through those four, the four we already mentioned. Then he went to the Orange Bowl again in 45. And then he resigned after that.

And Bobby Dodd took over. He can stick it out three more years and try to get the double. Yeah.

Yeah. Hit everyone twice. Man.

Yeah. So, I mean, it is a pretty remarkable record. Alexander was also one of those guys who was just a pretty innovative guy.

I mean, some of the things he did now seem kind of goofy. I've written in the past about him using the reverse QB. And I think he may have used a side-saddle QB at times.

But, you know, the reverse QB took the ball, like had his butt against the center's butt, and then took the snap between his legs, and then tossed it, you know, to a single wing kind of formation, tossed it left or right or backward. But. Yeah, I remember our conversation.

We did a podcast on your side saddle, probably back a year ago. But I remember that. That's, man, that is fascinating.

So, going back 80 years ago, and just actually 100 years ago or more with Heisman, when you think about it, I mean, just a great program. And we don't think about Georgia Tech in that light anymore because there's sort of they're overshadowed by some of their fellow teams that are in that area, you know, Georgia, for one, who's phenomenal the last few years, especially. But you have to look back at some of these teams and give them credit because they had some really strong programs back in that day and the errors with, you know, those three coaches 60 some years.

Wow, that's a tip your hat off to the program directors there. Yeah. And I mean, they played in a lot of big games.

I mean, back in, you know, in the World War One era, you know, Pitt and Georgia Tech came a couple of really big, you know, games that they played kind of national championship consequences, you know, that kind of thing. And, you know, they played in the 29 Rose Bowl when, you know, the wrong way Regal ran, the tip California who picked up the ball ran the wrong way. And, you know, it ended up at the end of the day, which is the reason Georgia Tech won the game.

But, you know, so I mean, they were involved in some really, some really big games. And, you know, like you said, not quite as much anymore, but, you know, they still play at a very high level and, you know, great school, all that kind of stuff. Well, Tim, it always amazes me, the stories that you come up with, and you do this daily in your tidbits, just some, you know, maybe not the mainstream of what we think of mainstream football today, you know, very popular from 80 years ago, but, you know, some of these teams that probably should get more attention, like these Georgia Tech teams, and some of the elements that we discussed today with going to the four bowl games, but you're doing this daily.

Why don't you share with the audience how they, too, can participate in reading your daily tidbit? Yeah, so, you know, the easiest thing to do is just go to footballarchaeology.com. And, you know, at the end of every article, there's an opportunity to subscribe. Just hit the button to subscribe and sign up; it's free. And then every day, you'll get an email that, basically, seven o'clock Eastern, you'll get an email story.

Otherwise, you know, you can follow me. I'm still publishing on Twitter, threads, and the Substack app, or you can bookmark the site and show up whenever you want to. Yeah, and I must add that when you go into your Substack on footballarchaeology.com, on your Substack, and you go into the tidbit section, there's a nice little search function there. So if you want to look up, you know, anything else about, you know, coach Bobby Dodds on there, any other articles that you have them in there, it'll take you right to those and give you a nice listing.

You get a nice round, I guess, a full belly of what Bobby Dodds was to football. It's the footballarchaeology.com site. Tim, we really appreciate you coming on here and sharing this.

And we would love to talk to you again next Tuesday about some more great football. Very good. Look forward to it.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

---

In the hazy days of early American football, before forward passes soared and helmets resembled leather buckets, a curious rule reigned supreme: the fumble out of bounds. Unlike today's automatic touchback, a loose ball crossing the sidelines triggered a bizarre dance of possession.

Fumbles were not over until they were possessed by a player, even if they went out of bounds. This led to some crazy plays that Timothy P Brown of Football Archaeology discusses.

If the offense fumbled near their own end zone, the opposing team gained the ball at the point of recovery, no matter how deep it sailed out. Imagine the frantic scramble, desperation dives into sideline bleachers, and potential chaos as defensive players chased a wayward pigskin like oversized puppies after a chew toy.

However, if the fumble happened near the opponent's end zone, the offensive team retained possession even if it bounced through the stands and landed on a passing pigeon. This paradoxical scenario rewarded sloppiness near enemy territory, potentially turning fumbles into first downs through sheer serendipity.

This strange rule, abolished in the 1930s, reflected the nascent nature of the sport, where improvisation and quirky quirks abounded. While it introduced an element of slapstick into the game, it also highlighted the ever-evolving nature of football's laws, constantly adapting to the growing complexity and athleticism on the field. So, the next time you see a fumble careen towards the sideline, remember: it could have been a winning lottery ticket in the gridiron gamble of a bygone era.

-Transcription of Timothy Brown on Live-Fumbles-Out Bounds

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And we have another great evening with Timothy P. Brown of Football Archeology, discussing one of his great tidbits that he shares with us each and every evening on Twitter and on email.

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, thank you, Mr. Hayes. Looking forward to chatting once again about oblate spheroid stuff.

Wow, we're getting into the geometry of the game a little bit. That's right. I got an A in high school geometry.

Did you really? Well, I believe you did because this topic that you have tonight involves a little bit of the geometry of the ball, I'm sure. You never know which way that ball is going to bounce. And you have a very interesting subject of football from yesteryear that we probably wouldn't recognize today.

If we saw this happen and officials let it go, we would be screaming and ripping our hair out from the stands and throwing things at our TV set. So why don't you share with us the topic tonight and the story behind it? Yeah. So the issue here is that when football began, they basically adopted a rule from rugby that when the ball went into touch, what we now call out of bounds, the ball remained live.

So for us now, we think, oh, the ball is out of bounds, so it's dead. Well, no, that wasn't the case. And so, if you think about it, it's comparable to the original rules for scoring a touchdown.

When you got into the end zone, the guy with the ball had to touch the ball down to the ground, which is why we call it a touchdown. And so until he did that, the ball remained live. And so they had much the same rule in place for the ball crossing the boundary line and on the sidelines, not just the end lines or the goal lines, that in order for the ball to become dead, somebody on one of the two teams had to be out of bounds and touch the ball to the ground.

So that's when the ball went dead. So it's just one of those things that we can't fathom. But when you think about it, the consequences of that rule mean that if the ball tumbles out of bounds, there could be obstacles.

Depending on the field, there could be trees. There could be players on your side or on the opposing side. There could be water buckets.

There could be carts and cars and horses and buggies and running tracks. A lot of the fans, you see some of those games where the fans are right on the sidelines. This could really cause some calamity there.

Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of fields. Virtually every field early on, where the sidelines, and I've got a bunch of pictures of these, the sidelines are just ropes.

There's a rope. And even the rule book talks about people behind the ropes. They're talking about fans behind the ropes.

Because they were just roped off, anyway, there's even a great story. In 1892, the University of Chicago took a train across the country, went out to play Stanford a couple of times, and they got a couple of other games in there.

But they were playing Stanford in San Francisco, and the ball went out of bounds and bounced over a fence. And one of the Stanford players would start to go for it. And Chicago had a guy who was a hurdler on the track team, and he hurdled the fence.

And ended up getting the ball before the Stanford guy could. But if you just think about it, in the tidbit itself, I've got some images like you described of the fans and the perimeter. I've got a picture of the University of Maine.

They had a 25-piece band sitting right along the sideline. So the ball could have gone running in there, and the sousaphone or tuba player or piccolo player or whatever could have gotten in the way. Yeah, your image of the Iowa State game with the fans on it.

I think there are fans like five deep all the way around the field, it looks like. I'm surprised that if you were standing on the outside, you wouldn't be able to see any of the players. That's for sure.

Yeah, and if you went and got concessions, there weren't TV screens up there showing you what was going on either. Anyways, all that continued until 1926. And that's when they finally changed the rule.

And at that point, they made it so that the last person to touch it, their team, got possession of it once it was out of bounds. And then later on, it was the last team to possess the ball while in bounds. So initially it was touch, then it became possession before it went out of bounds.

So anyways, it's one of those old-time rules that you just can't believe was in place. But it made sense based on the game's origins. But I just can't imagine some of the things that must have happened.

You know, the guys fighting and everything to get to the ball amid crowds and fans and teammates and whatever. Yeah, it had to be. Now, I just want some clarification on what you said early on.

The rugby term for being in touch, you're saying that's when the man's on the ground touching the ball. That's when the ball's in touch, or when it goes out of bounds, it's in touch. So, out of bounds, I was in touch.

So, the sidelines were called the touchlines. Okay. So, you know, that was just for whatever reason.

I mean, it gets a little bit confusing, too. Just, you know, but so I'm not sure exactly why they called it in touch, but they did. And then, but that was for the sidelines.

That's the out-of-bounds side. And then, you know, once you cross the goal line, you still, you know, old-time films and even in rugby today, you sometimes you see the guy, he'll kneel down and plant the ball to the ground. That's what was the case in football, too.

You had to, you had to for the touchdown. I was just trying, I was looking more from the sideline, what we call the sideline point of view, seeing in touch it, seeing if there was a correlation to try to understand it better.

So, okay. Hey, that's great stuff, as always. You know, that's definitely a fascinating thing.

And it's a way of really looking foreign to us today. As we said, in the beginning, for a ball to go out of bounds, people, you know, 22 guys were chasing it through the trees, the crowds, the bleachers, and everything else. Yeah.

We remember, you know when this stuff was first happening, and when it was really early on, the rest didn't have whistles yet. So, you know, it was all just, you know, they were fighting in there, and somehow, they figured out who had the ball. Yeah.

Officiating nightmare. Thank God I didn't officiate back then. So that's rude.

Well, Tim, that is some great stuff, as always. And your tidbits are coming out each and every day. Tell us how to share those.

And why don't you tell us also about your book, you know, that's still on sale? You know, the hot, hot hike a little bit about that, where people can get that too. Yeah.

So, you know, you can. The easiest thing is to subscribe, you know, go to footballarchaeology.com, and you know, there is a free process to subscribe. And that'll get you an email every night with the story. And again, you don't have to read it that night.

You can read it two weeks later, or you can read whatever you want. But at least you have access to it. And if you want to read it, you've got it.

Otherwise, follow me on Twitter. And then, you know, the book is available. All three of my books are available on Amazon.

So hot, hot hike, you know, either search for that or search Timothy P. Brown. There are a couple of Timothy P. Browns, but I'm the only one who writes books on football. So you should be able to find me.

And, you know, in particular, if you're somebody, you know, if you've got a Kindle Unlimited plan, you know, you can read it for free. So, you know, it's just like streaming anything else. You know, nowadays you just, it's available.

So, of course, I'm more than happy to sell you a paper copy, which is. Yeah, that's great to have too. It's a great reference, especially, you know, hike and when football became football are great reference points.

I use it all the time to look up things, and people have questions, or I have questions. It's an excellent source. So, it was very well done tonight.

We thank you for your time and for sharing your knowledge, Tim. And we'll talk to you again next Tuesday. Hey, look forward to it.

See you in a week.

-Frequently Asked Questions About an American Football Field:

-How long is a football field? A football field from goal line to goal line is 100 yards long with two ten-yard deep end zones. Want to know more about the evolution of the playing field, you are in the right place as we covered it here:Field Size Evolution.

-How wide is a football field? Most levels of American football play on a field that is 53.3 yards wide.

---

Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology joins us again this week to educate us on another aspect of football. This week Tim brings to us the honor he received in his research that brought him national attention. I am talking like the National Archives display attention! Listen in on Tim's great news!

-Transcribed Chat on the National Archives Celebration of Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And it is Tuesday.

And once again, we have our friend from FootballArcheology.com, Timothy P. Brown, the historian, the author, the great researcher of football, Tim Brown. Welcome back to the Pig Pen. Hey, thank you, sir.

Appreciate it, Darin. Looking forward to chatting once again. Yeah, Tim, you brought up a very interesting topic that you want to discuss tonight.

It's about something with the National Archives that you were able to be a part of, and hoping you could explain that to us and share it with us. And maybe some of us can get out there and witness it ourselves. Yeah.

So, you know, I posted a thing about this on my on football archaeology. But so basically what happened is I was invited to attend like a pre-opening of a new exhibit at the National Archives. And, you know, it was first time that I had been there.

But, you know, if you if you've been to D.C. and you checked out the National Archives Museum in the rotunda, they've got the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And then they have one room off to the side that has all kinds of, you know, kind of the history of the archives and the types of records they maintain, et cetera. Then, in the other direction is their special exhibit hall.

And so they recently opened an exhibit called All American, the Power of Sports. And so it's essentially a it's a it's an exhibit that will be open till for another like 14 months or so. But it's all about, you know, the role of sports in in bringing different types of people together.

And so in some cases, what they're, you know, is the emergence of opportunities for African-Americans in sports, for people of different ethnic backgrounds in sports, and for women as well. And so that's that's the general theme. And they've just got some really, you know, it's got some incredibly cool items, you know, a diary or autobiography, you know, that now I'm blanking on his first name, but big Boxer Johnson wrote while he was in, you know, the federal penitentiary.

There were all kinds of just really interesting artifacts, some things from, you know, Japanese internment camps. I mean, you name it. You know, there's a little bit of everything.

But and it was, you know, really nice events. I got to meet Anita Thorpe, Jim Thorpe's granddaughter, because one of the items on display is are his replacement medals, you know, from the 1912 Olympics. Dikembe Mutombo was the featured speaker.

So, you know, he gave a talk, and I had a chance to chat with him. And, you know, there are another, I don't know, half a dozen former NBA guys there. Did he shake his finger back at you? No.

Yeah. Well, I got close enough for him to strike me or wave his finger at me. But I tried to play nice with him.

So now he's, you know, really wonderful guy. He's doing some some great work raising funds for some challenges that, you know, are in Africa today. But but anyways.

And so the reason I was invited is that I had gotten involved in, you know, and, you know, did a lot of research on a story about the in the, you know, within the past year, the National Archives was processing some photographs, some old slides, actually, from West Point. And the guy who was doing the processing noticed that, you know, these were negatives. And so anyway, there are negatives.

He noticed that one of them, instead of all the people in the negative, had black faces in the negative; they had white faces. So he's like, oh, what's going on? You know, so anyway, he checked it out. It turned out to be this 1920s football team that represented the West Point Cavalry Detachment.

So they were Buffalo soldiers, so African-American men. And they were basically enlisted men stationed at West Point who taught, you know, maintain the stables and the horses but also taught horseback riding, et cetera, and cavalry tactics to the cadets, you know, many of whom grew up in a city and maybe didn't have a lot of, you know, experience in horsemanship. But these guys ended up, you know, having sports teams.

And West Point had an enlisted men's league. So there were a group there's a group of enlisted men who supported who helped teach the cadets artillery tactics. And there were other people in like medical and there are other people, you know, so there were different functions and each of them fielded a team.

So as I was, you know, I basically tried to figure out who these guys were. And because, you know, there was an article in The Washington Post about it that hadn't gotten into the detail. So, I basically figured out who these guys played.

I was able to find images of the twenty-eight, twenty-nine, and thirty teams, you know, in the old, you know, Spalding-type football guys. And so, you know, basically, I could start identifying who some of these guys were in the picture. While I was doing that research, I ended up seeing this trophy that a guy had online and, like, you know, a collectors group on Facebook.

And it was like it was a trophy for this West Point enlisted men's league awarded to the cavalry detachment. So I got a hold of them. And, you know, one thing led to another.

You know, it's just we've become friends. Ron Pomprey is the the owner. But when I wrote this stuff up, then the National Archives somehow came across it.

And so they reached out to the combination of Ron and I. And so he has his trophy on loan to the archives and as part of the exhibit. So it's just so that's why the two of us were invited to this thing and, you know, had a wonderful time. And so it was just a great event.

And, you know, there are some people there who just kind of stay in touch. And, you know, I just don't want to go into the names right now, but I'll just have that be very, very cool. What an honor to have something that you wrote be recognized by the National Archives.

And you get invited to go down there and celebrate, you know, this great sports heritage that we have seen here in the United States, along with the owner of the trophy. So that's really cool. Let's.

Yeah. Congratulations on that. Yeah.

So it's anyway, it's really fun. And, you know, just it's a great exhibit. And so if you live in the area generally or if you have plans to go to Washington, yeah, check it out.

You know, I mean, you could you could do it inside of an hour, probably, you know, and get a pretty good, pretty thorough going through. But really, it's a fun exhibit. And then the other reason I just want to point it out is that I. Have been trying to find ways to get some publicity around some of the research that I've done because I've kind of hit a wall.

And so. Anybody out there who was listening to this, who is aware of an ancestor who was with the cavalry detachment. At West Point in the 20s.

But please take a look at the site because I may have images of your grandfather, great uncle, great great, you know, whatever it may be, whatever the relationship may be. So I'm trying to trying to get people to go out there to see if we can identify some additional, you know, some more of these men. Right.

I probably figured out who half of them are, you know, and tracked them down through census records and everything. But there are others. All I have is the last name.

And I just haven't been able to get anywhere with them. Yeah. Get them recognized.

It would be so awesome to have them preserved in history as well and get the recognition they deserve for being, you know, such a pioneer and a trailblazer for what they did. So, yeah. And just, you know, for, you know, all the folks out there, you know, it's just cool to kind of learn something.

You know, I reached out to one or two people who weren't aware that their grandfather or green uncle had been on these teams, you know. So it was something they learned, something new. Yeah, definitely.

Very cool. OK, now I'm going to expose my ignorance, at least my ignorance, in one area. I have many ignorances.

But OK, the National Archives, we know that Washington, D.C., is that connected to the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress, or are they all separate entities? Boy, yeah. In terms of organizational structure on that, I do not know. I mean, you know, I think the archives, I think, you know, basically their basic charge is to maintain the history of all public records.

You know, so obviously, they're involved in some of the things going on now with Mar-a-Lago, et cetera. But, you know, that's that's their main charge. And so, I mean, they've got census records.

They've got all kinds of geologic and, you know, you name it. You know, just all kinds of things that. You know, one government entity or another generated the military personnel records, you know, fall under them.

So, I mean, they've got a massive charge. You know, they've got a lot of work to do. So.

All right. So maybe it's a little different. The Smithsonian is just all the other stuff that's the things and the archives is the records and the documentation and data that's collected.

OK, I gotcha. Yeah, gotcha. OK, well, Tim, I very much appreciate you joining us.

Before we let you go, why don't you share with us your website and how people can stay in touch with you and learn about what you share with your tidbits? Yeah. So my website is footballarchaeology.com. It's a substack site, if that means anything to you. But basically, just, you know, just go to the address footballarchaeology.com. You can subscribe there.

That'll result in you getting an email every day with whatever that day's story is. You can also follow me on Twitter, and I'm a football archaeologist there as well. So, following on Twitter is great.

But the unfortunate thing is you might miss a couple of episodes here and there. So if you subscribe, you're going to get every one of them. You can still delete them if you don't want to read them.

But if you miss it, you don't have time to read it. Save it in your inbox, and you can double the pleasure the next day. So that's yeah, you know, and most of them take less than a minute to read.

So, you know, they're they're pretty quick. But good stuff as always. Congratulations again on that great honor of being recognized and getting to go down there and on that visit with your friend who has the trophy.

So, you know, Tim, we enjoy your company each and every Tuesday. Hope that we can continue to do this and talk to you again next Tuesday and get some more football archaeology brought into the pig pen. So, thanks, Tim.

Hey, very good. Thanks, Darin. I appreciate it, as always.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.