Football

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Timothy P Brown posted a recent article describing an exciting award that some of our Nation's military training facilities once vied for on the football field. Tim joins us to bring this exciting subject in gridiron lore to light in this podcast episode as we continue our journey to preserve history.

This conversation is based on Tim's original Tidbit titled: footballarchaeology.com/p/todays-tidbit-battling-for-the-presidents?utm_source=publication-search">Battling For The President's Cup.

-Transcription of the Presidents Cup games 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 once again, we have a visit from our friend Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com. And he's got another subject from one of his tidbits that he wrote recently.

That's going to talk about something that you find rather interesting, as I did when I read it. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Darin, glad to be back.Look forward to chatting again and enjoying the winter weather, as we talk football. Your tidbits are extremely interesting. And this one tonight you had titled Battling for the President's Cup.

And it was just recently on January 26th. I wonder if you could you could talk a little bit and tell us what the President's Cup was. Yeah, so I mean, it's one of those things that was that is now kind of forgotten, right? Most people have never heard of the President's Cup, but it was kind of a big deal in the state.

And so but like most things, there's kind of a background in order to in order to talk about the real subject. Right. And so, you know, I think the main point and you know, my my first book was about football played by military teams during World War One.

So, you know, I've always kind of followed football played in military settings. And I think it's one of those things that is is really underappreciated in terms of the development of football as a game. And so the military, just by nature of their mission, you know, they they took the game overseas before anybody else did.

So, as an example, the first game played in Europe was played by two battleships that were part of the Great White Fleet. They played in East France in 1909. Yada, yada.

And so, you know, the military, you know, if you think about it, who's in the military? Well, a lot of times, it's a bunch of young men who are physically fit and physically able, and a lot of them need to blow off steam. One of the traditional ways that they have done this is through athletics. You know, the Navy was always big on boxing because you could do that on a ship at sea.

But they were also big on playing football. And so. So, sports was both a recreation and a way to maintain fitness in the military.

You know, kind of as far back as people played sports for recreation. And then it really got a push in World War One. You know, in all the training camps during World War One, there were a lot of all kinds of sports being played. The YMCA played a big role, both in camps in the States and over in Europe.

One of the things that the YMCA did was provide athletic equipment, and they set up basketball courts, football fields, etc. So athletics was a big thing. And so one of the things that kind of came out of the World War One experience was that there it was really the first time, other than a couple of the pro leagues in Ohio or Pennsylvania, is really the first time where there were all-star teams put together of men who had graduated from college in the past five, six years who were all in the service together at one camp or another.

And these camps had 50,000 people at 26,000 people. I mean, these were massive. You know, massive groups of young men.

And the biggest college in the in the country at the time was Penn, which had 7,500 students. So all of a sudden you had lots and lots of young men playing football. They formed these camp teams and they were very successful.

They got lots of news coverage. Lots of people attended their games. They played colleges.

They beat the college, you know, the better teams beat the colleges. So, you know, they were playing as good a football as there was in the country, you know, during World War Two or World War One. Sorry.

So but even, you know, so then once the once the war ends, basically guys all, you know, they go back to civilian life. But there remained a core of of people playing or remaining in the military. And then they continued playing football.

And one of the things that they did was, you know, the Navy had done this back, you know, from 1905 on. But they would have these tournaments where all the destroyers or all the battleships or all the cruisers who were stationed at a particular port would have a tournament for a football for football teams. And they determine who is the champion.

And then they, you know, the Norfolk would play the champion of New York and Philadelphia or whatever. In the end, you know, they ended up. They ended up forming these teams where it was like, OK, we're going to get the best Navy team and the best Army team or the best Marine team.

And we're going to see they're going to play one another and see who's best. So for like 1920 on on the East Coast, they played a game like that. And kind of year after year, as Quantico Marines won because they just they emphasized it enough and they had some really talented players.

But in 1924 and 1925, Calvin Coolidge decided to present the President's Cup to the winner of the active duty football tournament on the East Coast. Right. So it was just, you know, it's one of those things where the president and the cabinet, you know, multiple cabinet secretaries, the general staff, the admiralty, those people would be at the games.

Allies would be at the games. They would and it became a big social event in Washington, D.C. or Baltimore. You know, they played in a couple of different locations.

You know, they have these military balls after the games. And it kind of, you know, I mean, it never got to the same level as the Army Navy academy games, but it probably wasn't too far behind that in terms of the stature because it was like, yeah, he's college kids, but these are the active duty guys. Right.

These are the real soldiers and sailors. So it's just it was kind of a neat thing where these guys ended up playing. And, you know, unfortunately, shortly after, the Coolidge presented this cup, and the Army decided to kind of deemphasize these all-star teams, and then the Navy did, too.

And so then the Marines were left to play the Coast Guard. And eventually it all moved. The East Coast kind of fell apart and the emphasis on these military all star teams moved to the West Coast, where what's now Pendleton in San Diego and, you know, versus the West Coast fleet and the and the Corps that handled the Western Army Corps.

But so it's just one of these things that's kind of lost in time. I mean, nobody knows about this stuff anymore, but it was a big deal. It was in all the newspapers.

And, you know, I mean, another, I think, really kind of fun fact is just that of the fact that I think it was 1921 and 2016 coached by this guy who had played at West Point. And then he coached St. Mary's College in Texas. And his name was Dwight Eisenhower.

Right. So here's a guy who, you know, became president. You know, he led the Allied effort in Europe in World War II and became president.

But he was coaching one of these teams, you know, back in the back in the 20s. And, you know, at one point, he was stationed in Panama. And the guy who was the head coach, who has a whole separate story that I've written about, you know, just incredible story that guy had.

But anyway, you know, he requested, hey, bring Ike back here because I needed to help coach my team. So he transferred Ike from Panama back to the States so that he could help coach this all-star football team. You know, it's just like crazy things that happen to guys because of football.

So anyway, it's just one of these things that I think people know very little about this President's Cup anymore. On the West Coast, they played what they called the Armistice Day game. And they tried to buy the President's Cup there.

It didn't work out. They just kept on playing the Armistice Day game. But so anyways, you know, in both locations, it was a big event, big social event, military balls, big newspaper coverage, and very good football.

Right now, you know, a lot of these guys, you know, initially, there are a lot of guys who played at West Point or Army, and then they made it only for enlisted men. But still, a lot of good athletes, just a lot of young men at these bases. And, you know, they had their pick of 10, 20, 30,000 young men who could play football.

So they put together some pretty good teams. Well, yeah, maybe I asked you this when we were talking about the Rose Bowl games. We were talking about those military teams from that era, from World War I. But did those camp teams ever play like the main Army team or the main, you know, the Naval Academy team or West Point team? So, yes.

But so in 1918, Great Lakes played the Naval Academy. They'd come out east. So they played four or five, big 10 teams, and either tied or beaten them.

Then they went out east and played Rutgers, who had Paul Robeson at the time. And they just cleaned their clocks. They won like, you know, whatever it was, 43 to six or something.

They just blew Rutgers away. And the next week, they go to Annapolis. And Annapolis was winning six to nothing late in the fourth quarter with the ball on the one-and-a-half-yard line.

And a guy named Ingram, who became famous as coach later on, he was, I believe his quarterback, maybe his fullback. But anyways, he fumbles the ball, pops in the air into the hands of a Great Lakes player who grabs the ball, runs 100 yards. Well, he tries to run 100 yards in the other direction.

And one of the Naval Academy players comes off the bench and tackles him. And so then, you know, all hell breaks loose. And so anyways, the Academy superintendent comes out on the field and says, you're giving orders to referees because the rules didn't have, you know, didn't clarify what the situation should be here or the conditions.

And the Academy superintendent says you are giving that touchdown to Great Lakes. You know, our guy cheated. That was it, right? The referee said, OK, fine.

And so then Great Lakes won the game. And in the locker room afterward, they get the invitation to the 1919 Rose Bowl. So, you know, the Army and Navy played some of those, and you know, played some of the camp teams, but it was pretty limited.

And so, for sure, I know the Great Lakes game. I'm not, you know, I'd have to look at their records, you know, for 17 and 18 to check on that. But I think that's, you know, that may have been the only game like that.

Yeah. I wasn't sure if they would or not because it's, you know, basically what the Naval Academies are going to be officers. And, you know, they're playing the regulars, and the guys are going to be the grunts, you know, playing them.

I didn't know if maybe they didn't want to cross those streams or not, but it's interesting. Yeah. So, you know, well, during World War I, you know, the different camps applied different rules.

Most of them allowed both officers and enlistment to play on the same teams. That was kind of unusual. The Navy and Marines were especially that way, but the Army was a little bit more, you know, keep them separated.

But anyway, you know, so, you know, 1918, they had the Spanish flu. And so a lot of what went on that season was to play any opponent you could find. Because things got so screwed up with the Spanish flu, and the, was SATC upended most of the schedule.

So it was kind of bizarre; it was probably the worst, the most bizarre season, even worse than the COVID season that we all went through recently. Wow. Yeah.

I mean, just in terms of strange schedules and craziness, 1918 was worse. So. Well, Tim is always, that's great stuff.

Now, why don't you tell everybody how they can get a hold and read your tidbits that you come out with every day? Yeah. So, you know, the site is footballarchaeology.com and the two ways to get access to it, if you're interested in looking at it daily, one is just to subscribe. You can bookmark it, obviously, if you want.

If you subscribe, you'll get an email sent to you with the article's contents every night at seven o'clock Eastern. Or you can follow me on Twitter. And again, you know, football archaeology there as well.

So either way, my preference is that you subscribe on the site because then make sure that you get whether you read it or not. At least I know you've received it. That's right.

All right. Well, great stuff, as always. And Tim, we really appreciate you.

And folks, make sure you visit footballarchaeology.com and do as Tim suggests, subscribe, and get that daily tidbit. It's really a great read each and every day. And you stay in football all year long.

And it's a really, really excellent way to do that. So, Tim, thanks a lot for joining us and sharing that story. And we'll talk to you again next week.

Hey Darin, I look forward to seeing you next Tuesday. Thanks.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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Players can tell you that the surface condition of the turf they play on can make all the difference in a game and how they perform. Field conditions are affected by weather, surface, slickness, and even lawn care.

Long before the modern surfaces and machines we see football played on today, grass fields were the only surface that mattered. Have you ever considered how these playing fields were cared for and kept? Our man Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology has, and may we hear what he found out.

This discussion originates based on Time's Tidbit post titled: footballarchaeology.com/p/the-wretched-field-conditions-of-footballs-past-in-pictures?utm_source=publication-search">The Wretched Field Conditions of Football's Past - In Pictures.

-Transcription of Football Field Grass Cuts 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 evening where we get to discuss some football archaeology with the founder of that website, Timothy P. Brown. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Darin, thank you for chatting tonight, as we seem to do every week, every Tuesday. So yeah, looking forward to it. Yeah, I feel very blessed and honored to be able to talk to you every Tuesday and get this information that you share with us.

Just a few months ago, you had a very interesting topic on one of your tidbits about the field maintenance of the grass that was played on. There was no artificial turf; it was all natural grass, and we're very interested to know how they manicured their fields. Well, yeah, so I actually had an earlier one.

I think I probably have a link to it in this particular tidbit but about the terrible field conditions of the past. And so now we've got artificial turf, we've got prescription grass, and most fields have good drainage and watering systems as needed. And there's just other ways.

The fields are so well-maintained. Back in the day, especially in some stadiums that used to get really heavy use, if you just had one game or one weekend where it was rainy, the rest of the season, the whole central portion of the field was just mud or dirt. It just got torn up.

There's no way to avoid it. And that's one of the great benefits of artificial turf, which is that the central part of the field doesn't wear out, so it's between the hash marks. But back in the day, it sure did.

And so that's kind of a lost element of the game, or of the experience, both as fans and especially as players. But so I'm always looking at old yearbooks and other photo sources. And so back in the day, there were certain things going on in the field that you just noticed, and they were just like, what the hell are they doing there? And so obviously, the muddy fields that I just mentioned.

One of the ways that they try to maintain or dry out muddy fields is by tossing sawdust all over the field. And so I've got images, Yale Field, where there's sawdust all over the field. I'm just trying to draw it out or dry it out, I should say. And then they'd sometimes put hay on the field prior to the game, like if it was going to be icy, and then they'd rake it all off, so all kinds of crazy stuff.

So then once that dirt got all, well, once the field became dirt rather than grass, then you see in early pictures where they raked, you see all these lines in the dirt, and it's just because they raked, just to get all the clumps out and all that kind of stuff. And then, when it dried, the whole field was just dusty. So again, I've got a bunch of pictures of guys just stepping on the field, running around, and there are dust clouds falling; they all look like pig pens from the Charlie Brown cartoon.

But the other one that you see from time to time is long grass, which is, you don't see it as much, but there are times where it's like, I've got pictures of placekickers trying to kick off the grass, and it's like, the grass is literally like 12 inches tall. And so it's like, how the heck did they maintain the grass? Then I looked into that. And so initially, I'd have to make sure I pronounce this correctly, but I was asking, how did they keep football fields, baseball fields, parks, and lawns trimmed back in the day? And so the one way that they did it was with a scythe, which is like the Grim Reaper, with that pole.

A sickle type. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

And so, you know, so they had people up there, you know, cutting it that way. But then, you know, by like 1830, somebody came up with a mechanical lawnmower that pretty much, you know, looks like a real, and I mean real meaning R-E-E-L, so real mower that's used today, but obviously very clunky looking. And then, you know, they also had, you know, so there were the hand-pushed versions, and then there were the horse-pulled versions of these real mowers.

But from time to time, they also reverted back to more traditional methods, which was to bring in a flock of sheep, and you'd just put the sheep out there on your football field or your baseball field and let, you know, let them at it. And then you may have some new obstacles to try to avoid while you're playing. Well, you know, and that would make the grass grow.

So, yeah, and so... Nothing like a good turd tackle, that's for sure. Yeah. One of my brothers has a place up in California where, you know, it's basically a winery where the fields were so wet, or everything was so wet because of all the rain they had.

They brought in a bunch of sheep and just let the sheep go up and down between the rows, you know, eat back the grass. But, yeah, so, I mean, so you think about that, and it was even, you know, so for sure, I've got pictures, you know, it included a picture from like 1943 of sheep grazing in the Rose Bowl, trying to keep it back. And so, even like in the 40s, especially, you know, with gas rationing because of the war, you know, we saw a return to sheep grazing on athletic fields just to, you know, to try to keep it trimmed.

But, you know, I mean, there were like New Mexico, Loyola Marymount, places like that also, you know, I've got newspaper articles anyways indicating, you know, in the late 30s, early 40s that they were trimming their grass the old-fashioned way. Hey, just to put a comment, you know, the images that you have, and we have links to them in the show notes here, folks, and on Pigskin Dispatch from the accompanying article for Tim's images. In the image of the sheep on the Rose Bowl field, I think they got the black sheep of every family in that photo because I think there are two that look like they might be lighter color; all the rest are very colored sheep.

So, a lot of black sheep in that family. Well, there was; it may have been the breed because the article mentioned the breed, which, you know, I don't know one. I don't know my sheep breeds; I apologize.

But, so it may be that that was just a function of. Well, luckily for you, we just want to know about your football. We don't need your agricultural knowledge.

I'm not really good at the agricultural side. Now, that same image, the herdsman or the farmer that's caring for these sheep, he must be a pretty popular guy because it looks like he has like a five-gallon bucket of, I'm assuming, water for these dozen or so sheep to all drink out of. So, I'm sure they're very popular guy in the water.

So, I mean, the other thing, he could have had some grain in there. Then, tossing grain into different areas would attract the sheep to mow the whole field. Oh, okay.

Gotcha. I mean, again, I'm guessing this only because I saw a YouTube video of some guy in New Zealand who created a picture of a heart in his field, let the sheep in, you know, he spread grain in the shape of a heart, let the sheep out and they all went, and then sheep formed a heart. So, it is quite an art form to get your sheep to manicure your lawn.

That's right. All right. Well, hey, I'm even more glad this week, and I have to cut the grass with the modern conveniences we have today.

I'm not out there with a bucket throwing grain on my grass with a herd of sheep. So, although we do like those days, those were the days. All right.

I had a little, much harder time in many ways. So, we appreciate those pioneers of early football who took care of the yards that we played in and helped us advance to where we are today. And Tim, you have some very interesting, fascinating pieces of football that even go beyond the game and equipment like this, you know, caring for the field, which is, you know, you have to have a field to play on.

So, it's, you know, it has to be that. And I know one point I was going to bring up, too, is a really interesting study I saw just came out within the last week or so from, I believe, the National Football League on injuries compared on natural grass fields that are played in the league versus the artificial fields. There was a higher injury rate, as this study showed in the 2022 season, where people on artificial fields were injured more often, or more injuries occurred than they did on the grass fields.

And I don't know if you saw that, but it's kind of interesting to go back to old school, possibly. Yeah, I didn't see that. And, you know, I mean, obviously, when artificial turf first came out, it gripped so well that, you know, guys just blew out their knees all the time on that.

And it was like playing on concrete, you know, I mean, I mostly played on natural, you know, I played on one or two artificial turf fields that were fairly early in the development, and it was, you know, it was horrible. But anyways, yeah, I'm actually a little bit surprised by that result, you know, just because, you know, my sense is that the artificial surfaces have come so far. But, you know, there's a certain amount of, you know, there's kind of no going back on some of it, you know, if you're in a dome stadium, you're going to play on artificial turf, right? And then it's, you know, it's one thing to be on turf, you know, it takes, it just takes a lot of money from an ongoing maintenance standpoint to have a really well done natural turf, you know, so if you're the Packers or something like that, okay, you can afford it.

A lot of other places, it's just, you know, so I mean, anyone in the NFL can afford to do it if that's the right thing, right? Yeah, I know at Akershire Stadium, the old Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, they replaced the turf, I think, two or three times during the NFL season. Of course, the Pitt Panthers are playing on that. They have high school games, usually on Thanksgiving weekend.

They have four championship games or five or six now. I think they have levels playing on that field. So it gets tore up that time of year and they, they replace it within a couple of days before the NFL game.

And that's why you see so many famous games played at Pittsburgh stadium where chunks of the field are coming up, or they had a rainy Monday night game in Miami 20 some years ago, where the punter kicked the ball, and it came down point first and stuck right in the middle of the field and some things. Well, you know, that, that actually raises a point. You know, I don't know if the study was able to control for that, but you know, how long was the turf installed? You know, at the time an injury occurred, because, you know, turf that's been in there for months is different than turf that was installed last Monday.

Right. Yeah. I think it's; they just took an aggregate of the 17 games or, I guess, eight and a half games on average on each field and looked around to see how many state injuries happened at that field by the opponents, you know, both teams playing on it.

So I think that's how they studied it. And you know, it's got some, some, you can sling some arrows at it and shoot some holes in it, but it's an interesting study. And one, I know the NFL takes player safety seriously, as they do with most items.

I am so anxious to see where that leads us. Yeah. Interesting stuff.

Tim, your tidbits are, you know, bringing up items like this constantly every single day, sometimes a couple of times a day. Why don't you share with the listeners how they too can share in on all the fun of hearing these? Yeah. So, you know, best way is just to go to my website, footballarchaeology.com, subscribe.

And that by doing that, you'll, you'll get an email every night at like seven o'clock. I may actually push that a little bit later, but anyways, we'll get an email that with, you know, with the story for that, that evening. And, you know, if you, if you don't want the emails, then just, you can follow me on Twitter.

Yeah. So great subject. We really enjoyed having you share your knowledge with us, Tim, and appreciate you.

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

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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Calling all gridiron gurus! Ever wonder how fans first paid a premium to watch football on TV? Today, we have historian Timothy Brown joining us to delve into the forgotten era of early pay-per-view for America's favorite sport. Buckle up and get ready for a touchdown worth of knowledge!

Broadcasters aren't entirely switching to paid subscriptions for NFL games. They're offering a mix. Traditional channels like CBS and FOX still air in-market games for free. However, for out-of-market games and exclusive content, streaming services like YouTube TV with NFL Sunday Ticket or ESPN+ are becoming increasingly important. The NFL is adapting to the changing viewership landscape, offering both free and paid options.

This conversation is based on Tim’s original Tidbit found at: footballarchaeology.com/p/football-and-early-pay-per-view-television">Football and Early Pay-Per-View Television.

Also available is the Podcast Version of "The Original Football TV Subscription Service with Timothy Brown".

-Conversation Transcribed on Football's Early Pay-Per-View TV with Timothy Brown

Darin Hayes: 
Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes at Pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. Welcome to another Tuesday, where we will go and visit with our friend Timothy Brown of footballarchaeology.com. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. 

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

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

Timothy Brown: 
Okay, good. 

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

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

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

-Football and early pay-per-view television

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

Darin Hayes: 
I can tell you we still have blackouts here. 

Timothy Brown: 
What? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

Imagine getting all of your equipment at the beginning of the long football season. Shoulder pads, pants and pads, and of course a helmet. You look and the head piece looks a bit funny... it has no chinstrap. This is how it was in one era of football, and FootballArchaeology.com's Timothy Brown explains.

From Tim's original TidBit article: footballarchaeology.com/p/todays-tidbit-football-helmets-without">Football Helmets Without Chin Straps .

Timothy Brown, who runs the website footballarchaeology.org. The two discuss how early football helmets did not have chin straps. Instead, they had laces in the back to tighten around the noggin. These devices were not very effective in keeping the helmet on the player's head.

A company called Goldsmith, which was a major sporting goods manufacturer at the time, tried to fix this problem by creating a helmet with an adjustable back. However, this design did not work well and was soon abandoned.

In the 1970s, helmets with inflatable bladders were introduced. These helmets were more effective in conforming to the player's head, but they were still not as safe as today's helmets with chin straps.

The video concludes by mentioning that Timothy Brown's website, footballarchaeology.com, has more information about the history of football equipment.

-Full Transcript of the Episode on Helmets Without Chinstraps

Darin Hayes:
Welcome to Tuesday. Timothy P. Brown of FootballArchaeology.com is here to tell us a little bit about one of his recent tidbits. Uh, Tim, welcome back to the pig pen.

Timothy Brown:
Darin, thank you. Oh, it was a pleasure to be here and join you as we talk about old stuff, old football stuff.

Darin Hayes:
Yeah, most definitely, you had a recent tidbit that really caught my eye when it came out. I actually reread it a few days ago because it's just so fascinating. It's called the football helmet without chin straps, And it's, you know, something kind of peculiar that when we think of the football helmet, the chin straps are almost like an automatic part Of it in our day and age, and so it's very interesting what you wrote about, and I'd love to hear about it here in the podcast.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah. Well, so, you know, it's one of those funny things. Yeah, sometimes I've wondered, you know, how the name came about, like chin strap? I mean, now, chin straps are covering the chin, right? And then they connect up to the helmet with the two points on either side, but back, you know, that's really a post-1940 kind of look. Before that, that headgear, the wrestling-type headgear, and then, after that, you know, what we think of as leather helmets. For a long time, the strap kind of went from the ears and then looped under the jaw, not over the chin. Right? So, but I think they, I think, I think chin straps originated, I believe, on military helmets, and you know, so a lot of times they had them in military hats. So a lot of times they had those little straps, like kind of on the chin, a little bit below the mouth, that kind of thing. That's probably where that where the term came from. But anyway, so, you know, they had those original straps that were kind of elastic or cloth, they weren't, and they could tighten them. But, you know, they certainly weren't as good about, you know, keeping the helmet on the head as today's, you know, two or four-point, you know, chin straps do. Plus, the helmets are just tighter. So, you know, if you've got a leather helmet, you know, it can only conform to the head so much, right? I mean, if it's a little bit bigger, you've got it, you know, just nobody's had it shaped the same way, or no two people's are shaped the same way. So, you know, there's probably some little extra space here, little extra space there, in any given leather helmet. And so, you know, they used to come off. And so, so Goldsmith was, which was, you know, one of the original manufacturers of baseballs. They started back in 1875, and they were a big sporting goods manufacturer, at least till 1940. That's the last catalog I have of theirs. So, I'm not sure exactly how much longer they lasted. But so Goldsmith was trying to fix this problem. How do we keep helmets on? Because these little chin straps don't always work. So what they did was they got rid of the chin strap, which seems kind of dumb. They could have kept him, but they tried to make the size of the helmet adjustable. So they did that by putting it together like a drawstring system at the back of the helmet. And if you think about it, like, you know, we've all seen movies of like a Victorian woman who's getting her corset, you know, adjusted where they're pulling those straps and they're, you know, making her stomach, you know, look or make it look like she's got an 18-inch waist, you know, that kind of thing. So I mean, they basically had a system like that, or at least functionally, that was what it was supposed to do supposed to tighten the base of the helmet around the head. And so, but, you know, the fact of the matter is, it didn't work very well.

Darin Hayes:
You probably needed help getting your helmet on and off every time, I would assume.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, you know, I hadn't even thought about that. Yeah, it could be that. Yeah, you had to, you know, so it's what's funny that you mentioned that it's like, you know, back at that time, players, the front of their football pants, also had those like leather patches, the thighs and well, probably typically twice on the thighs on each thigh. They basically had drawstrings to tighten the thigh or tighten the pants so that they didn't move all around, and then they'd get protected by the thigh pads or the pants. So, you know, they didn't have really good elastic back then. So it's a matter of, you know, pulling laces of one form or another to try to get things to fit. So, you know, somehow, you know, they tried to do that with the helmet. But, you know, it was they were gone from the catalogs in about a year or two. So it tells me the thing just didn't work. The concept made sense. And in fact, you know, in the 70s, when people started, like, I think it was, I believe it was right now that did it first, but you know, they had the bladder helmets, where you pump air into it, and it conforms to your head, whatever the shape of it may be, you know, so they were trying to do that same thing. They just didn't have the means to do it at the time. And so, you know, good idea, bad execution. And so then that just disappeared. But I, you know, I still haven't figured out why you would get rid of the chin strap. So, even if you have this other cool thing going on, why get rid of the chin strap? Because I've never read anything about people being bothered by it, you know, like the nose guards. Yeah, that was big, you know, everybody, nobody liked wearing the nose guard because they had difficulty breathing and that kind of stuff. But chin strap, you know,

Darin Hayes:
Yeah, I mean, it's a natural place to secure because you sort of got that hook shape under your chin. You know, it's a good anchor point to tie it down to your head and get a little tension on there. That's that's weird. Thank you.

Timothy Brown:
So sometimes, you know, some of the stories, I mean, again, I like the stories where, you know, as football evolved, there were all these dead-end paths, right? Just like in, you know, animal species, right? And, you know, so for some of them, the thinking behind the path made sense; they just didn't have the tools, technology, or the right materials to make it happen at the time.

Darin Hayes:
Yeah, you, uh, very, very interesting story, but just you describing the back of that helmet and the core whole corset idea, it took me back to some time playing like a junior high ball, you know, we got sort of leftover pants and one year I had drawstring pants for football where you had to tie them up. Like you tie your shoe. What a pain in the ass that was every, every day for practice for game day. It just, especially when you're like, you know, 11, 12 years old, you know, you don't want to take your time to snap pants even, let alone, you know, sit on time and take them up and, and if you didn't tighten them up, then you had, you know, your, your jock and everything else was, you know, flopping, falling all over the place. And it was just a bad, bad design. Whoever designed those pants. I didn't enjoy those.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, well, and again, it's one of those things that, depending on your age, you may not have as much experience with. But, you know, back in the day, there were a lot of people on the football field with, you know, white athletic tape wrapped around their thighs or around their knees to keep things in place. Right. And so I, you know, I've spotted that kind of thing going on back to the 20s and 30s. So people, you know, even back then, they were tapping the same problem.

Darin Hayes:
Oh, I didn't. I never thought about that. Yeah, I guess I guess you wouldn't be able to do it, too. Then I'm always sitting, sort of thinking like athletic tape and duct tape. You know, the fabric tape is more of a modern invention, but I guess they would have had that back then.

Timothy Brown:
And they had, if you look at the old catalogs, I can't tell you it was the exact same kind of tape, but they had athletic tape and illustrations like Walter Camp, the football guides, they had illustrations of how to tape an ankle, that kind of stuff going back pretty far.

Darin Hayes:
So, yeah, very interesting. Thank God that they have the chin straps, but even with chin straps, and I don't know about you, but when I played early on, I don't even think I saw a four-point chin strap until maybe I was in high school or something, I think it was sort of a, you know, the late seventies type innovation, I think, or at least became popular at the levels I played at then. But you see so many people with the four-point head strap chin straps, and they still come, their helmets still come flying off, especially the NFL level and big-time big-time college; it's unbelievable that those can come off. Cause once you have those helmets on, if they're done rubbery, I mean, it's hard to unsnap them when you do want to take it off, let alone have it come flying off in the middle of the game.

Timothy Brown:
I hate to tell you this, but some of those guys are stronger than you and your buddies were.

Darin Hayes:
I realize I'm still a

Timothy Brown:
has a little bit more force. Yes.

Darin Hayes:
Still, that's a lot of stuff to pop a helmet on us. It's amazing, Tim. That is a great story and a great piece of football history that we, you know, seldom get to appreciate something like that and what the sort of forefathers of football had to go through to do that, and you talk a lot about this kind of items on your website football archaeology calm and want you to tell people a little bit about it and how they can enjoy footballarchaeology.com

Timothy Brown:
So it's footballarchaeology.com. It's a sub-stack website. So, if you're familiar with sub-stack, you can find me there. I also post on Twitter and on threads, but the site itself is a subscription site. If you subscribe for free, you get access now to about a third of the stuff, and with paid subscriptions, which are basically five bucks a month or $50 a year, you have full access to everything, including the archives. So, if that's what you're into, then subscribe away.

Darin Hayes:
Well, excellent job as always, Tim, and if folks, make sure you take advantage of what Tim's saying because there is really a plethora of information on football history. We get to talk a little bit about it, you know, each week, but Tim has so much more in there. I think, what did you say? Do you have over a thousand articles in there right now?

Timothy Brown:
Not quite a thousand, but it's getting close.

Darin Hayes:
Yeah, wow. That's uh, you know, four digits there, guys. That's, uh, that's some good stuff to look at football history from different angles. So Tim, we really appreciate you coming on, and we would love to talk to you about more great football history next week. Thank you

Timothy Brown:
Pretty good; look forward to it. Thanks, Darin.

-Frequently Asked Questions

-Who was the first player to wear a football helmet? We have your answer in our in-depth study ofFootball-Fun-Facts/Facts-about-who-wore-the-first-helmet">the first to wear a helmet.

-What is the history of each college team and their helmet designs? Check out many of them with our series College Football helmet history of schools.

-How come some teams have player numbers on their helmets? We asked this question too and had a college football expert historian help divulge helmet numbers history.

-Why do some teams like Michigan and Delaware look so odd and similar? It's really uncanny isn't it that the Wolverines and Blue Hens look the same, check this out for a reason Football-Fun-Facts/Helmets/History-of-the-Winged-Helmets">when helmets had wings.

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

---

For college football fanatics, few names inspire more reverence than Walter Steffen. A coaching giant whose legacy stretches across decades, Steffen's impact on the game is undeniable. Now, you have a chance to delve into his wisdom in a captivating video interview with Timothy Brown of FootballArchaeology.com. This exclusive conversation promises a treasure trove of insights, offering a glimpse into the mind of a true gridiron mastermind. So, buckle up and get ready to learn from a master coach as we explore Walter Steffen's storied career and the timeless knowledge he brings to the game.

-Transcription of Walter Steffen 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 date with Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com, where he's going to share one of his recent tidbits on some of the facets of football from yesteryear.

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Darin, thank you. Looking forward to chatting and judging you based on the quality of the questions that you asked this episode.

Oh my gosh. Okay, we're back. I will be the judge.

Folks, we are back to the dad joke segues. We've had some quizzes lately and some factoids, but now we are back to Tim Brown and his finest segueing into an article that you wrote not too long ago, titled Judging Walter Steffen's Coaching Career. So Walter Steffen is an interesting figure indeed in football history.

So what do you get on him, Tim? Yeah, so, you know, you and I were talking a little bit before we started the episode proper. And, you know, Steffen is just one of these guys, and it's a name that I kept coming across over and over again. And I was just like, sometimes I got to, you know, kind of look into this guy and figure out what he was about.

And he turned out to just be this really interesting character that just is impossible to imagine today. Right? I mean, he just lived a life that no one can live anymore, not at the major college level.

You could do it at D3, which is probably the right situation, but in high schools, you know, but not at the major college level. So, I mean, you know, he really, you know, kind of a classic guy.

He grew up in Chicago, you know, 1880s, 1890s. He ends up at the University of Chicago as a freshman in the fall of 1905. So he's playing for, you know, the famous Alonzo Stagg.

So, he's on, you know, 1905, Chicago was national champs. So, he's in a pretty major deal as far as, you know, football is concerned. In 1906, Walter Eckersall was the All-American quarterback at Chicago.

So, Steffen is the, you know, second fiddle running at halfback. But then Eckersall graduates, if he graduated. He wasn't much of a student, but anyways, he leaves.

Steffen became a quarterback in his last two years, and he became an All-American quarterback as well. So, and this is him carrying the ball back here. I see the only guy without any head protection.

Yeah, and so, I may actually have the wrong image up there. Anyways, but he played in that era. So, Steffen is hanging out around Chicago.

He goes, he was unlike Eckersall. He was an excellent student and went to the University of Chicago Law School. While he's going to law school, he assists Stagg on the football team.

And so, and then, you know, he graduated from law school and worked a couple of years in the law. And, you know, it's hard to trace whether he was, you know, he may have assisted with some schools. I know he did some refereeing and things like that, which was pretty typical of the time.

But in 1914, he became the head coach at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh. And so, you know, he was living in Chicago. And back then, it was not uncommon at all.

There were a lot of coaches who would live in one city for nine months of the year, and then they'd go coach wherever they were coaching for the other three. And so, that's what he did. So, he hadn't, you know, he was a first; he was a Chicago alderman for a while.

He, you know, worked in different government capacities, you know, in law. And then, so, you know, he basically, in the fall, he would, he would basically move to Pittsburgh to run the team. And then, you know, probably maintain some level of practice.

But basically, you know, he'd shut down whatever his business was, you know, for those three months, and then return and, you know, work as a lawyer the rest of the year. So, in 1922, he became a Cook County judge and Chicago's in Cook County. So, what he did was he couldn't just go to Pittsburgh for three months of the year.

So, he basically stayed in Chicago, and then he would travel on the weekend to Pittsburgh if it was a home game or wherever they were playing. You know, whoever they were playing, he traveled to the game. And then there was a guy who was a former Carnegie player, I believe, but there was a guy who basically ran the show during the week, a real trusted assistant. So, and all the time that he was there, he was upgrading the schedule.

So, Carnegie had been playing, you know, kind of the smaller schools, schools are now, you know, D3 schools in, you know, Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, you know, that kind of type of school. But while he was there, he started upgrading. And so, they're playing, you know, basically a national schedule, but more, you know, like a Midwestern, you know, Midwestern schedule, mostly against, or at least a mix of kind of the smaller schools, like a lot of teams did.

And then they were playing, you know, some top talent. So, just as an example, in 26, they opened the season, they beat, you know, three lesser teams, and then they go on a run, and they beat Pitt, who has had been national champs a bunch of times by then. Detroit, who was playing, you know, pretty solid football.

West Virginia, who used to kind of not be very good, but by then was starting to, you know, come around to be a pretty good football team. And then they went, they hosted and beat a team called Notre Dame, was being coached by Newt Rockne at the time. But this is 1926.

And that was the year that, you know, Rockne and Notre Dame won the 1925 national title. So, they were big stuff. However, in 1926, Soldier Field opened in Chicago.

And that game, the stadium opened with the Army-Navy game. Well, Rockne was in Chicago for that game, while his team was in Pittsburgh, playing Carnegie Tech. And Carnegie Tech beat them.

Which was like, it was a massive, you know, massive story. I mean, the only thing that, so the Army-Navy game was just a huge story in the papers, you know, nationwide. Second to that was the fact that Carnegie Tech had beaten Notre Dame, you know, reigning national champs.

You know, which nobody had expected. So, then, to show that that wasn't just a total fluke, in 1928, Carnegie Tech went to Notre Dame. So, they go to South Bend.

And they beat Notre Dame there. So, that was Notre Dame's first loss in South Bend under Rockne. It also made Carnegie Tech and Stephan the only team or coach to beat Notre Dame twice, while Rockne was the head coach.

Other than Nebraska, under Fred Dawson, did it twice. And then Howard Jones beat Rockne at Notre Dame when he was coaching Iowa, and then twice when he was coaching USC. So, Howard Jones has won up on Walter Stephan.

But nevertheless, I mean, so it's one of these things like you hear nowadays, well, Carnegie Tech, and now it's Carnegie Mellon because, you know, the schools merged. But and you think, ah, you know, that's not big-time football. Well, it was, you know, if you beat the reigning national champ, you're playing pretty good ball, right?

And then when you beat him two years later, you're still playing pretty, pretty good ball. So, he ended up from 1922 through the 1932 season, he basically, they used to call him the commuter coach, living in Chicago, you know, take the train into whatever city they were playing in, coach him game day, and then head back, you know. And so, you know, how they kept it, how he kept in touch with the assistant who was running things day to day.

I don't know, but, you know, they did very, very well. Just, you know, another thing that was kind of fun is he was the guy who gets primarily credited with inventing the spinner play. So, you know, anybody listening, you've seen these, if you've watched any old-time football film, you've seen the spinner, where a lot of times it'll, the ball might get hiked to a quarterback, or a fullback, who's, you know, kind of, who basically catches the ball, like literally does a 360 in place, as they're faking handoffs to different people.

And then they might, you know, kind of do like a QB sort of draw, or they might run left or right, or, you know, or handoff. So, the spinner was a huge thing starting in the mid-20s when he first, you know, implemented it. And it remained in place, you know, probably mid-30s when it was dying out.

However, there are a couple of other little factoids about the spinner, such as that he first used it in 1924. And the guy who was, who ran that play, it was a guy named Dick, I've never been sure of his name, I think it's Bede, but maybe it's Bede. And he was the guy who became the Youngstown State coach.

And he's the guy who invented football's penalty flag when he was coaching Youngstown. And then people who aren't that into, you know, older football stuff, maybe recognize the fact that one of his last quarterbacks, or perhaps the last quarterback that he coached at Youngstown, was a guy named Ron Jaworski. So, anyway, that's the little tidbit on that one.

But, so then, you know, he ends up 1932, announces he's going to retire, he just can't, you know, he's starting to get a little ill, I guess, and just couldn't keep up the pace. And so, you know, he ended up with an 88-53-9 record. So, you know.

Respectable. Yeah, especially at a school like that and playing the kind of schools that he played. And then, so, 32, if people remember from an episode or two ago, that's the year Amos Alonzo Stagg is let go at Chicago.

So, he's, you know, Stefan's retiring from Carnegie Tech. So, basically, he and Fritz Kreisler were the guys everybody said, oh, they're going to use one of these, they're going to name one of these guys to replace Stagg. And instead, they brought in Clark Shaughnessy from Tulane, who was, you know, kind of the father of the modern T formation.

So, and then, unfortunately, you know, poor health, he passed away in 1937. So, he didn't get to live the good, long life that Stagg lived. But, you know, he may have been one of the last of the, you know, he was certainly one of the last of these part-time coaches at a, you know, in a major school environment at the time.

You know, probably at the time, they would have been like a G5-ish or G3 or whatever. However, there are more. You know, that level of football. And here he's a judge in Chicago, you know, lawyer, that's what he does.

You know, a couple of episodes ago, I mentioned Clarence Spears, who's a physician. There were a bunch of guys like that, you know, but he was one of the last ones who was, you know, still running a major program. And then in his case, especially, he wasn't even there, you know, during the season, you know, the commuter coach.

So, really an interesting, you know, days gone by, you know, kind of deal, yeah, just when we think that our lives are busy dealing with football on a daily basis, you have guys like him and, you know, the Paw Porners and Fielding Yost that sometimes coach multiple teams in a season and these commuter coaches and did some other full-time jobs. So, yeah, it's amazing to think about that era of football.

Yeah, I think he had five kids, too. So, you know, he was a busy man. Well, at least the chores got done at home.

I didn't have to do them all. So, that's good. Tim that is some great stuff that, you know, is a gentleman that we probably don't hear about very many places in this day and age.

And it's great to have some preservation of Mr. Stephan and his accomplishments and some of the things that he did, you know, beating Notre Dame twice and, you know, all the other things that he did, which is amazing. So, you have things like this all the time going on on footballarchaeology.com, and you share them in some little bite-sized chunks. So, maybe you could explain that to everybody and how they can enjoy it.

Sure. Just go to footballarchaeology.com, and, you know, you can subscribe. You'll get an email every time a new article is posted.

Otherwise, follow me on Twitter, on the Substack app or on threads, or just go out to Football Archaeology, you know, kind of whenever you please and see what some of the new articles are out there or check out the archives. There's a search function. Just put in a topic and see if there's something out there.

Well, sir, we thank you once again for helping us understand football of yesteryear and how it became the mega game that it is today that everybody enjoys. And it's these little pieces getting put together in a history that really make it enjoyable. And we thank you for sharing it again and we'd love to talk to you again next week.

Very good. Thank you, sir.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

A recent Tidbit that Tim had titled footballarchaeology.com/p/todays-tidbit-herb-dana-and-the-associated?utm_source=publication-search">Herb Dana and the Associated Football Question Box, is our subject today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

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

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on Opponents Visitor Scoreboard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very good. Thank you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

Here the story is told best footballarchaeology.com/p/todays-tidbits-opponents-versus-visitors">Visitors on the Scoreboard Football Archaeology Tidbit.

-Frequently Asked Questions About Football Field Equipment

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

-How was time kept in a football game before the scoreboard clocks existed? Officials would use hand held and later wristwatches to time the events. Check out this article on the Football-History/Football-History-by-month-and-day/May/May-13">Evolution of the game clock or Timing of Games As the Sun Sets

---

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

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

The following discussion is based on Tim's original Tidbit titled: footballarchaeology.com/p/todays-tidbit-press-boxes-and-sideline?utm_source=publication-search">Press Boxes and Sideline Communication.

-Transcribed on Press Box History with Timothy Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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They say necessity is the mother of invention, and in the world of football, that invention sometimes comes wrapped in a pigskin and launched downfield. Today, we delve into a groundbreaking moment – the first ever extra point conversion by forward pass in American football history.

This wasn't just another point attempt; it was a play that challenged the status quo and redefined the way points were scored. Join us on a podcast journey with Timothy Brown and article exploration as we dissect this pivotal moment. We'll meet the players and coaches who dared to defy convention, analyze the strategic thinking behind the play call, and explore the impact it had on the game's evolution.

Was it a stroke of genius or a desperate gamble? Did it spark a revolution in offensive strategy, or was it a one-off act of audacious improvisation? We'll uncover the story behind the throw, the roar of the crowd, and the lasting legacy of this innovative play that forever changed the way extra points were scored. So, buckle up, football fans, and get ready to revisit a moment where forward-thinking met football history!

Could this be the first instance of a converted extra-point attempt after a TD via a forward pass? Timothy P. Brown tells the play's story as the Washington & Jefferson Presidents played the Lafayette Leopards in 1921.

-Transcription of Extra Point via the Forward Pass 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 guess what? It's Tuesday again.

And we are here with Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com. And he has some great tidbits from some of his past writings that he's going to come on and chat a little bit about. Tonight, we're going to be talking about a very interesting one that came out in March. Tim Brown, welcome to The Pig Pen.

Darin, good to see you again and get a chance to chat about old-time football stuff. Always fun. Yeah, old time football.

There's nothing like it. And there's so much that we don't know about it that your tidbits really bring to light. And, you know, I learned so much from really enjoying them.

And you always have something that I'm going to take out of each one of those and, you know, store it in the old crock pot because it's something interesting from football yesteryear. And tonight is no exception. You really have an interesting one, sort of a development of the game that, in some cases, we still see today.

Yeah. You know, so this one's about the first. Extra point conversion by forward pass.

Right. And so, you know, there's a lot of stuff in football, and sometimes when I'm writing stuff, it's like, well, this was the first time this happened. OK, well, this is the first time we know it happened.

In a number of cases, you know, did it happen another time before that could be, you know, and especially earlier on, we get the more it's dependent on, you know, it happens when there was a reporter there when they wrote it in the newspaper. So, I just wrote fairly recently about the first crisscross or reverse in a football game. And that occurred in 1888 at Phillips Handover, the prep school, you know, in the east.

And but, you know, big time school, wealthy kids, wealthy alums got reported in Boston newspapers. And therefore, we know what happened. Did somebody else pull it off somewhere else beforehand? Could have been.

But, you know, the received wisdom is this is when it happened. So now, with the first extra point conversion by forward passes, the timing is a lot easier to figure out than when that first happened because until 1922, if you were going to convert the, you know, after scoring a touchdown, if you were going to do the goal after touchdown, you had to kick it there. You couldn't run it.

You couldn't pass it. So it had to be by kick. So we know that the first conversion bypass couldn't have occurred until 1922.

So then we get into, OK, well, when in 1922 did it happen? And so I at least don't have it. I mean, try as I might, I could search every newspaper archive and comb through every book that I own. I don't have a real effective way to try to find that first time. So, in this case, I'm relying on a newspaper report from 1954.

So a look back article saying, hey, here's what happened in 1922. But the cool thing was it wasn't a high-profile game. By two teams that you might not think of as high profile teams nowadays, but in 22, they were.

So it was a game, you know, kind of, you know, maybe the fourth week of the season, a game between Lafayette and Washington and Jefferson. So, you know, nowadays you go, OK, Lafayette and Washington and Jefferson. But at the time, Lafayette was riding a 17-game winning streak.

Washington and Jefferson was on a 17 point unbeaten streak. And I say unbeaten because they had tied California in the 1922 Rose Bowl or. Yeah, so.

So anyway. You know, they. You know, so really, two top teams are playing, and they're playing on the polo grounds.

So in until 1922, I guess, you know, you had to you had to kick it. Typically, people drop-kicked it, but they did the placement kick as well. So then in 22, you got the ball at the five-yard line.

You could kick it, you could drop kick it, you could snap it to a holder in place, kick it, you could run it, or you could pass it in for a touchdown or not for a touchdown, but for the conversion. But of course, you know, since it's starting from the five. The kick is probably your better option unless you don't have a good drop kicker, or you don't have a good place kicker, a good snapper, or a good holder.

Right. So, as it turned out, in this game, Lafayette went ahead 13 to nothing in the first half. And so, you know, Washington Jefferson's kind of chugging along a little bit.

But then in the third quarter, they score a touchdown and convert. So now it's 13 to seven in the fourth quarter. Lafayette, Washington Jefferson's quarterback, a guy named Brinkert.

He throws a touchdown pass. So now it's a 13-13 tie. And so the game depends on their ability to convert.

So he had the previous time they scored; he had drop-kicked it. The quarterback had drop-kicked for the extra point. So this time around, he sets up, you know, the team sets up just like he's going to dropkick again.

They snap it to him. And one of their ends, who are playing in tight as they typically did, then, you know, scoot out into the end zone all alone, and he tosses him the P, and they convert the extra point bypass. So again, we think that's the first conversion by a forward pass.

And they, you know, they ended up winning the game. That was that was the last score of the game. And so all the.

You know, all the other W and J fans leave happily in the Lafayette fans are disappointed. So what? So I have a trivia question for you. But if about what's well about Washington Jefferson.

But I'm going to set that aside to see if you want to cover it. If you have questions about the game or anything like that, we need to discuss. Well, I guess one of the questions is not particularly about the forward pass, but it's right about that time, as you share in your story, and you just mentioned it is one of the ways was the kick for the extra point similar to what we know today. Maybe the scoring was a little bit different.

Now, where's how was I'm interested in how the holder may have been because I know on free kicks, the holder was lying flat on their stomach, which I'm not exactly sure why, why they laid on their stomach to do that. You know, we said that we have holders today for free kicks on a windy day when, in the NFL, you have a holder on the ball. But I was just wondering, would did they take a snap from their stomach while the holder was on a stomach for those kicks? Or is it more similar on a knee like we do today? Yeah, I think I've seen different versions of that.

Initially, they may have tried to do the thing on the stomach. So, you know, the reason they did it on the stomach was on the free kick. The defense had to be 10 yards back of the ball.

And so as soon as as soon as the holder or they used to call him a placer, but as soon as the holder set the ball on the ground or as soon as the ball touched the ground, the defense could rush. So what they what the holder would do is lay prone. You know, you basically run on it.

You'd lay on his stomach and perpendicular to the path of the kicker. Right. Then he put one hand under the ball and one hand over the ball, balanced it, and held it right close to the ground.

And then, when the kicker was ready, he pulled the underhand out. And then, you know, so the ball was sitting on the ground, held by his upper hand. And then the kicker would come through, you know, follow the path and kick it.

So, you know, I think. You know exactly why it developed that way. It's kind of hard to know, but it does make sense.

You know, I mean, in a nun or in a free-kick situation, that particular method of holding makes sense. Now, once you introduce the snap. So, the snap to the holder originated in 1896.

And, you know, it's just one of those nobody thought about it before. So two brothers who, you know, played at Otterbein in Ohio developed it and then it spread quickly. But they but still most people still drop kicked anyways, because that's what, you know, the guys were trained to do.

So in those situations, I mean, early on, I believe mostly what they did was you know, the football was still transitioning from rolling the ball on its side. There was still some of that or tumbling it back rather than really kind of a long snap like we think of it today. So they a lot of times a holder would kind of squat like a catcher in baseball.

And, you know, so you could move a little bit to grab the ball and then set it down. And then they started switching to, you know, what we think of today as a holder. I don't know what you call that position, you know, one knee on the ground or one knee.

Raised, but, you know, I've got pictures of even into the late 30s. I believe it is. I've got a picture of an Arizona player still doing it.

The squatter, you know, the squatting catcher's way. So it probably depended on how accurate your long snapper was, you know, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, it's one of those that, you know, when we think of the snapping position or the holder's position, that's the only way that makes sense.

But, you know, they tried different things along the way. But the catcher's position definitely makes a lot of sense. You know, adopting it from baseball, you know, you have a wild pitch, which is much like a snap.

You don't know where it's going to go sometimes. And they can maneuver a little bit. And probably they probably had a guy that played catcher on the baseball team, maybe as a holder to he's familiar from maneuvering that.

So that makes a good sense. So, all right. Well, thank you for that.

That's a good explanation. So, OK, what do you get for your trivia question? OK, so this may be one of my favorite trivia questions, but, you know, we've talked enough that maybe this is an obvious answer to you, but maybe not so much for your audience. So, you probably should allow the audience a little bit of time to figure it out.

OK, so the question is, there are four teams that do not currently play. FBS football has played in the Rose Bowl game. What are those four teams that are not currently in the FBS and played in a Rose Bowl game? Yeah.

OK, folks, before I answer, if you want to hit pause and answer it yourself, and I'm going to proceed to answer. I think I mentioned one of them earlier in the podcast. OK, well, let me let me say, does it does it count military teams? Are you counting military teams in that? Yes, I am.

OK. All right. Well, after spending almost 50 days of Rose Bowl coverage just a few months ago, I hope I get this right.

So, I think the Great Lakes team, I'm going to say Washington and Jefferson because we're talking about them tonight. That's two.

Let's see. Was it Columbia? No, no, Cornell, the other Ivy League. No, neither one of them ever played.

Well, Cornell or Columbia played in the 34. Yeah, Columbia. I must say, but it's not them.

No. OK, Harvard, because they're not FBS. No.

OK, I'm trying to think about who the other military team that played in the World War One era was. Well, actually. OK, so I asked the question, which should be, are you currently not playing Division One because there are teams like Harvard and Columbia?

OK. All right. OK.

FCS. Yeah. OK.

OK. Not a problem. No problem.

All right. OK, so they're so they're they're not playing in Division One football at all. So.

All right. So, OK, so you said Great Lakes, W and W and J, W and J. I'm trying to think of the military team from California that the one starts with an M. I took my tongue out. I'm not it's like Miramont or something.

And it's not. Yeah. So Mare Island, Mare Island, that's what they played twice.

They played in 18 and 19. And then. Another military team.

Great Lakes, I'm stumped on the last one; I'm stumped on the last military team. Great Lakes and Mare Island played in the 1919 game, and Mare Island and Camp Lewis played. OK, in the 18 game.

Camp Lewis is sometimes referred to as the 91st Division because that's where that Division was stationed. OK, you took away my easy bunnies with the Ivy League schools. I thought I had.

Yeah, I screwed up with the way I asked the question. So, I apologize. And to all the listeners that are scouring their brains trying to figure out the answer.

So it should have been like FBS or FCS schools. Yeah, or just D1. So normally, you know, there are some people when I ask this question, who either just draw a blank, or they might know there are these military teams.

But hardly anybody knows about Washington Jefferson. They're typically the toughest ones. The only reason I know about Washington Jefferson is because I'm in the process of doing a lot of research on a book that has a lot of W and J players in it.

However, from the late 1890s and early 1900s, they played with W and J. But I have a couple of books on W and J football. It's kind of still fresh in my mind. So, I know you're a PA guy.

That's right. They're the Western PA team. So, for the South Southern team from us, I think you can be a Western PA, and we're the first Norse.

But hey, that's true. Hey, great question, though. I really like the fact that it was a good one.

So, Tim, your tidbits are, you know, bringing up items like this constantly every single day, sometimes a couple of times a day. Why don't you share with the listeners how they, too, can share in on all the fun of hearing these? Yeah, so, you know, best way is just to go to my website, footballarchaeology.com, subscribe. And that by doing that, you'll you'll get an email every night at like seven o'clock.

I may actually push that a little bit later. But anyways, we'll get an email that with, you know, with the story for that that evening. And, you know, if you if you don't want the emails, then just you can follow me on Twitter, though, that's becoming less and less useful as the days go on.

I even did a blue checkmark, which, you know, I normally wouldn't have done. But, you know, that doesn't seem to help. I did the same and had mixed results myself, but we'll see how it goes.

So. All right, Tim, I appreciate it. And we'll talk to you again next week with some more great football history.

Hey, thank you, sir. I appreciate it and look forward to it.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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One of the biggest football rules about faces of all time may be in the game-time relationship of a coach in communicating with his players.

Here is Tim's original Tidbit that the topic derived from, footballarchaeology.com/p/todays-tidbit-coaching-one-player?utm_source=publication-search">Coaching One Player During Timeouts

-Transcription of One Coach 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. We're going to look in that portal today and go back and do some football archaeological work with Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Darin, thank you. Looking forward to chatting once again.

Always fun to talk about old-time football. Yeah, and you have some real dandies that come out in the tidbits each and every day, and one that really caught my eye that I'd like to talk about tonight is you have, it's titled Coaching One Player, and I find this very interesting on multiple levels, and my officiating ears go up on this one because, you know, I can appreciate what the officials had to deal with during these times too. So I'll let you take the floor here and tell us all about this.

Well, I think I said this two weeks ago, but there are certain stories that need background in order for a more current story to make sense. Hey, we're here to hear old football stories, so the more we can hear, the better. Then you're going to benefit from that kind of idea and thinking today.

So this, for I think everybody, whether you've lived through this era or not if you're a football fan, you've seen images of a coach standing on the sideline talking typically to his quarterback. Sometimes, it could have been his mid linebacker, but most often, the pictures would show the quarterback. And so it's obviously a timeout, and so they're, you know, the two are conferring about game strategies and which plays to call, et cetera.

And so, but the odd thing is, why the heck is he just talking to his quarterback? Because nowadays the whole team comes over or, yeah, I mean, especially like high school, the old team will come running over coach and listen to coach jabber, you know, 35 seconds and then run back and execute a play. But so this whole thing of the coach being able to talk to one player at a time during a timeout all has this background in the idea of coaching from the sideline. And so that was illegal really until, you know, in the college game, it was illegal until the 1960s.

It was illegal in the pro game until 1944. But so it all has to do with this idea that, you know, originally the football teams were organized by the athletes themselves, just they were club teams, just like any, I don't quite want to make it sound like, you know, the club Quidditch team at some college or university today, but, you know, fundamentally, it's the same thing. A bunch of guys got together and said, hey, let's play football.

And so they organized themselves and then it got popular. So a lot of people wanted to attend and blah, blah, blah. So the game, you know, evolved, but it had this fundamental belief that the game was for the players, not for the fan, not for the coaches.

And so there's a whole slew of football rules and underlying beliefs that are aligned with that. And, you know, I mean, some of it's kind of hidden, but even things like, you know, numbering the players was for the fans, but it was opposed by the coaches for a long time. So that's why we didn't have numbers.

But so one of the things that was by tradition, you're supposed to engage the player's brawn and the brain. Therefore, coaches, fans, and spectators are not supposed to yell instructions to the players. And so that all worked and was, you know, the tradition and kind of the etiquette allowed that or made sure that didn't happen until the late 1880s.

And then people kind of started cheating a bit. And so they enacted a rule in 1892 that said, if somebody coaches from the sideline, it's a 15-yard penalty. And so if you think about other and older pictures that you've seen of football teams when you saw, you see pictures of all the players sitting on a bench on the sideline, you see pictures of all the players sitting or kneeling on the sideline, or you see one or two coaches standing.

And all of that was just at various times, the rules morphed a bit, especially in terms of the number of coaches that could stand on the sideline or move up and down during play. But the, you know, even when they could move around a bit, they still could not instruct the players. So there were things in the 19, I want to say it's the late 1930s, there were some experimental games where they had a 12th student, so a team member, maybe he was a smart guy, but he was like the third string quarter.

They put him out on the field to call the plays and instruct the team because he was a student, not a coach. So there were some experimental games, you know, trying that because, again, student, not a coach. So, even the rule that they had was the kicker; if there were times when they did allow teams, the kicker had to request the tee.

You couldn't, you know, some of the sidelines couldn't just toss a tee out onto the field; the kicker had to request it. Because if you just toss the tee out there, that meant the coach had said, I want them kicking, you know, I want them to try the field goal here from the 35-yard line or whatever. Anyway, there is a whole set of rules like that.

But then in, you know, say, 1940s, you have two platoon footballs coming along. That allowed coaches to coach the defense while they were off the field or the offense when they were off the field. And then eventually, in the 50s, you had, you know, in the pro level, anyways, they had what they called messenger guards, where teams would swap, they'd have guards run back and forth between days.

So that, you know, one, the right guard would swap between one guy and the other, and they would bring in the play each ball. Interestingly, a guy named Chuck Knoll was one of the first messenger guards to play and perform that function. So... I think I've heard of him before.

Yeah, I think he, well, I know the listeners can't see that, but you're wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers hat. So, I think you've heard of Chuck Knoll before. But so eventually, in 1967, they passed a rule that said, okay, now when we call a timeout, you know, previously, even during a timeout, the players, the coach could not talk to the players; they had to stay out there on the field.

And even with injuries, the coach could not go out there; just one person who was a medical professional could go out there. And so in 1967, in the colleges anyways, they said, one player can talk to a coach. And so that's why you see all those pictures.

And actually, the high schools had made that rule change a couple of years earlier. And then, you know, early 70s, maybe late 60s, somewhere in there, the high schools also just said, let's allow all 11 players to come over to the sideline to talk to the coach. So again, it's one of those goofy things, but it's grounded in this whole background, underlying people's belief systems about football.

But believe it or not, at the high school level, the phenomenon, you know, even through my officiating career, it's only the last 10 or 15 years that more than one coach can go out on the field and more than 11 players can be out there. When they had it for a long time that I officiated, you had to have only 11 players and one coach, and they had to be at least inside the nine-yard marks, which is the top of the numbers. And, and you had to call, you know, technically, if they did that, you're supposed to call it illegal substitution.

I mean, we just tried to enforce it and keep them back, but it was a pain in the neck because you know how timeouts are; it's sort of chaotic. And you're trying to tell these coaches, they can't, you know, the defensive assistant wants to come out with the head coach and whatever you got to chase them back. But they, they did a promotion.

Right. Right. So the national federation had to be like 10, 15 years ago, finally in this century said, Hey, you can have as many players and as many coaches come out anywhere on the field.

And as long, you know, but when that minute's up, you know, everybody's got to be out of there. And just the 11 players are on their own side of the ball. So it's still an evolving transition of that rule, at least at the high school level.

And it's much easier to do it now. I think, you know, you raised a really interesting point of view from the official, right? So, you know, I played, I coached. So I have that perspective on what it's like to do those things, but I never officiated.

And so I don't understand the game from that perspective, as well as the pressures and the concerns. Right. And so there's, there's just, I mean, there's a lot of things out there in the rules that, you know, even like the, the stripes, stripes on the gridiron, you know, the 10, the five-yard stripes, when there was a checkerboard, the checkerboard stripes, there are lots of things that were put on the field to help the officials, not to help the, you know, the players.

Like the game, they're playing behind me right now. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, the difference between whistles and horns and all that kind of stuff, the final gun, you know, there were so many things that, that really, you know, they were instituted to make officiating easier and, and more regulated, more consistent, you know, because what do people complain about? Inconsistent officiating, right? So, you know, there's a reason.

They still complain about that. If you watched the games in the playoffs this year and the regular season, you know, even us old officials complained about some of them, but it's. Yeah.

But, but it really, I mean, it really, you know, like your perspective just lends a different lens, a different way to look at the game. And, you know, so I just, I appreciate that. It's just, you know, I get it, but I don't get it.

Yeah. It's, it's, it's definitely something. I mean, I, I miss, I love being out on the field.

I love the people that I work with. I love, you know, the coaches and the kids, but there's some, some parts of it that I don't miss, especially when you have a, a coach that had a bad day and he's going to take it out on you because you're the easiest target for him. And you're a sideline official.

You know, those are always fun, but yeah, I like the game and ship. I love doing it and going back and forth with the coach, and that's part of the fun of it. And it's an exciting thing.

And it's part of the game. I have a quick little story I have to tell you. One of my favorite college memories is that I played at a small college, and we had a game with a backup quarterback who was just a kind of poster.

And at one point, you know, in the middle of a game, a referee threw a flag, and then the play ended up at about 20, 30 yards downfield. And so, but he had thrown his flag near the line of scrimmage. And so this quarterback goes out on the field, picks up the guy's flag, stuffs it in his pants.

And so the, the official comes running back, you know, he's a headlinesman or whatever, cause he's right along the side. He comes back, and he can't find his flag. And so our coach starts yelling at him like, what are you doing? You know, you're delaying the game, you know, sticks.

So then the guy heads back upfield, looking for his flag, and when the quarterback takes the flag and dumps it back on the field, where, you know, it is behind him. And then the official turns around, sees the flag sitting there, and knows that it wasn't there like five seconds ago. He just, he just smiled, and he didn't say a damn thing.

He knew one of the kids was in his chain. And I just think I recall that it's just one of my favorite memories in college. It was just like a small college.

It really didn't matter, but it mattered. And so for somebody to think about, to think that quickly to do, to pull off that trick, and for the official to just let it go, I thought it was just total class. Cause he could have he could have flagged somebody.

Right. But it seems like you'd have it like every, every season, at least once or twice, you'd have that, that kid that just wants to help you out. You know, they, they, they're, they're just that helpful soul, and you throw a flag, and it's a spot foul.

And if the flag means something, you know, it wasn't like, you know, offsides or something, it's a holding or, you know, intentional grounding where the flag really matters, and you throw it, and you're, you know, you're, you're, that's why you have a flag. You're marking that spot, and you're following the rest of the play. And you, like you said, you might end up 30 yards downfield or 80 yards downfield, and you got to come back to the spot, but I'd always be turning around to come back.

And there's this kid, I can see him pick up the flag and say, I'll bring your flag to you, Mr. No, no, no, don't, don't do that. Thank you. But thank you.

But no, thanks. Yes. But yeah, that's all you always run into that kind of stuff, too.

But my teammate didn't have the official best interest at heart. Yeah. I think that was a little bit more malicious.

Are you sure this was a teammate, and it wasn't the person telling the story? No, it wasn't me. You seem to really have a lot of firsthand knowledge here. I've done, I've done, I was kind of a trickster, you know, sort of person.

So I've done things like that, but no, I, I, I didn't have the guts to do that. Yeah, that would be; it took a little bit of moxie to do that. I'm sure, especially with everybody in a stand, seeing what you're doing.

So, hey, Tim, great stuff as always, you know, this coaching and quarterback relationship and coaching with the, from the sidelines is always an interesting subject. And it's amazing how much that's evolved over the years and how much the perception of what the coach should be doing on the field and what he shouldn't be doing has changed over the last hundred years. It's just great stuff.

And I really like how you portrayed that out here in a story and this podcast tonight. And you know, you have these thoughts and these tidbits that come out each and every day on your website, social media, and email, and maybe you could share with the listeners how they could enjoy some of these, too. Yeah, so it's really easy.

My site is footballarchaeology.com. And as long as you spell it right, you'll find it. And so you can, there's, you know, every story that's out there, there's a subscribe button. And if you subscribe, you get get the email at seven o'clock Eastern every day, which comes right to your inbox.

And then alternatively, you can just follow me on Twitter at Football Archaeology. And then, you know, obviously, you can just go find it and, you know, periodically search it and see, see what's been published. But you know, from my perspective, the best thing for me is if you get the thing every day and, you know, if you've got a busy week, let them pile up.

And then when you got a little bit of time over the weekend, scan through them and see what interests you. All right. I, I'm glad that you, you mentioned that, that I'm not the only one that has trouble spelling archaeology every time I write it out.

And even if I spell it right, I look at it, and I, is that right? That's just one of those words that just doesn't look right, but hey. A-R-C-H-A-E-O-L-O-G-Y. Yeah.

I think maybe, maybe as an American, we pronounce it with that archaeology and A just doesn't seem like it belongs there, but hey, hey, great stuff and spell it right and put the dot com on the end and you'll get to Tim's site. And Tim, we'll talk to you again next week. Hey, very good.

Thanks, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.