Football History

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Calling all NFL history buffs! Take a shot at today's quick-fire trivia question and see if you're a true gridiron guru!

NFL trivia is a treasure trove of fun for football fanatics. It lets you revisit iconic moments, test your knowledge of legendary players and coaches, and unearth hidden gems of franchise history. Whether you're debating obscure stats with friends or casually dropping facts at a watch party, NFL trivia is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. It deepens your appreciation for the game's rich history and adds a layer of excitement to every matchup, making you see familiar plays with fresh eyes. So, dust off your memory bank and get ready to have some fun – NFL trivia is the perfect way to celebrate your love for the gridiron!

Leave your answer in the comments below and let's see if you know your NFL history!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Randall Balmer
you do

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Honorable Mentions:

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

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

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

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

Auburn's football coaching history boasts a vibrant tapestry of legendary names, each leaving their mark on the program's legacy. Here's a glimpse into some of the top Tigers' head coaches:

-Founding Figures and National Champions:

-John Heisman (1892-1895): The man who gave his name to the prestigious trophy, Heisman laid the foundation for Auburn's football tradition.

-Ralph Jordan (1896-1927): Known as the "Father of Auburn Football," Jordan led the Tigers to their first national championship in 1913 and remains the program's longest-tenured coach.

-Pat Dye (1981-1992): The "Bear" brought a swaggering confidence and run-heavy offense, propelling Auburn to three SEC championships and a national championship appearance in 1983.

-Tommy Tuberville (1995-2008): Known for his fiery personality and potent rushing attack, Tuberville revived the program, winning an SEC championship in 2004 and reaching the national title game in 2003.

From the iconic "War Eagle" chant that echoes through Jordan-Hare Stadium to the electric atmosphere of the pre-game Tiger Walk, Auburn football is more than just a game. It's a family. It's a tradition passed down through generations, uniting fans in a sea of orange and blue. Here, victory isn't everything, it's the spirit, the claws held high, the unwavering belief that makes Auburn special. So join the roar, feel the electricity, and become part of something bigger than yourself. War Eagle!

There is so much more to explore, so check out our other stories of Auburn football history.

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It is time to jump-start the football side of your brain with a challenging question of gridiron history. Dust off the cobwebs because this question delves into the college game and two of the Poser Five Conferences.

The puzzle today is hangman-style where we will give clues and letters and light up the answer along the way.

Pause the TV, pull over the car, put the kids to bed, and test your knowledge on this little Pigskin Pop Quiz.

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Our friend historian Timothy P. Brown recently wrote about the exciting variation of high school football played in less populated areas where each team field six players rather than the normal eleven.

Born in the heart of the Great Depression, six-man football emerged as a testament to American ingenuity and the unwavering spirit of small-town communities. Its story is one of adaptation, resilience, and the enduring passion for the gridiron.

-From Necessity to Innovation:

In 1933, the harsh realities of the Depression hit small Nebraska towns like Chester hard. With dwindling student populations, many schools struggled to field full eleven-man football teams. Enter Stephen Epler, a resourceful superintendent who saw an opportunity amidst the hardship. Inspired by basketball and tennis, he envisioned a modified version of football played with six players on each side, allowing even the smallest schools to compete.

-Birth of a Game:

Epler's brainchild quickly gained traction. The first six-man game was played on a crisp September night in 1934, drawing a thousand spectators to witness the clash between the combined teams of Hardy-Chester and Belvidere-Alexandria. The game, a 19-19 tie, proved the concept viable, and six-man football began its ascent across the plains.

-Spreading the Game:

Word of the innovative game spread like wildfire. Texas adopted six-man in 1938, followed by states like Oklahoma, Kansas, and Montana. Soon, the gridiron echoed with the cheers of six-man fans from coast to coast.

-Six-Man Football 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, it's Tuesday, and we love to go into that footballarcheology.com in the mind of Timothy P. Brown, its author, to talk about some great football that might be off a little bit on the beaten path of what we normally get to discuss in the realm of football. But Tim brings it to us so eloquently each and every day with his daily tidbits.

Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen. Darin, hey, thank you. Thanks for having me back.

And I'm not sure about the eloquence thing, but I definitely like to kind of chase down odd tales. It was on my Word of the Day calendar, so I had to throw it in there somewhere. Well, you used it perfectly.

Okay, I'm glad I pronounced it correctly. That's off to a good start.

That's good. Before I fumble some other words during this, that's the way it usually works out. But Tim, you had one back in mid-January, a tidbit that came out daily that talked about six-man football and some of the origins of that style of play.

And I'd love it if you could chat about that a little bit. Yeah, so one of the things that I like thinking about is how the game can be played differently. So maybe a year and a half, two years ago, I wrote a story about how touch football and flag football developed.

And then you have the Canadian game and whatever. There's different to play this game, the same generic game. And so what was happening is the origins of six-man football go back to the 1930s, so countries in the depression.

And we were still a much more rural country. But not everybody had working vehicles, and there weren't two cars in the household or anything like that. And so people just couldn't get around as easily.

And so the combination of factors led to the fact that there were lots and lots of very small high schools in the country. And so, while schools wanted to have organized athletics for their students, just the sheer numbers didn't always make sense for that to happen. And especially when it came to football.

So I'm going to cite a couple of numbers just because I think kind of reinforces the case. But six-man football was developed by a teacher and coach at a high school in Nebraska, a guy named Stephen Epler. And so Nebraska at the time had 505 high schools, but only 218 or 43% played football.

And so the problem was a lot of them just had about 300 schools with fewer than 100 students. So when you think about that many schools with less than 100 students, then just to get 11 guys, I mean, to scrimmage, you'd need 22. So you need half of the school, 50 kids, 50 males presumably.

And then half of them, you'd want to be out there for practice every day. And it just didn't work out. And it wasn't, you know, Nebraska wasn't alone.

It was like at the time there were 24,000 high schools in the country, 18,000 played basketball, but only 8,000 played football. So it kind of just kind of showed there was an appetite for sports, but football needed a lot of equipment relative to other sports, especially basketball. And the numbers just weren't there for a lot of schools.

So this guy devised a game in this like 33 or 34, I believe it was. So he devises a game with six players, you know, so they played on a field that was 80 by 40. And then like they kick off from the 20.

Teams had to have three players on the line of scrimmage. That meant, and then they had, you know, a quarterback and, you know, two backs. And, like, the quarterback could take the snap, but he had to get rid of it, you know, kind of like the old style of football where the quarterback had a lateral or, you know, pass it to somebody.

And then, you know, initially, the center wasn't eligible, and even the quarterback wasn't necessarily eligible, but, you know, that got resolved pretty quickly. So basically, he had a game where every player was out and became eligible for the pass. Everybody could, you know, you could come up with some kind of play where everybody could run with it.

Everybody was needed on defense, you know, and, you know, in effect, what you had was a center, two ends and three backs. I mean, that's really kind of the way the game was played. So you got rid of four of the real skill positions, the offensive linemen, and then, you know, they just went off and played.

And then the other side of it was that they had, you know, money, which was a real issue because of the cost of the equipment. So a lot of the sporting goods manufacturers, I mean, you know, Epler wanted to devise a game where you didn't need much equipment. At the time, not everybody wore helmets anyway.

And so, and then the sporting goods manufacturers basically came out with a whole line of equipment, and a number of them did this, you know, kind of using lower quality materials to make the helmets, you know, less padding, using canvas rather than moleskin or a lower grade leather, you know, so kind of anything they could do to cut the cost, they did so. But, you know, you look at their catalogs from the 30s, they're just, you know, there's three, four, five pages of just six-man football gear that they sold. So, you know, it ended up that this game became very popular, you know, and it was played in, you know, like 40 of the states eventually, you know, had enough teams to play.

And, you know, so they had high school officials and coaches, organizations, everything, you know, included the six-man game. And then, you know, eventually, I think, you know, there were some places where six men, they were big enough, the school started consolidating, you know, you'd have these schools, and they're named after like the four villages or whatever, you know, a lot of rural schools are like that. And so, they end up, you know, so then there was an eight-man game and a seven-man game, you know, there have been variations, and there still are, you know, teams play, I think, in high school right now, it's anywhere from nine to six-man, you know, games.

I think Michigan, I think we've got eight. Yeah, I think that's still, I know, in the National Federation rule book, at least six years ago, when I got my last copy of it when I was still officiating, there's still a section of back for eight-man football, which is very popular in the Midwest, like you said, Oklahoma, Texas, probably Nebraska, where there's a little bit more rural than up north and east and far west. So, yeah.

And like in Michigan, the upper peninsula, I think, is where a fair amount of that football is played because they just, it's just more difficult to get to other schools, too. Yeah, that's understandable. So, yeah.

So, I don't know, it's just one of those things that's just an interesting slice that gave kids the ability to play football under fundamentally similar conditions, you know, by reducing the fewer guys on a smaller field, the six-man, the original six-man game, there was each player had 10% more square footage than in the traditional 11 man game. And if you compare that, you know, when you include end zones, Canadian football has 40% more space than American football, you know? So, the six-man game was pretty comparable, in many respects, to playing regulation football. So, it's pretty cool.

Yeah. Definitely some cool stuff. Now, I don't know if you've heard this before, but somebody was telling me, somebody, I had on the show probably about a year ago, and I'm trying to place my, I can't remember exactly who was telling me, but they were telling me some of the roots of the eight-man football were from playing on the naval ships because they had limited space and, you know, limited people that could play.

And they were, I think, aircraft carriers or something. They were playing some kind of ball there, and they reformatted, you know, the number of players to fit that. But I don't remember the details; I don't know if you ever heard that or not.

Yeah. Yeah. I've never heard that.

I mean, I've done a lot of, you know, research and writing on military football. And, you know, typically, they just waited until they got into port, you know, and they had all the land, you know, that they needed. But, you know, in the Pacific, you know, a lot of, you know, kind of recreational islands that, you know, troops kind of, you know, went and recovered in Iran, and they had big football leagues and everything going on there, you know, right, you know, during the middle of the war.

So, and there were big teams playing in Hawaii and everything. So anyways, yeah, I've never heard the story. It doesn't mean it, you know, I'll have to look it up and I'll shoot you something on it.

Cause I know, I know I got it somewhere, but look that up. Well, yeah, I'll definitely follow it up too. It sounds interesting.

Yeah. But Tim, before we let you go here, we appreciate the history on six man football and some of the aspects of it. Why don't you share with folks where they can get your daily tidbits like this, like six man football for some of these unique items associated with football each and every day too, so they can enjoy them.

Sure. So I publish every day, seven o'clock Eastern on footballarchaeology.com. And if you subscribe, so you can subscribe for free. I'm more than happy to for the paid subscriptions, too, but you know, you can subscribe for free; check it out.

And basically what's going to happen is you would get an email every day with the story. You can still click on it and go online, or you can go directly to the site to view the today's story or any of the, the archive of stories. The other option is to follow me on Twitter.

And I'm just, you know, still footballarchaeology on Twitter. There's an English guy that has, you know, soccer related stuff using more or less the same name, but mine, football and archeology are merged together. So, you know, you'll find me.

A green logo with a leather helmet on it. That's like 1918 leather helmets embedded in it. It's always good stuff, folks.

It's worth a great read every day at 7 PM. And it's usually a pretty short read, you know, usually a minute or two, maybe tops. So, some great images and quotes and all kinds of great stuff to go along with the great story.

So Tim, we really thank you for joining us here and hope to talk to you again next week. Okay. Very good.

Thank you, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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Do you know the NFL rulebook like the back of your hand? This video tests your gridiron knowledge by taking you on a journey through the evolution of NFL rules! From the early days of confusing scrums to the high-tech officiating of today's Super Bowls, we'll explore how the rulebook has shaped the game we love.

Get ready to answer trivia questions that challenge your knowledge of once-used severe penalty enforcement that may alarm you.

So, get ready to step into the virtual field, don your favorite jersey, and embark on a thrilling and enlightening journey through the captivating history of NFL rules! Will you emerge as the ultimate rulebook guru, or will some of these penalties catch you off guard? There's only one way to find out – hit that play button and let the game begin!

Bill Willis tradition of toughness and bravery is carried on through tradition