Football History

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In a weekly visit from author and gridiron historian Timothy P. Brown, he enlightens us about a team of unique individuals that loved the game of football and, despite obstacles, played the game and won. This group was from the Kentucky School of the Blind in the early 20th century, as yes, even though their sight was impaired, these fellas had a great time and won some ball games.

-Transcription of the Kent School for the Blind 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 we are going to portal back in time to football archaeology and Timothy P. Brown because it's Tuesday and Tim's going to talk about a very interesting and unique school that played football so many years ago. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey Darin, thank you once again. Glad to be here and like we have a pretty cool story to talk about today.

Yeah, I had never heard of this one until I read your tidbit back on November 20th. And your title of that tidbit was really a high catcher, football at the Kentucky School for the Blind. And I said, okay, he's got to have some kind of an angle on this, literally mean, you know, this is a school for the Blind, but I guess it was.

So I'll let you explain it. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, so that was just the first thing I could even think about when because this actually involved young men playing football who were blind. I mean, I think it's just a story of courage, you know, it's just, but it's also just, it's such a cool, cool thing that these kids just wanted to play, you know, and so they found a way, you know, they found a way to play and, and, you know, then obviously they had opponents, and all of their opponents were sighted teams. And so anyways, it's just, you know, kind of a cool thing.

And so it's just, you know, it's one of those, I mean, I remember, you know, as a kid, you know, I started playing football, and I guess, you know, organized like sixth grade, you know, we had a grade school team and then high school and dah, dah, dah. And so, you know, and there, there were times, you know, if you're going, you know, I was a late developer. And so, you know, there are times when you're, you know, you're kind of intimidated, you're scared, you know, in playing, you know, or you're just, you know, you just happen to be positioned against some 4,000-pound mammoth, you know.

And so, so it just takes guts to play the game. Right. And absolutely.

These, these kids were out there playing, and they couldn't even see their opponents, you know. And so it's just, I just think it's, you know, it's remarkable that they were still willing to get out there and play, you know. And so, you know, I guess the other thing for me as I think about it, you know, tend to think about like accommodations for people with, you know, various types of, of, you know, disabilities or limitations of whatever sort.

But they, you know, it just, this story tells you that there were accommodations made back then, too. So, and, you know, these may have, I think I, in some of the newspaper articles, it's clear that you know, they did things like, you know, the, the team, the opponent had to run between the tackles or between the ends when they were on offense. Tim, if you don't mind, I'm not sure if we mentioned to the listener what timeframe we're talking about; we're talking 1904 to 1912.

So this is 130, 120 years ago. So this is a, you know, so really fascinating that you know, it'd be remarkable in today's age, but this is really incredible for the game that they were playing back then, too. Yeah.

Yeah. I apologize for not mentioning that. I kind of had the picture of the players in my, in my mind, but you know, if you're just listening to the podcast, you don't see those pictures, but yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, these kids are, so like, you know, what they had the, the opposing team had to run between the tackles. They were, they, if they were going to run the ball, then they made out a certain call. I think they just said hike, but if they were going to punt the ball, then they yelled punt.

And so the, you know, the kids on defense would know, you know, what was going on, but you know, and so it's kind of like, okay, well, how did these kids play? And the report suggests they kind of had a certain sense, right? That, you know, just as like, defensive linemen, for instance, you know, are taught to react to the pressure coming from the right or to the left, you know, kind of, you resist the pressure, whatever direction it's coming from. And I'm sure they had developed a lot of that sense themselves, probably even before they started playing football.

But so that was one of the things, you know, that they were able to just, you know, sense pressure. The other, I think, is as long as the ball had to be run between the tackles or between the ends, you know when these guys were on defense, then it's kind of more like, you know, it's a little bit more like wrestling, you know. So, like, you know, I wrestled when I was younger.

And so I, you know, I can see that being, you know, it's easier to think of a blind wrestler being successful, right? Just because it's a, you know, sport of close quarters and very technique oriented, you know, and you're physically grabbing one another, you know, all the time. And so that makes sense to me. But football still just seems like crazy.

You know, it's like, how do you? You don't even know if somebody's coming at you until they come at you, right? And just tackling the ball player or the ball carrier, you know, you know, it's kind of like they must have just grabbed anybody that was coming, right? And yet they apparently were, I mean, they won a bunch of games, like half of them. It might be friendly fire, or it might be your teammate going down. Yeah, that's right.

You know, you have a really interesting photo on footballarchaeology.com on this is one of the challenges and I, you've got me. So I'm looking at these photos a lot closer and trying to pick up things. And one thing I looked at is it had to be like challenge.

Number one is they're lining up. There's sort of a line on the field where these guys are lined up, and there's the far left end, which has his hands beyond the line. The ball's probably, I don't know, a quarter of a yard shy of the line, and the right end is probably almost two yards deep off the line.

So they're sort of cattywampus to the line. So, probably staying on the side. And I'm sure maybe, you know, I always look at it from an officiating lens for something, but I'm trying to get these guys to line up so that they're legal, legal formation.

Yeah. They just had some challenges there. I'm sure.

Yeah. So, I mean, you know, I noticed that in that image too. I just was like, I'm not going to write anything about that.

I'll leave that one alone. Just let everybody pick that pick up on themselves. But, you know, so I think this is some of the accommodations I think was probably like when you were a kid, and you were on the playground at the park half the time, there'd be one team had six guys and the other guy, other team had five or someone team had the best kid, and everybody else stunk or, you know, whatever.

So that's why you have all the time quarterback, Tim. Yeah. And he was out the sides.

Yeah. But, but then there were but these, so I just have to imagine there were things like where, like when you're a kid, you negotiated that stuff with the other kids because you wanted it to be fair and competitive. Otherwise it wasn't fun to play.

Right. So, you know, they probably had something where there was a process where these guys got lined up correctly, you know, so they're on side and, you know, then they went from there, but still just, you know, yeah, I think it's just kind of an incredible story for these kids. And I think we mentioned it briefly on another previous podcast, but the Kentucky School for the Blind completed at least one forward pass in one of their games, which is just nuts to think about.

That's amazing. Now, in one part of this tidbit, you explain how they would kick extra points, and maybe you could talk about that a little bit because I thought that was really interesting. Yeah.

So what they did was they had, so back then, extra points were a free kick. Right. So, so what? That meant there was no snap, nothing.

It was just, you know, like, so, so the one guy. What we call a kickoff today is a free kick. Yes.

Start each half, and after a score, there is a free kick. Just a, yeah. Or like, you know, somebody, it's still part of the game.

If you catch a, if you fair catch a punt, you have the legal right to kick the ball from there to try to get a field goal. Correct. And so, uh, so back then the, the, the team that just scored, um, assuming they had scored near the middle of the field or near the goalpost, they could basically just walk it straight out as far back as they wanted to.

And then they then kick it from there. So then once they would get the kicker, and the holder lined up, then the, um, there was one of the teammates would stand between the goalposts and get, and then, you know, behind them, and he would, uh, yell towards the kicker and then two other teammates with sticks would hit the goalposts and that the combination of those noises would allow the kicker to kind of center where he's trying to kick the ball. And apparently, they made about half their field goals, too.

So, or extra points. So, you know, I mean, it's just, again, I mean, it cited people didn't do that well, uh, with, with, uh, you know, kicking accuracy back then. So, it's actually, you know, pretty darn amazing what they did.

Definitely is. I thought that was great. It was a great story.

Especially like you said, the, the part where they completed a forward pass, I mean, that, that had to be so well-timed when we talk about timing between a quarterback and a receiver. Now, you, you would have to put it right where a guy's expecting it or at the right time or, you know, it had to be like a basket catch, you know, you gotta, gotta believe. Right.

Yeah. That's, that's great stuff. This is, is that's what makes these tidbits so interesting because they're just such off-the-wall topics sometimes that, uh, you know, you, you grab from an old newspaper or book or the postcards or whatever, and, uh, really makes for some interesting reading and, and makes you scratch your head sometimes and sit there in amazement like this one is because these, uh, these guys really did some amazing things.

So really appreciate you chatting about that and, uh, and sharing this with us. So it's a good story. Yeah, definitely is.

And Tim, uh, maybe if you could share with the listeners where they too can, uh, pick up on some of the tidbits that you have each and every day, that'd be a great thing. Yeah. So, uh, footballarchaeology.com is my website.

I post a new story or what I call a tidbit every day at seven o'clock Eastern. Periodically I post other, you know, longer form stories as well. I also post it on, on Facebook or not Facebook, but Twitter.

And so, you know, just a reminder, if you're, um, if you go find the site, you know, you can, you know, now there are, I don't know, 400 some different articles sitting out there. So, um, you know, just use a little magnifying glass to search, uh, search whatever topic you want and see what's out there and, um, have at it. I mean, if you like it, then sign up, subscribe, and, uh, you get the email every night at seven o'clock.

It's great stuff and, uh, really makes your football brain work each and every night and, uh, really enjoyable. So, uh, Tim Brown, thank you very much. footballarchaeology.com is the site, and we'll talk to you again next Tuesday.

Okay. Very good. Thank you, sir.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

Sometimes, the rough and tumble-game of football is tragic. Severe injuries and even deaths have occurred to participants who were just trying to enjoy the game.

Timothy Brown brought to light one of these circumstances from 1910 in a Tidbit he wrote about an interesting incident at Bethany College in 1910.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown Murder Football Field

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigScanDispatch.com. Welcome again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to another Tuesday.

We have Timothy P. Brown here from FootballArcheology.com. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Hey, Darin.
Look forward to chatting.

It's a potentially difficult topic that we're going to talk about, but. I'll let that story develop as we go. Yeah, this one is kind of surprising.

Usually, your titles and your articles are a little bit lighter. And your title from early October was Murder on the Football Field. A little bit of a mystery hangs over with that.

I wanted to read this article like any good Agatha Christie or Alfred Hitchcock. I'm sure a lot of the other readers of FootballArcheology.com did, too. So we are glad you were here to tell us about this instance in this article.

Yeah, so, you know, one of the things I enjoy doing, you know, is kind of set up to some of these some of our discussions on your podcast is to just kind of talk about, well, how did I come across this issue or idea or information? And so this is one where, you know, I'm always looking at old RPPCs, so real photo postcards. And some of them I buy just, you know, because the guys are wearing some old equipment or, you know, the gear they have is just so horrible that it's just, you know, kind of almost amazing that they decided to play. And other times, it's just photographically, or something is appealing to it.

So, in this case, I came across an RPPC. It showed through the backfield for the Bethany College team in West Virginia from 1910. And I thought the picture was amusing because they're standing on the field.

You can see the goalposts in the background, and not too far behind the goalposts, but not too far to the left is a school building. With a bunch of glass windows, I just thought, OK, well, hopefully they had an accurate kicker. But, you know, if they didn't, then they broke some windows.

That's actually what got me interested in the image. But then, a lot of times, what I do is, you know, I knew it was identified as 1910 Bethany. So I did a quick search on them and found out that in one of their games, an opposing player had died.

And so then I said, OK, I'm going to bid on it. So I had a thing, and eventually, you know, I got it. And so then that's when I really kind of dove into the research.

It just did enough to know, OK, I could probably make a story out of this. So, I mean, what happened is that Bethany College, a small school in West Virginia, they were playing for the second time they were playing West Virginia University in football that year. And, you know, they'd lost, I think, a tie to a close game earlier in the year.

And so this is like, you know, if there's a 10-game season, there's a 7th or 8th game of the season. And the game had been pretty chippy. And, in fact, the Bethany coach had complained to the officials about, you know, just some of the behavior in the game.

And so, with a couple of minutes left, Virginia's quarterback, a guy named Monk, kicks a field goal to seal the game, make it 5-0. So, Bethany was pretty much going to be out of it. And then, several plays later, Monk is still on the field.

He gets by a Bethany player, falls to the ground, is carried off the field, and dies a couple of hours later. So now, you know, some of the initial reports came out. So, you know, any time a player died in a game, and especially in, you know, this is a fairly big-time game, you know, it got publicized.

So there were, you know, if you looked at almost any small town newspaper in the country, it had a short article about this player who was killed in a football game. The initial articles said that the umpire had kicked the Bethany player, a guy named McCoy and that he had seen McCoy hit Monk from behind. And then, so he thought it was deliberate.

And so then he kicked him out of the game for that. And then, you know, basically, right away, the local coroner sets up a coroner's inquest. It's going to be scheduled for a couple of days later, and he orders McCoy to appear. He wasn't arrested, but he was the next thing to being arrested.

And the whole thing was, OK, he was the coroner was viewing this as a case of he was investigating it as a murder. And so obviously that made it, you know, the headlines all the more dramatic. And, you know, pretty much right away, both schools canceled the rest of their football season.

So then, when it comes time to do the inquest, McCoy shows up. But by that time, the umpire was kind of walking back to some of his earlier comments. So, yes, he had kicked McCoy out of the game, but he was no longer saying, well, I saw him hit from behind.

And then other people, nobody on either team said, saw the hit. But there were people in the crowd who testified at this inquest that. McCoy hit Monk from in front, and it was basically a standard football play.

So nothing, you know, nothing unusual from that from that vantage point. Now, then, what was revealed in this inquest is that Monk. Had a history of concussions and even beyond anything that you can even think happened today.

The previous year, he had in a game, he had been hit, and he went down unconscious. The newspapers varied whether he was unconscious for two days or two weeks, but he was out of it for a significant amount of time. And then, you know, basically, the doctor said you cannot play football anymore.

His parents told him you could not play football anymore, but he went back to school for his senior year, went out for the football team, and, you know, because he's, you know, this hard-nosed kid or whatever, the team looks to be captain, you know. So, so basically, you know, once that testimony came out that, you know, the coroner is like, well, this is an accidental death. Right.

You know, you can't, you know, even if this, even if McCoy had done something dastardly, you know, Monk was playing when he shouldn't have been. And, you know, he had this history of, you know, significant head injury, and yet he went out there and played again. You know, so anyways, you know, it's one of those where, you know, there's some other little extenuating circumstances.

But I think for me, then, you know, I don't recall seeing other instances where, you know, somebody was being, was potentially charged with murder for activity on a football field. I'm sure there are other situations, you know, I probably should do some searching for that. But it kind of raises the question of what would it take to, you know, so what would have to happen today for people to leave the field and, or, you know, folks in the stands and look at it and say, that guy ought to be charged with murder, you know, in the event somebody was killed as a result of being hit or struck, you know, on a football field.

So, you know, you know, in my mind, I see certain, I'm not advocating necessarily for the murder charge, but I'm not advocating against it. But there are some of the targeting hits that I think are horribly foul, you know, in terms of the way that some, you know, players are hitting one another. There, I've seen cases, more at youth level, actually, than among older kids, where somebody grabs a face mask and is literally like spinning another guy around, you know, twisting his neck, that kind of thing.

What would you know if that happened? And then you got, you know, another case would be, you know, sometimes it's these fights, you know, and somebody's helmet comes off. But if somebody took their helmet and swung it, hit another guy who doesn't have his helmet on, you know, if you hit him in the head. It's sort of that Miles Garrett, Mason Rudolph from a Steelers-Browns game, probably about four or five years ago.

I think that was a famous case of that with Miles Garrett swinging the helmet at an uncapped Mason Rudolph or whatever, whatever happened before that because they were talking about maybe pressing charges there, and it didn't even make contact, you know, for assault. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you think about it, it's like, OK, how far does the fact that you're playing a football game absolve you from your behavior? You know, behavior that, you know, I mean, you played the game.

One of the great things about it is you can go run into a guy, slam him, and take him to the ground, and it's all sanctioned. Everybody's happy that you did it, right? You can't do that on the street, right? And you can't do it in your classroom. You get to do it on the football field.

And yet where, you know, where does one cross the line? I just think it's an interesting question. Thankfully, you know, it's not one that we have to face, at least, you know, certainly very often, but, you know, the potential is out there, you know, that so it's kind of, I mean, it's not that you have to answer the question. Still, it's just, you know, to think about what would it take, what would it take to for somebody, you'd say, OK, that that guy ought to be charged with murder for that. Yeah, are you going to solve this mystery? I don't know if I want to be the judge and jury on that one. That's yeah, I mean, I think there's, you know, especially nowadays, we have video on everything from little kids' games.

You have probably three or four parents filming it. Everything's filmed, though, you know, and you get the NFL games. You got forty-five cameras from every angle of the stadium looking at it and, you know, five drones and whatever.

You know, so I think you can probably figure out what's going on pretty much on almost any football game, especially major college and professional and probably a lot of the other ones, too. So, I think you may have more video evidence if a crime happened on a football field than you would maybe even at a bank. You know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good point. I bet it was like, you know, very few games, you know, were filmed and certainly not a Bennie West Virginia game, you know, I'm right just wasn't going to happen, you know.

So, yeah, it's. Yeah, yeah, I mean, just another one of those other examples of where technology just changes, changes the questions and the answers and. So.

Yeah, and I think it's crazy, crazy, crazy; I think there's more of a camaraderie in football, maybe in the more modern eras when there's a brotherhood, and everybody understands, you know, that you're all on the same side and you can get somebody can get hurt badly if you do a cheap shot because you see, you know, teammates and opponents come together when somebody goes down. I think even more so than this era where people just, you know, wanted to hurt you sometimes, and that was just the way the game was at that period of time. Yeah, so I think it's a little bit more. It's calmed down a little bit, and people understand a little bit more that they can really do some damage to somebody.

Yeah, and I think, you know, obviously the the protective gear and everything is much better, obviously, all the concussion protocols are we're in a lot of space. Both have bigger, faster, stronger athletes. So, you know, it's.

That getting that goes on is really pretty incredible; that's true, and people are still getting hurt, and sometimes even death is occurring, and that's a bad thing, too. So hopefully, we will get some technology, rules, and techniques and try to prevent people from getting permanently injured and, you know, even worse. So, hopefully, that's in the future for football.

So, Tim, we really appreciate you bringing up this story; I mean, it brings up you bring up a lot of questions; people are going to be thinking about this, I know I'll be thinking about this and something that happened, you know, one hundred and ten, one hundred fifteen years ago and, you know, bringing some light to it and bringing some memory of this young man that passed away playing a game that he loved, even to the point where he knew he was in danger playing it and did it anyway and to his own detriment. And, you know, it all comes through just seeing a building with a bunch of windows and a goalpost by it. And you're really interesting.

So, yeah, you have some interesting things like this each day in your tidbits on footballarchaeology.com. And maybe you could share with the listeners how they, too, can participate in reading this and enjoying your work. Yeah, so, you know, the easiest, best, and my preferred way would be that somebody goes to goes to the site, you know, www.footballarchaeology.com, subscribe, you'll get an email every night at seven o'clock Eastern with that day's story. Alternatively, you can follow me on Twitter, in threads, or on the Substack app.

Of course, you can always bookmark the site and visit it periodically. But do whatever works for you. The information is out there, so have at it and consume it however you prefer.

All right, well, footballarchaeology.com is the website; we have the show notes and the links to get to this particular tidbit, we'll also have a link in there, too, that'll get you to the rest of Tim's site. And his name is Timothy P. Brown, and we enjoy him each and every Tuesday here on Pigskin Dispatch. And Tim, we thank you once again for shedding some light and enlightenment on Football of Antiquity.

Very good. Thank you, sir. And we will see you next week.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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Have you ever wondered how American football evolved from its rugby roots into the juggernaut sport it is today? The answer might surprise you, and it involves a surprising organization – the YMCA.

Today, we're thrilled to welcome Timothy P. Brown, the mastermind behind the fascinating website footballarchaeology.com. Mr. Brown has dedicated his research to uncovering the forgotten stories and hidden origins of the game we love.

In this special post, we'll delve into the often-overlooked role the YMCA played in shaping American football. Through a conversation with Mr. Brown, we'll explore how this organization fostered the development of the sport, nurtured its early pioneers, and ultimately helped lay the groundwork for the gridiron giants we witness today.

So, buckle up and get ready to embark on a journey through the fascinating history of American football, where we'll unearth the surprising influence of the YMCA!

Here is the full transcript of the conversation with Timothy Brown on the YMCA's influence on football

Darin Hayes
Welcome again to the pig pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to Tuesday football, archeology .com day. Timothy P. Brown, the host of that website, is here to visit again, as he does every Tuesday. Tim, welcome back to the pig pen.

Timothy Brown
Hey, thank you, Darin. I'm looking forward to talking about a song. Well, it's not; it's about a subject related to a song that we can't talk about and that we can't sing or play because of copyright restrictions.

Darin Hayes
But, audience, we can share with you that Tim is dressed like an Indian chief, and I am dressed like a construction worker as we are talking about the subject, but we're just kidding. But of course, we are talking about the great organization of the YMCA. We have probably heard of that before or attended or taken some swimming classes like I did; I have one not too far from me. And we have some great ties in football history with the YMCA history that Tim had in a recent tidbit. So Tim, why don't you take it away and share this great story with us?

Timothy Brown
Yeah, so, you know, this is one of these. One of the things that fascinates me about football is that it is a different type of organization that supported and helped football grow, especially in the early years. And so we tend to think of football as this thing that's run through schools, and then obviously, it became professionalized. And so the NFL and AFL and AFC and, you know, various semi-pro teams, whatever they're, you know, but there were, you know, back in the day, there were organizations like the American Legion after World War One, there were all kinds of industrial leagues, some of which are where the basis of the NFL, right. So, different kinds of organizations have influenced football's growth and one that is vastly underestimated, I think, by many is the YMCA. And so it came about in a couple of different ways. One is that, back in, you know, one of the arguments for playing football and justification for football was the Muscular Christianity Movement that came out of England. And so it's just kind of this, this belief in the mind and the body and the spirit and that, you know, football was a way to meld, you know, that all three of them came together in football and provided good training for young men who needed to be hardy, you know, da da da. And so, that philosophy matched very well with the YMCA, which also had, I believe, come out of England, but in any event, the YMCA had a school that is now Springfield College in Massachusetts, that was was a school to train people to go out into the world and be YMCA directors. So I mean, it was kind of like a seminary, or you can think about it however you want. But you know, this is when there weren't physical education majors anywhere, and if you wanted to become somebody who would go out and teach, you know, physical fitness. You know, you also bought into some of the, you know, the religious side of it, then the YMCA training school was the place to be. And so, you know, right after he graduated from, from Yale in 1890, Amos Alonzo Stagg shows up, but, you know, he becomes the football coach and, well, basketball wasn't invented yet, but he was a football coach and baseball coach at YMCA training school. Now, in those days, he also played for them. So he was, you know, a player-coach. And, you know, they played typically a bit of a, you know, and, you know, they kept playing, you know, for years, they're still playing today in Springfield, but, you know, they would like a lot of schools in the Northeast States to step up and play, you know, Harvard and Yale here and there. Most of them played, you know, a smaller college schedule, but they played; they were very competitive and had a lot of good players. And one of the guys on Stagg's teams, the two years that he coached there before he went to UChicago, one of the guys was John Naismith, who ended up inventing basketball while at Springfield. And another guy who's a little bit later was William Morgan, who invented volleyball. So, these schools were pretty influential and certainly created those two sports. And, and then, you know, playing football. And so, but, you know, their impact came from World War One. And the YMCA and its role is kind of underappreciated, you know, in training camp, any American training camp around the world, and then even those, like rest camps and stuff, you know, once and once they're in Belgium and France, and in England, had a YMCA hut. And so these were typically fairly simple structures. But, you know, they, they had stationery for the guys to write home, they had, you know, a library, just they taught classes, especially, you know, there was a lot of, you know, they weren't GIs yet, but they were, you know, the doughboys, a lot of them couldn't speak English, so they teach English classes. But another big emphasis was that they supplied, you know, what would be the equivalent now of $80 million worth of athletic equipment to soldiers. Now that was basketballs and tennis rackets, etc. But football was a big one. And so, if there were athletic events at a military camp in World War One, it was likely very much, you know, YMCA involvement in it. And so, you know, these are especially like the interregimental games rather than the all-star teams for a camp. So, you know, that was an opportunity, you know, this is a time when I think it was less than 5% of Americans went to college. And so they, you know, they might have played for some rinky-dink little high school team in the little farm town that they grew up in. This became an opportunity for them to experience, you know, well-coached, you know, and more sophisticated football. And so it was, you know, it really kind of democratized football, you know, the World War One camps. Because, I mean, the vast majority of guys of that age range, you know, served in some form or capacity or their brother did or, you know, so it, you know, really spurred interest in football. And, you know, there's many, you know, folks that had made the case that, you know, that military football in World War One was a key to spurring the development of the NFL, you know, because it just demonstrated that people would come and attend games played by these former collegians, these college all-stars that, you know, nobody had said that they would do that before, you know, the NFL before that, you know, the pro leagues before that were mostly like kind of steel town folks and guys who, yeah, some of them went to college, and some of them didn't. Still, it was, you know, more of a semi-pro field than what came in the 20s, you know, and then obviously really took off in the 50s and 60s. So anyways, it's just, you know, the YMCA is one of those organizations you don't think of as being influential in the development of football, but it was. And there was, you know, physical instruction for the Navy anyway. Was this guy named Walter Camp? So, I mean, they were connected, right?

Darin Hayes
Yeah, another interesting story comes out of that with Nay Smith and a connection to football innovation. And I wrote an article about three years ago about who was the first to wear a helmet was the question and nay, smith's name is thrown in there because he, he, I wouldn't say that he wore a helmet. He had a; it was described as his, uh, he was getting cauliflower ear from getting knocked around playing the line, you know, in 1891 game against Amherst is what I sort of narrowed down to going through some of the descriptions of it. I think that's a game on October 17th, 1891. His girlfriend at the time helped sew some flannel together and tie it around his ears so he wouldn't get boxed and be irritated with his ears. It was one of the first head coverings in football that was publicized. Uh, they were not like a rag tied around your head or something, you know, but something for protection on your head. So, it's just odd that, here, the inventor of basketball who gets credited, played at this small college and has had so many great sports sprout out of it and so many great sports stories that connect to football. I think that's just amazing. Yeah.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, he, well, he, I've used that image of Naismith with that headgear, I think, in one of my books, but you know, definitely in some of the writing. And I know I got that I got, you know, Naismith was Canadian. So I got that image from their equivalent of the National Archives; whatever, I can't think of the name right now. But yeah, it's a great image. He's playing center; he's snapping the ball with his hands. And, he's got that, the thing wrapped around his head. Yeah, I, you never know, you never know where stories will come from. And, and the, you know, what I enjoy is, you know, the links of one thing to another. Yeah, so that's fun.

Darin Hayes
And I think it's interesting, too, if you can; you made me think about it in this context. So here you have Amos Alonzo Stagg, who, I assume, graduated from Yale. I think he graduated from there. Yeah. So he graduates from Yale and gets his master's in a phys ed degree at YMCA school. Just today, we look at him like, Hey, what the hell was that? You know, you went to Yale, you know, and are going to get a phys ed degree, you know, but

Timothy Brown
Well, you know, he was. I think he was a divinity student at Yale, but I'm not positive.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, I think you're right.

Timothy Brown
But he was definitely, I mean, his whole upbringing, a very religious man. And, and so, yeah, it made sense. Right. And, and some of his, you know, the guy who became president at U Chicago, knew him at Yale because he'd been, you know, faculty there. And just, you know, so he knew the character of Stagg. And, you know, he's an excellent athlete, one of the best baseball pitchers of his time. And so, that's part of why he said, hey, I want you to come out here.

Darin Hayes
I'm just putting in today's context. If my kid graduates from Ivy League after paying that and says, hey, I'm going to go to community college to get a phys ed degree too, because that's what I want to do. You're like, what do you mean you'll do that? You know, let me choke you first. But yeah, great stuff. That is a very interesting story. And it has so many webs and tentacles coming off, and it's just awesome. And I'm sure, you know, that connects to a bunch of your other tidbits. And you have these tidbits to come out every day, about 7 pm. They're very enjoyable. And, you know, talk about some great parts of football history that aren't mainstream but are very interesting. Indeed, maybe if you could share how folks could get their hands on those every day, too, that would be some enjoyment for them.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, so, you know, my site is footballarchaeology.com. You just go out there and subscribe, and once you're subscribed, you'll get an email with that day's story every day. And then, you know, kind of read them at your leisure. Alternatively, I'm under the same name, Football Archaeology; I'm on Twitter threads and on the sub-stack application. So, however, it works for you, if you want to read it, that's how you get to me.

Darin Hayes
Well, that's very good, Tim. We appreciate you preserving that football history each and every day, coming on each week, and sharing with us. And, uh, we want to talk to you again next week, and we appreciate you.

Timothy Brown
Thank you. That's very good. I look forward to it.

Up until about World War II football players by rule pretty much had to play the entire game. There were not offensive and defensive specialists. The skill sets that soldiers who trained for war by playing football gained added a surplus of roster talent and the rules were then adapted post war to allow mass substitution as often as coaches wanted to.

This ushered in the era of two-platoon football and Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology wrote a great post on the first All-America team from this new era.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on the 1st Two-Platoon All-America Team

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history, and welcome to another day where we get to talk to footballarchaeology.com's Timothy P. Brown about one of the great tidbits that he writes every day about football of yesteryear. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Thank you for having me on. I look forward to talking about two-platoon football.

Yeah, why don't you first let's give you a title? You titled this tidbit back in October of 2022, the first two-platoon All-America team. And why don't you explain to the audience what two-platoon football is and what was significant about this All-America team? Yeah.

So, back in the day, if you played a football game, you put your 11 guys or 15 guys out there, and that's who you played with. There were no substitutions. Then they started allowing substitutions, but pretty much, once you left the game, you were out, just like soccer remains today.

It was the same game; they came from the same origin, so similar rules applied. But over time, football allowed substitutions in certain instances, but for the most part, until 1941, if you, once you're out, you're out. There were no go-backs. And so, in 1941, because of concern about the, you know, there were a lot of guys enlisting, and they were, you know, I'm not sure if they were being drafted yet or not, but either way, there were a lot of college-age men heading into the military, even, you know, pre-Pearl Harbor.

And so, they were concerned about roster sizes. And so, they passed a rule allowing coaches to substitute anytime they wanted to in a game. And so, the funny thing is, this is, you know, I think at multiple levels, this is a story of how much people follow tradition as much as the rules.

So, even though the rule was passed in 41, pretty much without exception, the only people who got substituted, in the way that we think about it today, were kickers and punters. You know, coaches would bring in those kinds of people, but they and even those were very few because typically your punter, the kicker was your halfback or somebody, you know, one of the regular players. And so, but then in 1945, Michigan had a really depleted roster, and they were going to play, you know, Army, which had, you know, Blanchard and Davis and a bunch of other guys.

And they just knew they were just going to get their lunch handed to them. And so, Fritz Crisler, the coach, was looking for, you know, some way to try to, you know, give his team an advantage. And so, he realized, hey, the way this rule is written, I can swap my offense and defense out whenever I want to or swap players in whenever I want to.

Even though nobody's done it, the rule says I can't. So, from his vantage point, he was exploiting a loophole, right? I mean, not in the way the rule was written, but in the way it had been traditionally applied. So, he does that against the Army.

He basically plays offensive and defensive units. I think there were three or four guys who played both ways. They're, you know, that much better players.

Other coaches picked up on that, and they started doing it. Over the next couple of years, the two platoons, you know, the old no substitution was called the single tune. And two platoon, what became, you know, kind of the standard term for swapping offensive and defensive players.

And so, then, that's fine. And there, it was raining, you know, gaining speed. But it wasn't until 1948 that anyone named an all-American team with two platoons.

So, in 1945, 46, and 47, they still kept naming a single platoon all-American team. So, 11 guys, no specialists, right? And so, finally, this organization called the NEA was a big one, kind of like the UPI or the AP or somebody, you know, along those lines at the time. They named a two-platoon all-American team in 1948.

So, just, you know, some of the guys whose names, you know, a lot of people probably will recognize as Charlie Justice, who was back at, you know, North Carolina, Doke Walker of SMU, Eddie LeBaron, who played at Pacific, some guy named Darryl Royal, who was at Texas. Leon Hart was the only player named to play on both the offensive and defensive teams at Notre Dame. So, then the other thing I just said is that it doesn't so much relate to 1940. I just find it really interesting that it was not until the 1980s that all-American teams added kickers and punters to their rosters, right? So, I mean, it took all that, so, you know, we had moved into specialist players.

I mean, even through the 60s, there were still a lot of kickers and punters who were everyday players, right? You know, Don, like I grew up, so Don Chandler, an end originally and kicked, was a kicker as well. Honey Anderson was the punter, and he was a halfback, you know, so there was a lot of that going on. And like George Blanda, you know, he was a quarterback.

Yeah, Lou Groza is a lineman. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can just go through it; there's a whole slew of guys like that.

And so, but so anyways, you know, but clearly specialists had come into the game, especially after the, you know, onset of the soccer-style kicker in the 60s, you know, with the Go-Go Axe and others. But it wasn't until the 80s that they, you know, they named separate punters and kickers. So just, you know, it's an amazing thing that it took that long.

Yeah. Wow. I didn't realize that about the punters and kickers.

I thought that would have been, you know, going on for a while. I was like, man, that's great stuff. So, you know, I guess the kickers today, even though they feel that they're shunned by the rest of football and looked down upon a little bit of not being, you know, sometimes called not real football players and everything, they would have been pissed back in the 70s when they weren't even honored.

Yeah. Well, you know, and the funny thing about it is like, you know, if you go back and you read the newspaper reports of guys who were named all American in the teens and the twenties and thirties and whatnot, a lot of backs were named, you know, especially in the heavy punting years, you know, they were named as much for their punting ability as for their running ability or their passing ability. You know, punting was just so important to the game, and they were the ones who did it.

Yeah. It wasn't like Jim Thorpe, one of the greatest punters and dropkickers ever. And that was sort of what some of his fame was besides his running.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. I mean, that's the triple threat. You know, the whole thing is running, passing, and kicking. You know, it is either a form of kicking or typically punting. So yeah, I mean, it was, there's, I mean, you just can go on and on about the, the number of guys who, who were especially running backs with, you know, fullbacks, fullbacks, a lot of times were like the big studs of the teams in the twenties and thirties.

And, you know, a lot of them were, were really, really effective punters. Yeah. So I guess, you know, World War II changed the world, and it changed the world of football, too.

So it's sort of that line of debarkation between the single platoon and the dual platoon because of the rule changes and, you know, a substitution. So very interesting. Great stuff.

Well, then, in college, they went back to single platoon in 52. The pros, you know, once the pros went, you know, swapping offensive, offense, and defense, they never looked back, you know, their game was much more about entertainment and everything. But once you went to platoon, you needed more coaches and bigger rosters.

The coaches became more specialized. I mean, think about how much more complicated the game has become. And a lot of that's because it's two platoons, you know if you only have so many minutes a week to impart, you know, knowledge and techniques to players, if you got to cut it in half, well, you know, it can't be as, you know, you just can't complicate it as much.

So, these coaches studied just defense and coached just defense. So, I mean, it's, you know, certainly among the top four, five, six rules in terms of the effect on the game, but the colleges went back in 52 to dual platoon really as a cost-saving measure. And then, you know, kind of slowly, and then especially in the late fifties and early sixties, swapped it over.

By 64, Katie had barred the door, you know, a total of two platoons. Wow. Amazing stuff.

And you sit there, and you think about how good athletes these guys had to be to be on the field for, you know, 60 minutes or 48 minutes, whatever it was at the time. It might've been longer than that back in that era, but they had longer, longer halves back then, too, like 35-minute halves. Yeah, that was more; that was all like pre-1912 or something like that.

I mean, that was earlier. Yeah. But I mean, just think about it in terms of just the shape of, you know, what players look like.

I mean, you know, you've got these six, eight, six, nine, 340-pound guys running around now, can't play a 60-minute game. They just can't. No, they can't even take all the offensive-defensive snaps, you know, unless you're an offensive lineman or a quarterback, you're, you're probably going to get substituted in while your team is on the field, and that, uh, that genre, that offense or defense.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, my part of my argument is always looking at world-class rugby teams, and they've got guys for six, three, two 60, you know, running around as the, you know, kind of the forwards blocking, um, you know, they're the guys leading the scrum, but there aren't, you know, there aren't the kind of guys that you see in the NFL or, you know, almost any major college team.

And nowadays, half the D3 teams have kids who weigh more than 300 pounds, right? Um, you know, so it's, you know, you just can't, you can't play like that in a, in a 60-minute game, especially when there were far, there weren't TV titles, there weren't, you know, anywhere, there weren't anywhere near the number of passing completions or weren't that many balls out of bounds. The ball went out of bounds, and the clock kept running.

I mean, all that kind of, you know, the rules were so different. Um, the body types were different, but yeah, amazing stuff. Yeah.

Tremendous. Tim, you know, we enjoy these stories and, and, you know, learning about these little pieces of football, which this one's a pretty major story of the evolution of football, but, uh, you know, you, you share with these, uh, these stories and sometimes they're just fun. Sometimes they're really serious and game-changing like this one was. You call them your daily tidbits, and maybe you could tell folks how they can enjoy your daily tidbits.

Yeah. So, you know, the best thing is just to go to footballarchaeology.com and, you know, subscribe. You can subscribe for free.

You'll get an email. As a result, you'll get an email every night at seven o'clock with that day's story. Otherwise, you can follow me on Twitter, sometimes called X, but I don't call it that.

And then, catch me on the Substack app on threads or just bookmark the site and pop in whenever you want. Well, Tim, we appreciate you educating us and sharing your knowledge on football history. And we'd love to talk to you again next Tuesday about another one of your tidbits.

Well, I think we can find something to chat about next week. I'll leave that up to you. Thanks much.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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-Transcription of the 1905 Fairmont Experiment 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 Tuesday, Football Archaeology Day. As we go to FootballArchaeology.com's author, Timothy P. Brown.And Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Thank you.

Good to see you again. Looking forward to chatting. You have one of your most recent tidbits that you've dug up some real good football archaeology on this.

And just a great story from 1905 that I'd love to have you tell the audience about. Yeah. So, I mean, I think probably anybody that's listening knows that there were a lot of concerns, you know, leading up to and then in the 1905 season about injuries and deaths on the playing field.

And so, you know, there was just a lot of pressure to make some changes to the game. We had the whole Teddy Roosevelt thing. And then, you know, in the end, the guy who was the president or chancellor of NYU, he formed, he got people together to start really looking at this issue.

And, you know, so there were, the newspapers had all kinds of suggestions about possible rule changes. And, you know, there are people throwing out all kinds of ideas. And so, they kind of started talking about, you know, is there a way that we could experiment and have a test game? And, you know, there have been other times where that occurred.

Stag did some things, you know, this is about another five years down the road. And Hugo Bezdek, you know, did some testing. So, there are a couple of different instances of stuff like that.

But so, this one was, you know, while they were kind of looking for a game to be played, you know. Basically, the teams had disbanded for the year. But for some reason, the folks at Fairmont, which is now Wichita State, you know, in Wichita, they had been looking, you know, to maybe play a Christmas game just to kind of keep folks entertained and have some fun. And it turned out then that they agreed to play a test game against Washburn, which is a, you know, a state school in Kansas.

And so, you know, they were, and basically what they agreed to do was to try out some of the rules that were being proposed. And, you know, I don't know exactly how much interaction these guys had with folks back east, but the coaches of the two teams, Fairmont, were coached by a guy named Willis Bates, and Washburn was coached by John Outland. So, Bates had played at Dartmouth, and Outland had played at Penn, and, you know, he's the Outland trophy guy, right? So, so they were both, you know, they both had, you know, East Coast cred.

And the fact that they would play a game would be something that would be kind of, you know, trusted, you know, for want of a better term. So, and just one other odd thing about that year was that Fairmont, earlier in the year, had played a game at night. And it was played under, I think Coleman Lanterns is a local manufacturer somewhere in the Wichita area.

And so they lit, they had Coleman Gas Lanterns hanging all around the field and over the field. Maybe not, maybe not over the field. I think they had but it turned out to be kind of a mess because it just didn't put off enough light.

But anyway, it's just one of those early, early little factoids. Yeah. I never heard that before.

It's kind of interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, there were others that did electrical, you know, lighting before that, but they were the only ones I've ever heard of that tried to do, you know, gas lanterns. But we have the Zippo factories not too far from here. I wonder if they tried that bunch of Zippos lit up at the same time.

Or just have all the kids turn on their cell phones. So yeah. So anyway, they agreed to play a game on Christmas day.

And so they said, okay, we're going to allow the forward pass. We're going to require offenses to gain 10 yards rather than five and three downs. And then they also gave officials the authority to, you know, throw somebody out of the game if they, you know, for any kind of unnecessary roughness, which was, they didn't have that necessarily at the time.

So, you know, as it turned out, it turned into kind of a, the game was kind of a turd, frankly. It was like, it ended up in a zero, zero tie. Each of the teams threw some forward passes and completed two or three.

But we don't really know. I mean, all we really can operate off of these newspaper articles. So we don't really know how they threw the ball.

Right. And we just know they didn't do it very effectively. But the whole thing comes down to that they just couldn't imagine and think through how to change the game of football, how to approach it differently, given a new set of rules.

Right. And so it's just that idea that for us, we know the old spiral is to throw a football, but they didn't. You know, they tried all kinds of basketball and two-handed set shots.

They did shovel passes. They did, you know, you name it. You know, they tried, and they threw the football like a grenade, with a straight arm, you know.

And just if you think about it, how do you tell somebody to go out on a pass route when they've never seen a pass route before? Right. I mean, what do you do? You know, so these are the first guys trying to figure this stuff out. And they didn't do a very good job of it.

You know, and you can't really blame them. A lot of people struggled with it for about 10 years. You know, once the pass was legalized, there were some that got it, got after it right away, but most people didn't.

So, you know, and it turns out that, so one of their big conclusions was that, you know, because they really didn't adapt their offenses at all, they went from playing a game where they had three downs to getting five yards. Now, all of a sudden, they have three downs to get 10 yards. They didn't change their offense really.

So guess what? They didn't get many first-downs, right? And so they viewed that as a silly rule. Oh, it's never going to work. Well, it didn't work because they didn't reimagine the game.

And then, you know, find the tactics, find the techniques, you know, to do things differently. So anyways, I think it's really just the neatest part of the game in total is number one, that it failed, right? And that it, but it shows the difficulty of reimagining how to play this game under a new set of rules and why it took a while for that to occur. But, you know, they did their best.

They were willing to try it. And, you know, so, you know, good for them, right? Right. You know, I always found it kind of interesting, you know, hearing that story and, you know, the reason why they did it is to try to report back East to give them some information on, you know, it's an experimental game on some of these rules, but you never really see a whole lot, except for maybe years later, there was, I think one gentleman that was involved or was a spectator or something that had some information about it.

We don't know how accurate it was or anything, but there's nothing going back to, you know, to camp or to, you know, John C. Bell or any of those guys back East that tells what happened in this game, you know, what they tried. And I'm always surprised, maybe someday somebody will open up some notebook and, you know, in their great-grandparents' house or something and have some information. But I was finding that kind of fascinating.

Well, you know, you have to believe that there were at least personal letters exchanged. So, like, because, you know, both of these coaches were, you know, they were Eastern guys, you know, and they maintained their connections. So, there had to be something back and forth.

But yeah, I mean, as far as I know, I mean, there's no report to a committee and, you know, maybe it was because things were, there was so much turmoil at the time, you know, we'd had multiple rules committees in the late 1800s and now, you know, we're going between the IFA and, you know, whatever. And this whole thing that NYU is getting going will eventually become the NCAA. But yeah, you know, who knows? Yeah.

It's not like they picked up the telephone and called somebody very well. No, exactly. You know, and so, it had to be, you know, just the fact that they were even in touch.

Somehow, they got all this material. Now, the newspapers, you know, that was, you know, the wire services and that, that would have been one of the main ways for them to even learn what the potential rule changes are. But, you know, as this game got reported on, you know, if you look it up, I mean, you name it, any newspaper in the country, they did at least some kind of report on this test game.

So, you know, people were paying attention to it, but, you know, then it was forgotten pretty quickly. Right. So, it might be one of the original bowl games.

Of course, the Rose Bowl came out in 1902. So, I guess it wasn't the original holiday bowl game, but it was played right on Christmas day even, right? Yeah. Okay.

And so, one of the things that, you know, part of the reason I kind of, I did this particular tidbit was because I'd come across, you know, a real photo postcard of the 1906 Fairmont team, you know, online. I, you know, I ended up, you know, buying things because most people looked at it and said, I don't know who this is. Still, I knew who they were, you know, you know, so I basically was able to pick it up for a song, but, you know, and so, my best guess is, you know, that the vast majority of 1906 guys were on the 1905 team too. So, probably a number of the guys played in the game are in that picture, but, you know. Interesting.

I have a piece of history in my possession. Yeah. Well, that's a cool piece of history and, you know, we appreciate you sharing it with us each and every day on your tidbits.

And speaking of that, why don't you tell the listeners how they too can enjoy some of these great photographs and, you know, your website and where they can, you know, get a hold of the tidbits each and every day? Yeah. So, the site is, it's a sub-stack site, but I've got a, you know, personalized URL.

So, it's just footballarchaeology.com, and you can sign up there. If you sign up or subscribe, you'll get an email delivered to your inbox every night at seven o'clock Eastern, and then you can read it at your leisure. Yeah.

And so, you know, the only other thing I would just say is, you know, if you're, if you bookmark the site and you're trying to figure out something on football history, you know, there's got one of those little search magnifying glass things in there. So, put in a term, see if something pops up for you and there's probably a story or two in there. Yeah.

So, great stuff. All right. Well, appreciate you, Tim.

And we'll talk to you again next week. Darin, thank you very much. Look forward to it.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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NFL legend Bobby Layne wasn't just a great player, he was a player who adapted to the changing tides of the game. Today, we'll delve into a pivotal moment in his career – his transition from playing in the single-wing offense to thriving in the emerging T-formation. This wasn't just a simple position change; it was a testament to Layne's versatility and his ability to excel in a rapidly evolving landscape.

The single-wing, known for its reliance on a powerful running back and a more static quarterback role, was giving way to the T-formation, which emphasized a mobile quarterback with a stronger passing presence. Join us as we explore the challenges and triumphs of Layne's position switch, and how it not only impacted his career but also foreshadowed the increasing importance of the quarterback position in the NFL. So, grab your playbook and get ready to analyze the fascinating story of Bobby Layne's transformation from wingman to T-formation titan!

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on Bobby Layne

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And it's that time of the week again when we're going to visit Timothy Brown, the author and historian at Football Archeology, and see what he's up to with one of his famous daily tidbits.

And Tim Brown, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, thanks, Darin. Looking forward to chatting once again.

Yeah, this is a great weekly thing we got going on here. And Tim, before we get going into the tidbit, maybe you could, without giving away your secret sauce recipe here, tell us what your normal routine is for finding such interesting and off-the-wall topics for football for your writing. Yeah, you know, so I think, you know, some of it is really kind of planned out, and some of it's just happenstance or luck, I guess.

So, some of the topics are just things that, you know, I just have this the way my mind works a lot of times. I'm like, well, why is it this way? Why why do we do things this way? And so, you know, I just generally look at the game and ask the question and, you know, why do we call halfbacks, halfbacks and fullbacks, fullbacks and quarterbacks, quarterbacks? You know, I mean, just I ask kind of goofy questions like that. And so, anyways, as a result, you know, I just spend a lot of time researching football topics.

And so some of them are really kind of purposeful. I'm trying to find information on a specific thing. But oftentimes while I'm doing that, I just, you know, the article next to the one that I found, you know, for whatever I was researching happens to the headline that I noticed.

And that ends up being the more interesting article. So, you know, so and then other times just, you know, you're reading an article, and they're not just they don't just cover one topic. They talk about two or three things in an article.

And so sometimes the second or third topic is as interesting, more interesting than what I was really looking for. And so, you know, I just kind of notice them. And I have, you know, a couple of ways of tracking that information and kind of putting them in buckets. This is something I'm going to follow up on.

And once I'm done with the research I'm doing today. I just come up with judgments that are either worthy of a long article or a tidbit. Well, you really are quite the magician because I find myself quite often when you have that tidbit come out.

Yeah, I'm saying, you know, Tim's asking a question that I didn't even know that I wanted to know, but now I do want to know it. So it's something I never even thought of half the time. Like, wow, that's that's great.

This is really interesting. And it really dives into it. I think the listeners will enjoy that also.

And we'll give you a way to find Tim's tidbits here in a moment. But we're going to talk about one of his tidbits that really caught my eye back in early May. And it's on the great, legendary Bobby Lane and him switching some positions during his career.

Yeah, so this is an example of one that I kind of stumbled upon. I mean, I've always known about Bobby Lane and yada, yada. But, you know, I was I can't remember what I was looking for.

But at one point, I came across an article that said that leading into his senior season at Texas, he was going to be switching positions. And but he was just, you know, he was he played at a point when football was switching from the single wing and, to some extent, the Notre Dame box to the T formation. You know, so the T really came out.

You didn't say 1940 was really the word really bowed and then had the warrants that stopped some things. But so he's a post-war college kid, and his coach, Dana Bible at Texas, was a single-wing proponent. And so Lane was fullback slash halfback within the single wing.

And, you know, that was an offense that required. Required, I mean, the ideal was the Jim Thorpe, you know, triple threat, the guy who would who could kick, who could run, and who could pass. And Lane was all three of those.

You know, I mean, he was, you know, an absolute stud. The 46 Rose Bowl. He had three TVs rushing.

He had two passes and one receiving any kick for extra points, you know, which is, you know, 40 points every point in the game. He was a part of, you know. So, he was that kind of guy.

And, you know, some single-wing teams relied on their, most of them relied on their tailback to be the primary pastor. Some also had the fullback passing. You know, it depends on whether you have two talented pastors, and that's what you do.

But pretty much nobody had the quarterbacks pass the Notre Dame box. Yeah, they did. The Packers did that kind of stuff.

So anyway, they bring a new coach, and he installs the team. Oh, he looks around. He says, who's the best pastor on the team? Bobby Lane.

Boom. He became the quarterback during his senior year at Texas and was a total stud as a quarterback. But, you know, and it is because he was a great passer before.

You know, he's a great pastor in the single wing. So, he's a great pastor on the team. In some respects, he probably didn't utilize all his talents as well as a single wing did, but they wanted to move to the team.

OK, now I believe, you know, when he became professional, he went to the Pittsburgh Steelers, which is near and dear to my heart. And I think you even say that the Steelers were a single-wing offense at the time when they drafted Lane. I believe Jock Southern might have been the coach there and after the postwar days when they got Lane.

But then they they traded him away to the. Was it the Lions that they traded him to the Bears, the Bears, the Bears, who were a T formation team? It just seems odd to me. OK, he was a single wing in college, converted to the the the T formation and then a single wing offense drafts them and trades them to the T formation.

I'm just wondering, you know, a little bit curious about that. You know, it's part of my Steelers anxiety is part of that. But it's just a little interesting question.

I was wondering if maybe you knew. Yeah. So, you know, I think what happened there is that so he was drafted third overall by Steelers, and they were the last NFL team to be running the single league.

So that kind of tells you, maybe, you know. Maybe they should have thought it was an antiquated office at that time, right? It belonged as well. But that was the case.

But what was happening, too, is that right after the war, you had the All-American Football Conference. And so Lane also got drafted number two overall by the Baltimore Colts. So now he's in a situation where, OK, do I want to play for the Colts and the AFC, or do I play as a T formation quarterback, or do I go back single wing with the Steelers? And he basically told the Steelers he wasn't going to go play for him.

So, in order to recoup, you know, some value, the Steelers traded him to the Bears, who were one of the teams that pioneered the T formation back in 1940. OK, so he never played single-wing and professional. The Steelers traded him before he even played for him.

OK, that makes sense. OK, gotcha. Gotcha.

Because he wanted to be a T formation quarterback. Yeah, correct. Correct.

All right. That explains it. By then, you know, the NFL rules were, you know, a lot, you know, they were just more protective of quarterbacks.

They recognized the value, and they started just doing some things, liberalizing, blocking, et cetera, that just allowed quarterbacks to flourish and attract fans. And now we know what happened with NFL versus college games. Well, very interesting indeed, and a great glimpse back into both college and pro football history and one of the great players in Bobby Lane and Tim; why don't you tell people where they can find your daily tidbits and your website? Yeah, you can find the tidbits at www.footballarchaeology.com. You know, just hit the site and click on an article.

It'll give you the opportunity to subscribe. If you subscribe and you subscribe for free, you can. You'll get an email every day around seven o'clock in the evening with the tidbit or the full article.

That's what I published that day. There's also paid subscriptions that offer some additional value for those that are really into the stuff. And then or you can follow me on Twitter or Facebook using the same football archaeology name and but those, you know, potentially a few a few of my articles.

So I hope you subscribe. All right, folks, and if you're driving the car, don't try to stop and write it down or write it as you're driving. We're going to have it in the show notes.

So you can just come back later. And on PigskinDispatch.com, we'll get you right to Tim's site and to where his social medias are as well. So, Tim, thank you once again for this little glimpse into football history.

And we'll talk to you again next week.

Very good. We'll see you in seven days. Thanks.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

When I was researching information for my book World's Greatest Pro Gridiron Team, I kept seeing games where the time of the first half was much different from he second half.

It occurred almost every game, and though the first half was almost always the same time from game to game, the second stanza was all over the place. There had to be a reason.

Tim Brown over at Football Archaeology had the answer and he also shared it in a post he wrote and in a conversation on our podcast.

-Transcribed Conversation of Timothy Brown on the House of the Setting Sun

Tcf Bank College Football Stadium Minnesota Golden Gophers Sunset Panorama Panoramio is courtesy of mjdemay via Wikimedia Commons

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 Tuesday, FootballArcheology.com day. We have Timothy P. Brown, the founder of FootballArcheology.com, joining us as he does each and every week to talk about one of his famous tidbits.

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Darren, good to see you, see your smiling face. It is about time.
About time. Yeah, great segue. Your segue-isms are getting better and better each and every time.
I am upping segue game. The dad jokes are a-flying, that's for sure. But Tim, now that you set it up, you have an interesting article from back in September that maybe back in September didn't mean as much as it does this time of year as we're getting closer to the winter season.

The sun going down affected the timing of games. I'll let you take it from there and tell us all about your tidbit. Yeah, so actually, the interesting thing is there is an unidentified reader.
I can't say who that is unless the reader gives permission. The reader gives you permission, Tim. Go ahead.
Oh, OK. So, one time, Darin asked me. Why is it always me? So, yeah, so just, you know, it's like anything else.

You know, you question, you go like, how did this work? So, as he was doing his own research on some things, he kept on seeing in the old newspapers. You know, 1800s and early, you know, 1900s. Oftentimes, the box score would have a little thing right at the bottom of the box, and it would say, you know, time of halves or time of quarters.

It would say 15 minutes, 15 and 10, or something like that. And so, and then typically, if there was a short quarter or a short half, it was the second half. So, you know, the question is basically, well, why the heck did they do that? Why did they shorten games? And so sometimes that happened because one team was getting blown out, but that was not generally the reason, you know, so even in tight games, it wasn't unusual to shorten, shorten a quarter or a half.

And so, you know, when I wrote it, I kind of used the, you know, the old terminology of de jure versus de facto. So de jure means, you know, by the rule or by the law, whereas de facto is in practice. Right.
And so when football first started, when we first brought it in, you know, when we were playing rugby. Football was just one of those stew of games that came out of, you know, 18th-century England and the norm was to play 45-minute halves. And so soccer still plays 45-minute halves, and rugby still plays 45-minute halves.

And when football got started here, we were playing 45-minute halves even though there was nothing in the rules that said that's how long it was. You know, the original football rules don't mention how long a game is supposed to last, but everybody knew it was 45 minutes. So that's what you did.
When football kind of, you know, as partly safety measures, you know, they were trying to give people rest and just reduce the amount of time that they're on the field. You know, football started, it went to 45 minutes and then 35 and then 30. And it's perhaps so.

Now, another tradition that was quite common was that, a lot of times, games started at about 2 o'clock or 2:30 in the afternoon. And so part of that was, you know, you had a lot of people, you know, fans who, you know, if they were factory people, they and, you know, clerks and whatnot, they work six days a week, as did their bosses. And if they were rural folks, well, farm chores have to be done.

You know, if you got a dairy herd, well, guess what you're doing every day. You know, so just from a lifestyle standpoint, a lot of people had things to do in the morning. On top of that, a lot of teams didn't have the budget to send their team to an away game and stay overnight.

So, you know, they would want to be able to take the train in the morning of the game, show up, play the game, turn around, and get home. And so not only did that mean they had to schedule a game a little bit later, but then there were times where they needed to, you know, the only way they would get home and make their connections that night was to be at the train station at, you know, 430 and or, you know, five o'clock or whatever it was. So, you know, for a combination of reasons, they ended up needing to cut games short.
And eventually, the rule makers, you know, it was kind of an understood thing. It wasn't. Again, it's one of those traditions.

It was, you know, in fact, people cut games short, even though the rules didn't say, you know, didn't allow it. But everybody did it. Right.

So, then we end up in a situation where, you know, during World War One, the government instituted light savings time, daylight saving, no S on that, daylight saving time. And so that came into effect in 1918. And so that was the first time that anybody had experienced that, at least, you know, in the US.
So you just kind of put yourself. I mean, we know what happens when daylight saving kicks in. But they just didn't anticipate it.

So there were teams that showed up at practice on Monday afternoon, right after daylight saving kicked in for the first time. And it was dark, you know. And so it's just one of those things where, you know, and then obviously that applied on Saturdays, too, because, you know, it gets dark on game day just as much as it does on practice.

But, you know, and in the tidbit, there's a discussion of like. And the USC and somebody, you know, playing in a game, and it's just like nobody could see by the end of the game; it was just so dark. And it's it's one of those things, you know, we take for granted that everybody's going to have lights.
Well, guess what? Very few places had lights. And if they did, it was jerry-rigged like the Navy used naval searchlights to light up the field for practice, you know. And, you know, so you have examples like that.
And that's that's one. I mean, some people had used them earlier, but they were painted white balls and yellow balls that came in right around. Yeah, that really became popular around that time.
That's when you start seeing them showing up in sporting goods catalogs. And it's really, you know, like. I know it's one of these things depending on where you have lived in the US; if you have not moved around a fair amount, you don't realize how much where you are in the time zone from an east, west, and north-south standpoint.

You don't realize how much impact that can have on how dark it gets early. So like Chicago is right on the east side of the central island. So it's like it's getting dark where it's like I'm in Detroit.
So, you know, still across the state, but if you're on the west side of Michigan, you know, it's light in the summer. It's like until.

You know, 10, 10 o'clock, you know, and, you know, beyond where it's like it's the same thing in Chicago, but it's nine o'clock. Right. So anyway, I mean, it's just one of those things you just and if you're northern, you know, then it's great in the summer, but then it gets darker early if you're further up north, because that whole sun, you know, the earth rotates and it tilts and not enough.

So anyway, it's just one of those things you don't think about, but like. Daylight saving was a big story in 1918. So then, because of that, in 1922, they formalized the rule that said at halftime, the referee could approach the the two team captains and ask if they wanted to shorten the halves.
And then then they they'll do so as needed. And whether that's because of the lighting or the one team getting blown out. Basically, they had they had the chance to do that.
Yeah, it's just thank God that the football didn't adopt what soccer does now with, you know, you have the two 45-minute halves, and then we're going to just kind of arbitrarily throw some time on at the end, you know, just and not tell anybody, you know, how much time is left. Just, you know, whatever that drives me crazy. Drives me nuts, you know, that they don't have that public with how much time is going on there.
But yeah, very interesting stuff, Tim. And I'm glad you mean you really cleared up mine because I kept seeing this, you know, you'd have like a 25-minute first half and, you know, something like 10 minutes for the second half. I'm like, why are they doing that? You know, you have a 13-to-nothing game.

You know, it's still still a ball game. You know, it's just driving me crazy. So, I'm glad you could clear that up for me and the listener.

So that's that's great. So, yeah, again, it's just one of those things you just don't even think about because, you know, basically, there are very few people living today if there's anybody, you know, that that's that, you know when Daylight Savings first showed up. So.
Yeah, crazy. And there are probably more people who see live games under the lights, you know, at your local high school than you do in the daytime anyway nowadays. So we're so used to the lights.

It's taken for granted, I guess. Yeah, but Tim, you have interesting items like this each and every day on your tidbits and people really love reading them. And maybe there's some listeners out there that aren't familiar with how to reach you and get ahold of your tidbits.

So maybe you could help them out with some information. Yeah, so easiest and best thing is just hit my website, footballarchaeology.com in order to find it, you got to put the WWW in front of it. And then, you know, you can every, you know, every story gives you the opportunity to subscribe.
You can subscribe for free. And then, as a result, you'll get an email every night in your inbox. And, you know, some people let them pile up, and they'll send it to you.

I know every Monday morning, I get a bunch of hits on my site because people who send them to their work address, you know, don't look at them until Monday morning. So anyways, and then you can also you can follow me on Twitter, on threads or simply, you know, or follow me within the within the Substack app. And so kind of whichever flavor works for you, have at it.

All right. Well, he is Timothy P. Brown, footballarchaeology.com. The links to Tim's site and to the tidbit are in the podcast show notes. You want to enjoy that, you know, the images and some of the great writing that Tim does there and some of those other tidbits.

You have links to get to it that way, too. So, Tim, thanks a lot for joining us again and sharing. And we will talk to you again next week.

Very good. Thank you, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

---

One of the top experts in early football rules history, Timothy P. Brown, joins us in the discussion to explain the 1915 season of Brown University. Timothy Brown's FootballArchaeology.com has a daily football factoid that he shares, which is quite interesting in a short read. They uniquely preserve football history, and we are quite happy that Tim has agreed to join us each week to review some of his Today's Tidbits. Click that link, and you can subscribe for free and receive them each evening.

This post originated from a Tidbit that Tim wrote back in 2022 titled A Bad Loss and a Bonus.


-Transcription of the 1915 Brown University Football Team 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 it's Tuesday. And once again, we have some football archaeology with Timothy P. Brown, author and historian that has a great website of footballarchaeology.com. Tim Brown, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Thank you for having me on again. As always, I am looking forward to chatting.

Yeah, this is a really interesting topic that we're going to talk about, the 1915 Brown Bruins, and have a very interesting story that you shared back on September 2nd, and really enjoying this one, and I think the listeners will as well.

Yeah, well, actually, you know, before chatting about that team, I think it was yesterday or the day before, an RPPC, so a real photo postcard of that 1915, of Brown's 1915 team, sold on eBay for $1,025. Wow. So, I mean, that's the, you know, it's not like I've tracked it, you know, over life, but that's, I think, the highest-priced postcard I've ever seen.

But, you know, it has Fritz Pollard on the team. So, a lot of times, especially older African Americans, you know, football stuff, you know, can command a pretty good, pretty good price. You know, it's an item that I don't think I've ever seen before until it was offered in that particular auction.

And then, you know, even for NFL people, you know, Fritz Pollard was the first African American coach in the NFL, you know, back in like 21 or, you know, something along those lines. So, you know, but just a couple of interests kind of collide, and all of a sudden, you're paying some pretty big money for a postcard. I mean, he was a tremendous player as well.

I mean, I think every team that he went to, he really brought their game up quite a bit to a different level. So, that's another reason to want to collect that, to have a legendary player. So.

Yeah. Well, you know, so the thing about that, you know, the 1915 team, you know, is that you know, Brown, I think, you know, by and large, has been kind of a second tier program, you know, and it was at the time. I mean, and I'm comparing that to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, and then, you know, probably like West Point.

Those were probably the premier, you know, year after year premier programs. But they had a long-term, you know, long-term coach at Brown, you know, during some of that period. And, you know, they have some pretty competitive teams.

And so, they actually, I think they ended up, they were, they surprisingly beat Yale that year, which they seldom did. But that was the Yale team, the 1915 Yale team. Frank Hinckley had come back to coach the team in 14.

And they kind of struggled. And then they were really struggling in 15. That was the year that the captain, Alex Wilson, fired the head coach.

So, he fired Hinckley. And he brought in Tom Shevlin to come in, you know, kind of fix things up for the last couple of games of the year. But, you know, part of his being fired was, Hinckley's being fired was that they lost to Brown.

So, you know, it was, I think that's the last instance I'm aware of where, you know, that was the last year Yale still had that, the captain runs the show, you know, kind of philosophy. But, you know, he literally fired the coach because his word was final. And then they, you know, they switched things up at, you know, the following year.

So, that was, you know, kind of an interesting element of it. And even, you know, to kind of the perspective of Percy Houghton, who was the coach at Harvard, didn't even go, or he wasn't there for the Harvard-Brown game because, you know, he thought it more important to go scout Yale, you know, and coaches used to do that sometimes. Stagg did that a few times, and you know, you read about it, and you know, here and there, people did that.

So, I mean, it just kind of tells you that it was a real upset, you know, that coach didn't even show up for the game. But that sounds, I mean, it sounds so strange, but I think you explained it the last time we had you on; we talked about the first coach and when the word coach was used, and it just recently aired as a podcast. And, you know, you usually explained to that, that the coaches really were important, not really as important at game time as the captains were, like they are today, you know.

So, it's. Yeah, the captains called the plays, there was no coaching from the sideline, all of that, you know. So, the practice week was done so he could go scout the teams, and the captain took over.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, to some extent, that, you know, that is the case. But then, you know, so the other thing that's just kind of interesting about that team and football in general at the time was Harvard, Yale, and Princeton had policies that they didn't go to bowl games, right?

And, you know, this was still, you know, they didn't have postseason games. And so, this is, you know, the Rose Bowl had a game back in 02, and then that was kind of forgotten. And then they restarted it in 1916.

So, they're inviting, you know, the best team they could get from the east that played in the 1915 season. But, you know, so Harvard, Yale, Princeton wouldn't go. And so, you know, Brown ended up being, you know, the best team that they could find, you know, who would say yes.

You know, and so then they did whatever the five-day, you know, train trip out to Pasadena. But, you know, there were, you know, the Big Ten didn't allow teams to play in postseason games. They did allow Ohio State to play in the Rose Bowl, I think in like 22, I think it was.

You know, and so just in general. And then even teams that did where the school or the faculty allowed it, you know, sometimes the kids just said, no, we're done. You know, they're just, they were just done with the season.

And, you know, they'd already turned in their equipment, whatever. They didn't want to spend time away from family for the holidays, you know, those kinds of things. So, I mean, it's just a different world.

You know, we'd know so many teams playing bowls, you know, to begin with, but it's just kind of the expectation of, you know, well, of course, you're going to go to the bowl. But back then, you know, a lot of times, you know, teams had the opportunity to go, but they turned them down. But so Brown ended up, you know, playing in the game, and then they lost to Washington State.

So, you know, that was kind of a, for the folks out West, that was a big deal is, you know, kind of a credibility boost that one of their teams could play and beat, you know, a team that's now, you know, of the Ivy caliber. So, you know, it's a big, you know, kind of a big deal, you know, for those folks. Yeah.

So, okay. So we already said that Fritz Pollard was on that team. Was there anybody else significant on that team besides Pollard? Yeah.

One of them, Wade, now I'm blanking on his name. Wade, Wade, Wade, Wade. He was a guard or tackle.

Wallace Wade, sorry. And so he was, he coached Alabama, took them, you know, to a couple of Rose Bowls. And then he, he was the coach at Duke for quite a while.

They played when Oregon State played the Rose Bowl at Duke because of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. You know, so the 42 Rose Bowl, Wade was still the coach there. So, but he, you know, he and Pollard were probably the most famous of the Brown players that year.

Very interesting. And, you know, some great, great research, and we appreciate you sharing these teams and some of these innovations from football from so long ago, your football archaeology site. I want you to share with people how they can, you can find your tidbits that you'd share with us each and every day and how they can subscribe to your website to make sure they know when that you've released them.

Sure. So, you know, my website is just, you know, footballarchaeology.com. You can also find me on Twitter under the same name. And, you know, the gist of it is I publish these, I publish a tidbit every day, comes out at seven o'clock Eastern time.

And so if you subscribe, you'll get that as an email newsletter. And then obviously, if you're, you know, you could also just visit the site anytime you want. And, you know, there's a full archive in there with, you know, now getting on, you know, 300, you know, some article, you know, fully long-form articles or tidbits, which tend to be more, you know, 30 seconds to a minute long reads.

Okay. Just little snippets. And I can tell you that it is exactly right at 7 pm.

It's very consistent because usually my family and I were watching a rerun of the Big Bang Theory. And the chime for my email signal, my notification comes right at the same time of the theme song for Big Bang Theory every time. So it's like part of the song to us now.

Well, it's just gets scheduled in the application. You could have just take more punctuality credit for than that. Well, you know, so I still have to manually do it on Twitter.

So, you know, but then it's going to be a 703, 705, somewhere in there. Yeah. Yeah.

We're well into the show by then. So. All right, Tim.

Well, thank you very much. And we'll talk to you again next week with some more great football archaeology. Cool.

We'll see you next week. Thanks.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

---

Women playing football is not a new concept as we have seen time and time again through history. Heck we have even read and heard of some ladies that play on the men's teams.

Timothy P. Brown does an outstanding job of retelling the story of 1937 when some young ladies vied to play NCAA Football with the men.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on the 1937 Kicking Women

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 as FootballArcheology.com's Timothy P. Brown joins us each and every Tuesday to talk about one of his recent tidbits that he writes about football history past and shares it with us. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, thanks, Darin, for the chat. I hope the listeners get a kick out of this evening's topic.

Well, I don't know if the men will, but maybe the women will, because it's OK. Yeah, you have a great title that really grabs the reader's attention.

And I remember when this came out back a few months ago, the Kicking Women of 1937, that could, you know, grab attention in multiple different ways. But from a football aspect, it's really intriguing to think about women kicking football anytime, especially back in the 1930s. So why don't you share the story, please? Well, I mean, you know, now it's not entirely uncommon, right? You know, I mean, it's been, oh, whatever, past 15 years, something like that.

You know, there's been various women at the high school or college level doing some kicking and recently had a woman playing defensive end or outside linebacker and putting the putting a smack on the quarterback. So this one is kind of one of those stories where it's like, you know, it's one of these where I stumbled across it when I was reading something else. And I saw this story about George Washington University, which is based in Washington, D.C. They have had what would never be considered a storied football program.

For whatever reason, they could never get it together. They were not a very good team, but they played football from 1928 to 1941.

And they're trying to turn the program around. I mean, it's a fine university and everything. They want to be proud of their of everything that they do.

So they went out, and hired Gus Welsh, to be their new head coach in 1937. So Welsh was the quarterback at Carlisle when Jim Thorpe was playing. And then I think he was a little bit younger than Thorpe, but he continued playing there.

He ended up playing in the NFL for four or five years. Then he went on to be the head coach at Washington State and then somewhere in Virginia. Then he was the coach at Haskell, you know, which is one of the Indian schools in Kansas.

So he'd been around a little bit but ended up at George Washington University. And, you know, he's trying to get this program resurrected and get some attention because, you know, he at one point made a quote that it was like, you know, the only way we're going to get any attention is to play a halftime of the Redskins game. So, you know, so he's just trying to get some attention for the team.

And so, you know, in October of 37, the story starts floating around that that he's got a co-ed, so a woman who's attending George Washington who's going to kick for him, you know, kick extra points. And. You know, it just kept popping up in the paper.

She's going to she's going to kick in the upcoming game or this Saturday. And then it didn't happen. And, you know, it goes on a couple of two, three times.

And so. And there's even, you know, I found one photograph that was in the newspaper of him holding the ball. So, you know, Gus Welsh is holding the ball.

And this kicker was supposed to be a barefooted kicker. But there's this woman wearing a skirt and she's got shoes on, but she's still, you know, so publicity kind of picture. But it kind of just goes on and it's going to happen.

And the student body votes for it. They support this program or, you know, having a female kicker. And then they kind of at the last minute, the faculty says, no, go.

You know, they would not allow one of their women students to to participate in the football program. So the day that that hits the newspaper, there's a story right next to it that talks about Tuskegee Institute down in, you know, in the south where they're claiming they have a kicker as well, a woman kicker. And that the plan is that she's going to kick in the rivalry game on Thanksgiving Day against Alabama State.

So the difference, though, is that Tuskegee's article names the woman and it was Mabel Smith. And so as I dug into, OK, well, who's Mabel Smith? You know, what's your background? It turns out that Mabel Smith, at the time, was the American record holder in the long jump, which, you know, she had set she had set the record at the AAU meet in 1936, which was the qualifying meet for the 36 Olympics. And unfortunately for her, the women's long jump was not an event at the 36 Olympics.

It didn't come into like 48. So she would have been the U.S. rep had she had they had the long jump at the time. But they didn't.

So she but she held that record. I mean, it really it was an amazing jump. And she held that record into the 1960s.

And she said in 30, that would have that would have been the Berlin Olympics. Right. We're Hitler.

That's right. Jesse Owens. Yeah.

OK. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

So. Yeah. And in fact, I think she had a teammate at Tuskegee who made the team because she ran in the sprints or something like that.

But in the event, so, you know, obviously a premier athlete. So, you know, it's certainly believable that she could be an effective kicker. And then, you know, as it turned out.

On game day, she was on the field, but she was only there because they were recognizing that year Tuskegee had won the AAU championship, which was not just colleges; it was, you know, any club team, anybody at the time. They were the national champions for women's track and field. And so she was on the field to be recognized for that.

And Tuskegee won the game 14 to nothing. So they did kick two extra points, but it was there, I think, half-baffled back, you know, but one of the male players who kicked the extra points. But the other thing about Mabel is that she, you know, graduated from Tuskegee.

And then I forget where she did her master's, but she got a master's degree. Then she ended up getting a doctorate at Cal Berkeley. And then, you know, became a faculty member at Texas Southern and taught there for, you know, basically spent her career teaching, teaching at Texas Southern and kind of an education department sort of arena.

But anyway, so just an amazing, amazing person. And, you know, life, life history is just kind of cool. Even though she didn't get to kick in the game, you know, she had a pretty amazing story.

Yeah, boy, the brains and the athleticism. That's pretty amazing to be a world-class athlete at the time in multiple sports, you know, get attention. And you named four different universities.

There was a tour of the whole United States where she went and taught. So that's pretty incredible. And I'll start off with that sort of publicity stunt that the coach was doing at George Washington.

So interesting that that's kind of ironic that you found those in the same newspaper side by side of a woman kicker. So very, very. Yeah.

I mean, I suspect what happened is, you know, I don't know if Tuskegee picked up on the George Washington thing or if they were just kind of going to do it anyway. But I'm sure the editor found that second story and said, OK, let's put these two together. I was fortunate enough to find the one.

And that led me to the second one because otherwise, it was kind of like, oh, you know, it's a much better story with the Tuskegee side of it. Right. So definitely.

Well, Tim, you have some interesting items like this each and every day on some great football past stories and, you know, just interesting little tidbits that you call them appropriately. And maybe you could share with the listeners where they too can join in on the fun and read these tidbits each day. Sure.

So just go to www.footballarchaeology.com. That's a Substack application and our newsletter blog site. And so if you do that, you can subscribe, and you'll get an email at seven o'clock Eastern every night, and you'll get the story delivered to you that way. Then read it at your leisure.

You can also follow me on threads or Twitter, where I go into the football archaeology name. And then, or if you have the Substack app, you'll get it in your feed that way as well. Well, lots of different ways.

Whatever works for you. Yeah, that's a great variety. And, you know, no excuse not to be able to get it, whether you're on the go or at home or want to catch it a couple of days later or a week later or a year later.

I find myself going back through some of the ones I read a year ago. And they're still interesting. They're evergreen, with their history and fascinating stuff.

And you do a great job. So I appreciate it. Well, I sometimes find myself going, oh, boy, I don't remember writing that one because I've got 800 of them out there now.

So something like that. So, yeah, I forget that I've even written on some of the topics. Yeah, it's a it's great, phenomenal pieces that you write there.

And they're very interesting. So we appreciate you coming on here each Tuesday and talking about one of them with us and sharing your knowledge and some football history. And we would like to talk to you again next Tuesday.

Very good. Thanks, Darin. Look forward to chatting.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

---

Anyone that has traveled to a North American Tourist destination has probably walked by or in to a wax museum of the uncanny called 'Ripley's Believe It or Not."

We that are old enough probably remember the 1980s television series of the same name. The concept is just what the name says, they tell stories that are so off the charts that they are hard to believe to be true.

One of the top experts in early football rules history, Timothy P. Brown, joins us in the discussion to chat about the work of Robert Ripley and an early connection to the history of football.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown about Ripley Believe It or Not Football

Hello, my football friends; this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And as we try to do every Tuesday, we will talk to our friend from football archaeology, Tim Brown, the great historian and author of multiple books and many tidbits that come out every evening for our football enjoyment. Tim Brown, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin, thank you. Thank you. Football season is well underway, so it's always the best time of year.

We hate to see the weather start to change, but we know it's football season. It is the most exciting part of the year, especially on the weekends.

And now it's spreading out throughout the whole week. So it's even better, but better for us, maybe worse for the players. But I so love the game.

Yeah, exactly. So tonight, I thought we could talk about one of your tidbits from mid-August on Ripley's Believe It or Not and some of their thoughts on football. And I think most of our listeners are familiar with Ripley's Believe It or Not.

We're going to get rid of the not part when we talk to you. We always believe you. But let's hear what Ripley has to say about football.

Yeah, I'm a truth-teller. I don't. I don't make anything up. So, you know, just to take a step back when I'm researching any topic that's football related, if I spot and, you know, a lot of the early newspapers, so, you know, into even 1920 or something like that.

A lot of times, they didn't print photographs. They printed line drawings, you know, illustrations rather than photographs. And so I always find those really interesting.

I find, you know, just the artwork interesting in general. And so if I spot one that I think I could write a tidbit about and, you know, make it interesting, then I just kind of have a way of cataloging them and coming back to them. So, not too long ago, I came across this one, and I think his name is Robert Ripley.

But so is the guy from Ripley's Believe It or Not. And he, you know, grew up in California and ended up working for the New York Globe as a cartoonist. And this is like the World War I era.

And so. In 1919, he published a cartoon that looked back at football prior to all the rule changes of 1905. So he's showing all these kinds of conditions of what the game was like at the time.

But the interesting thing about it was. His first Believe It or Not was published about two weeks after he did this cartoon. So this cartoon is a tree, believe it or not, if you can believe it or not.

So anyways, and then, you know, once he did the Believe It or Not a thing, he became famous, rich, and all kinds of good stuff. So at the time when he was still just, you know, a young illustrator, he did a thing, and he basically showed stuff like, you know, tandem blocking. And, you know, that's where before you had to have, you know, seven men on the line of scrimmage, sometimes teams would line up.

They take the guard and tackle from the other side and line them up right behind, you know, the right tackle or whatever. And, you know, so two guys in tandem would then push through the hole. He showed kind of the whole days when running backs had handles sewn on their pants so that guys could grab them by the handles and throw them over the pile to gain yardage and hurtling.

He specifically showed or mentioned Harold Weeks of Columbia in that cartoon, who is famous for he was famous for jumping, leaping over the line with both feet forward so that he could hit the opposing player in the chest, knock him down, and continue. But was it he the one that they sort of had that play where they would almost throw him over the line? Yeah. Yeah.

OK. They did it both ways somewhere. He got a good head start, and he leaped, you know, with both feet forward and others where they would swing them and then, poof, you know, pop them over.

Old alley-oop. You know, so I mean, we still know it's back. You know, Mullins were outlawed for for quite a long time, but now they're back in football.

And so we see our offensive linemen. We just saw an example that gave one of the games an opening weekend. Yes, there was a lineman who pushed his guy across the goal line.

Right. And so that's legal again. It wasn't for a long time.

But, you know, it's still not legal to pull. But back then, you know, linemen pulled there. They're running backs forward as well.

I think they sort of opened that back up again, that famous USC Notre Dame game back when Reggie Bush got pushed over by Matt Leinert, I think, and a couple of others. I think that that critical play at the end is where they sort of because it was illegal at that time, but they let it happen. And I think it was like the year after that, they sort of lessened up on that rule and allowed that to happen again.

Yeah, I mean, it was a big, you know, that was a big part of it. It's just like a rugby scrum. I mean, it's it's kind of where that all came from. But they got rid of that for a long time.

But then, you know, they also talked about, or his cartoon also includes a little thing on pumping and talking about, you know, roughing the punter and which originally was roughing the fullback because the fullback is typically who pumped it. And, you know, as there's a long involved explanation of that, which if you search on my blog, you can find, you know, find that whole thing roughing, roughing the punter and the origins of that. But anyway, it's just a cute cartoon.

And so, you know, just kind of it. The other thing I liked about it was that in the article beneath it, he mentions that the changes in rules and more open play that had developed by 1919, when he published this thing, allowed some smaller schools to become prominent. You know, he listed Colgate, Georgia Tech, Dartmouth, Washington and Jefferson, Occidental, and Brown.

And, you know, really, Georgia Tech's the only one now that we consider prominent W&J, and Occidental played Division three, and Occidental doesn't play anymore at all, you know, so. So, you know, their time in the limelight didn't necessarily last that long. Yeah, that's definitely true.

There are a lot of those schools, the Lafayettes and Suwannees of the world, too. Those are sort of. They had some big seasons. And now they're, like you said, they either don't have teams, or they're playing Division II, Division Three, or something else.

Yeah. And the flip side is, you know, there are a lot of schools that Wernie didn't exist at the time that are now playing big-time football. You know, I mean, we didn't realize that Florida State was a women's school until 1948.

So, you know, they've they've changed quite a bit, right? I mean, they were male back in 1902 or three or something like that. And then they went all female. So, you know, school is like that.

Then, Central Florida is in the FAUs. Florida's got a million of those schools. And so does Texas, you know, schools.

But, you know, we're little commuter schools or normal schools, you know, that kind of thing. But they, you know, times changed, and now they're massive, you know, massive significant universities. So as one of those like Florida International or Florida Atlantic, one of them I was reading about recently, and I was surprised to see that they just started having a football program like in the 1980s, or it might have been even, you know, 1990s, even it wasn't that long ago.

They started a football program. Now they're playing, you know, you know, FBS D1 football. And it's kind of unbelievable.

Yeah, I think there are about six schools playing FBS right now that didn't have football in 2000. So that's how, you know, that's how fast some of those programs got up and running. And then there were a bunch of them that, you know, even more that the school didn't exist until, well, the school didn't exist in, say, 1960.

You know, you got a Boise State that was a junior college for a lot of its history, you know. Anyways, I mean, there are as many examples as there are of schools that dropped down. There's probably an equal number that have kind of risen up or, you know.

They've become substantial schools, and, you know, so they go with the advertising benefits of intercollegiate athletics. Football's a moneymaker, that's for sure. That's I think it's been like that for over 100 years and still is that way today.

It's amazing. There's some good stuff. And folks, if you want to enjoy this picture that Mr. Ripley drew way back when on Tim's site, there are some links through Pigskin Dispatch.

We'll also try to put the link in the show notes of this podcast, as well as how to connect to Tim to have his daily tidbits delivered to you. And maybe, Tim, you could talk about that just a little bit. Yeah.

So you can, you know, go to FootballArcheology.com, subscribe and, you know, you can subscribe for free. There's also some paid levels. But if you subscribe for free, you'll get at least one email every day that has whatever the tidbit is.

And then I'm also on Twitter. Just look for Football Archeology as well. And you should be able to find me.

Well, Tim, thank you so much for sharing this tidbit of football again with us and our listeners. And I hope to talk to you again next week about some more. Very good.

Look forward to it. And yeah, we'll get together as always.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.