Experiments in Football at Fairmont in 1905
I collect old RPPCs (Real Photo Post Cards), typically those showing players wearing distinctive uniforms or pads, game action or field conditions that no longer apply, and others with teams or individual players that did something of note. The image above is one of the latter, sort of. I bought this RPPC a week or two ago. The 1906 Fairmount team won their conference but otherwise did nothing special, to my knowledge, but the 1905 team did. Fairmont, now known as Wichita State, played a night g — www.footballarchaeology.com
-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.
What Was the Gridiron Safety Product Absorblo? Timothy Brown Explains
The football helmet symbolizes resilience and power and has radically transformed throughout history. Initially conceived as a rudimentary leather cap, it ha... — www.youtube.com
The football helmet symbolizes resilience and power and has radically transformed throughout history. Initially conceived as a rudimentary leather cap, it has become sophisticated protective equipment. But the quest for player safety in this high-impact sport continues. In this episode, Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology explores the evolution of helmet attachments, especially Absorblo, and highlights the ongoing efforts to mitigate the risks associated with football.
Early helmets, introduced in the late 19th century, offered minimal protection. They were primarily leather shells designed to prevent scalp lacerations. As the game grew faster and more physical, concerns about concussions and head injuries rose. The introduction of soft inner padding in the 1930s marked a significant step forward, absorbing some of the impact from collisions.
Tim's original Tidbit can be seen at Absorblo, the 1960s Helmet Exterior Padding.
Check out the audio at Podcast version.
The 1940s and 1950s saw the adoption of hard plastic shells, which offered better protection for the skull. However, the lack of facemasks left players vulnerable to facial injuries. The invention of the single-bar facemask in the 1950s addressed this concern, but it limited visibility and restricted airflow.
In the '60s, Absorblo was a product developed through funding of sporting goods manufacturer MacGregor with testing and engineering at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory.
Over the next three decades, some attempts were made to improve the inner padding of the helmets, both for the player's comfort and safety.
The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a focus on impact absorption. Advanced padding materials and chin straps were adopted to manage better the forces transmitted to the head and neck during collisions. The Pro Cap attachment was designed to fit outside the hard shells on the crown of the head, providing impact absorption protection for its wearer. Mark Kelso of the Buffalo Bills made the device famous and claimed it extended his career. Sadly, it never caught on, and only a few other players tried it on the pro circuit—the poor aesthetic appearance needed to be improved for many players to overcome. Additionally, research on the role of helmet fit in mitigating concussion risks began to gain traction.
Innovative attachments like inflatable bladders and shock-absorbing inserts within helmets have been explored in recent years. These technologies aim to reduce impact forces further and mitigate the risk of concussions. However, their effectiveness remains debated, and ongoing research is crucial.
The Guardian protective caps used by teams at all levels, including the NFL, are still in their infancy but are providing sound data for research during practice sessions and, most of all, are affording players that extra layer of protection. According to the Guardian website, the soft external padding fits externally on the helmet shell and provides impact absorption. It also moves independently of the helmet to further deflect the impact blows. There are still player injuries that involve serious injury or worse, so the progress has yet to go far enough.
Despite the progress, the quest for a foolproof helmet continues. The science of head injuries is complex, and concussions remain a significant concern. The NFL and other leagues are actively collaborating with researchers and equipment manufacturers to develop even more sophisticated helmets and attachments.
The evolution of helmet attachments is a testament to football's ongoing commitment to player safety. As research advances and technology evolves, we can expect even more innovative attachments to emerge. However, it's crucial to remember that helmets are just one piece of the puzzle. Coaching techniques that emphasize proper tackling form and rule changes that penalize dangerous hits are equally vital in mitigating the risks associated with this high-impact sport.
Love the helmet designs and evolution wait till you check out the College Football helmet history of schools.
-Frequently Asked Questions
-Who was the first player to wear a football helmet? We have your answer in our in-depth study ofthe first to wear a helmet.
-What is the history of each college team and their helmet designs? Check out many of them with our series College Football helmet history of schools.
-How come some teams have player numbers on their helmets? We asked this question too and had a college football expert historian help divulge helmet numbers history.
-Why do some teams like Michigan and Delaware look so odd and similar? It's really uncanny isn't it that the Wolverines and Blue Hens look the same, check this out for a reason when helmets had wings.
-What do stickers on college football helmets mean? Some of them look really crazy but there is some goos reason for the extra adornments and we have the scoop Why all the stickers on some football helmets?.
-When did football helmets change from leather to plastic? Just after World War II saw the most abrupt changes, we have more in this in our chat with an expert:When helmets changed from leather to plastic.
Bobby Layne Changing Positions
A passing fullback in the Single Wing, Layne became a quarterback as a senior when Texas switched to the T formation. Drafted by the Steelers, who ran the Single Wing, they traded him to the T-formation Bears. He made the 1950s All-Decade team at QB for his play with the Lions. — www.footballarchaeology.com
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.
House of the Setting Sun with Timothy Brown
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.
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.
1915 Brown University & Their Bonus From a Big Loss
The 1915 Brown Bruins were 4-2-1 coming off a victory over Yale, helping Yale earn its first losing season in the forty or so years football had been played, so the boys from Providence had reason to be optimistic heading into their game at Harvard the following week. Led by all-everything Fritz Pollard and future Hall of Fame coach Wallace Wade, the Bruins hoped to put a scare into the Bostonians, if not return home victorious. — www.footballarchaeology.com
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.
Punt As Much As You Can
Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss a recent Tidbit about two games played the same day in 1939 during a Louisiana rainstorm. One game featured 77 punts, while the other had only 65. Click here to listen to the story, or subscribe to Pigskin Dispatch wherever you get your podcasts. — www.footballarchaeology.com
There was an era of football where the punt may have been the most effective weapon for an offense. It just doesn't sound right to our modern gridiron minds to understand. No worries we brought in an expert to help.
One of the top experts in early football rules history, Timothy P. Brown, joins us to explain the kicking game strategy of early football. The story is eloquently shared below in the link that takes you to Tim's article, complete with photos of the era. Timothy Brown's
-Transcription of Punt Often 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 bring in our friend Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology.
Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen. Hey, Darin. Great to see you, hear from you again, and looking forward to lots of Tuesdays during 2022, or 2023, I should say.
We already did a bunch for 2022. Old habits, old habits. It's hard to change that date. That's one of the toughest things to do.
We'll be doing that into March, I'm sure, all of us. Hey, you know, we have had a great football season. You know, we've had some great Tuesdays on Football Archaeology.
You know, I shared a lot of Rose Bowl memories with you. And, you know, now we've got into some of your interesting tidbits from November. One that really caught my eye is you had one titled from November 14th called Punning Early and Often about some early football strategy.
We'd really like to hear about it. Yeah, you know, I think for me, this is kind of a, it's kind of a fun topic, you know, for two reasons. I think, you know, one is just kind of the nature of, you know, punting was a much bigger part of the game, you know, back then.
But for me, it also, I think, just generally, you know, in line with that thought, it kind of just reinforces, you know, just the, when we're going back and doing history and reading about things that have happened in the past, it can be very difficult to make sure you have, you know, you're wearing their hat. And what I mean by that is, you know, you're working under the assumptions they worked under, not the assumptions you now work under, you know, because 100 years or 120, you know, some years have passed. And so, you know, the point of the overall article is just kind of discussing how, back in the day, teams often punted on first or second down.
And then once, you know, they got four downs, and they would punt on third down, too. But, for us, that seems like just such a strange way to play the game, right? It's like, why in the heck would you punt on first down? And yet it's, you know, if you kind of put yourself back under their assumptions and under their rules, then it starts making a bit more sense. And so, you know, in my mind, there's two kinds of key things that, you know, that are different about the game that they played versus what's played today.
And so one is just that people punted early on or on, on early downs, because it was difficult to move the ball. You know, you know, they just, you know, pretty much everybody with the, you know, exceptions here and there, but pretty much everybody played close formations, you know, with three or four backs, you know, inside the, the both ends being tight. And sometimes there'd be a wing or, you know, whatever, whatever it was, but I mean, for the most part, everybody's playing really tight together.
And, then, the defense has had a wide guy on either side to stop anybody from sweeping. So everything just got funneled into the middle. And so it was just hard to move the darn ball and do it consistently.
So it's one thing to get a first down. It's another thing that, you know, string together five, six, seven first downs, drive down the field and score. So, you know, it's just that, that whole idea that the, in a game of reasonably well-matched opponents, it typically was going to be a pretty low-scoring game.
You know, they did not have Yale and Harvard or Yale and Princeton or whomever, Michigan and Chicago, or when they played one another, they didn't play a bunch of 47 of 43 games, you know, it was 13 to 10, it was six to nothing. So just, you know, the fact of the matter is against well, you know, well-matched teams, it was really difficult to move the ball. So, they played the field position game, and they just booted it.
Right. And they booted it thinking, Hey, I'm going to have to keep the ball in their territory, and then they can make a mistake, and then I can capitalize on it. And so this particular article has a quote by a guy named George Brooke, who was a famous player and coach back then.
And, and, you know, wrote a lot of articles that were in, you know, syndicated newspaper articles, but he, he basically made an argument that the maxim he called it, that if the ball is inside your 40, you should punt it. That's it. Right.
Which is like, you know, again, what, one of those things we just can't even imagine. And so, just the way that he phrased it, I got it here. So, he considered that if you were inside your own 40, he considered dangerous ground.
And he said this is called dangerous ground because if the team should lose the ball for some foul or offside play fumble or other common means of losing it, then, you know, then their goal is going to be in danger. So it's kind of the reverse of what I was saying, which is why you want to punt it, but it just points out that, you know, so our assumptions are offenses can move the ball. And then the other assumption, you know, we understand fumbles or interceptions or something like that, losing the ball, but we don't think about it in terms of the first thing he mentioned, which is some foul or offside play.
So back then, most penalties resulted in a loss of possession, did you know? So, you know, yes, there was, you know, if you interfered with the center five-yard penalty, piling on or a couple of other things for 15-yard penalties, but an offside, if you were offside loss of possession, right? And then like, you know, the old, the forward pass before the forward pass was legalized, you know if you pitch the ball forward that was lost possession, you know, was another, another example of that. So again, it's just that we don't think about the game that way.
We don't think about, you know, jumping offside, boom, the other guy gets the ball at the spot, you know? So, so, you know, there was just, I think that much more reason, you know, you, you were risking yourself and your field position if you kept the ball and you were inside the 30, inside the 40, whatever it was. So anyway, it just kind of makes more sense now. Or, you know, if you kind of think about those two terms, you know, the offensive inefficiency and then loss of possession.
So no, no, just interesting to me. Yeah. It made me start really thinking about it, you know, especially before the forward pass was legal.
You know, we, we talked now, you know, we watch a game when they say, Oh, you know, the defense has eight in the box, or they're to stop the run. Well, they were putting, you know, 10, 11 in the box back then. There was no threat behind them to that.
So they could fill every gap and have an extra guy to shoot the gaps if they wanted to. So, so probably made moving the ball on the ground real ineffective. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, yeah. And you know, there are so many things that we just take for granted, the opposite of forward pass, but just other ways of just moving, you know, trying to move the ball, you know, just like a, well, I guess a shovel, shovel pass would have been illegal then anyways, but you know, option plays and those kinds of things that just, you know, hadn't come along yet.
So it was, it was tough. Yeah. Well, it's great.
Definitely that article and some of the photographs, the pictures you have in there and you know, Mr. Brooks quotes and things that really make you think and takes you back, you know, 120 some years ago and appreciate how the game has evolved over time and made a lot more enjoyable from a fan's point of view. And probably from an offensive and defensive strategist to make, make some headaches for them too, for the defenses, but the forward pass stuff, but Hey, just some great stuff and how important the kicking game was at that point. It really comes to light.
So we thank you for sharing that with us. And Tim, why don't we take this time? You know, you have these tidbits coming out each and every day. Maybe you could share with the listeners how they, too, can appreciate your tidbits each day.
Sure. So, my site where I post the tidbits every day is called football archeology.com. It's a site where you can just sign up for free, and you'll get, and you'll get an email delivered every night at seven o'clock Eastern. I also post on Twitter.
And so, but just to, you know, if you want to make sure you get it every day, you don't have to read it necessarily, but if you want to make sure you get it every day, just subscribe. And it'll pop right into your inbox dutifully. It most certainly does.
So, Tim, we appreciate you coming on again. Again, Timothy P Brown, footballarcheology.com, and Tim, we'll talk to you again next Tuesday. Okay.
Very good. Thanks, Darin. Appreciate it.
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.
The Kicking Women Of 1937
American University in Washington, D.C., has a football history, but not much of one. They fielded teams from 1925 to 1941, dropped the sport due to WWII, and never brought it back. With good reason. They went 24-67-6 during its time with their 1926 record of 4-3-1 marking their only winning season. Two years later, they played and lost four games in four weeks to Gettysburg College 81-0, Catholic University 69-0, St. John’s University 63-0, and Gallaudet University 37-7. — www.footballarchaeology.com
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.
Even Ripley Believed in Football!
Robert Ripley published his first Believe It or Not cartoon covering the weird and wonderful in 1918 and was not yet famous when he put pen to paper to give his take on football history. In the cartoon below, Ripley covers: Tandem blocking – stacking blockers in the backfield before the seven men on the line of scrimmage rule came into effect — www.footballarchaeology.com
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.
The Football Archaeology of Dirty Play And A Ring Of Truth
Back in the day, there was an element of chivalry in football. Despite many stories of dirty play, there were other tales of teams tackling opposing players high due to the awareness that an opposing player had a leg injury. For example, an earlier Tidbit — www.footballarchaeology.com
Football Archaeology goes in depth to some early examples of good sportsmanship by early football players, in avoiding dirty tactics of punishing injured players.
Timothy Brown shares a particular instance where fair play was out the window.
-Transcribed Conversation on Football Dirty Play with Timothy Brown
Hello, my football friends; this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to another Tuesday. FootballArcheology.com's Timothy P. Brown is joining us once again. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.
Hey, Darin. Thanks for having me once again.
I'm looking forward to chatting about old football stuff. Yeah, and we're going to ask you to keep it clean tonight. But I don't think we can possibly do that with the subject matter tonight because you recently wrote a tidbit titled Dirty Play and a Ring of Truth.
Maybe you could explain what that all means. Yeah, so, you know, it seems like I've had a number of tidbits recently where it starts in one direction and takes a turn, sometimes for the worse. Right.
And so this is one where I started by just telling a story of some examples in the old days, excuse me, of players and teams acting in a chivalrous manner. So, you know, I told a story about a 1953 Clemson quarterback, a guy named Don King, you know, told his team not to hit the Wake Forest quarterback in the knees because he'd sustained an injury. And so they complied.
And, you know, then he ends up winning a sports sportsmanship award. A similar thing happened back in 1925. Davis and Elkins go to Army.
They're playing Army. He's already got one of their quarterbacks hurt. The first-string quarterback gets dazed, probably concussed in the game.
He leaves the game. The second guy comes in. He sustained some kind of bodily injury, and he's out.
So they have to bring back this guy who was dazed and confused. Right. So the West Point trainer just approached the Davis and Elkins captain and said, hey, can you kind of take it easy on this guy? So Davis and Elkins complied.
And they basically took it easy on this quarterback for the rest of the game because they, you know, need the Army to have the guy there. But he shouldn't have been there. And just to ensure that we don't think that chivalrous things still happen in the games today.
The other night, I just, you know, happened to see a, you know, little clip from a high school game. And, you know, wide receivers going downfield get injured. And then, you know, his bad leg and, you know, one of his teammates kind of gets under his arm and helps him hop along.
A D-back from the opposing team jumps under the other arm and helps him off the field. So it's just a good kid trying to help his opponent, you know, so that's all good. Now, there are other times in football when people haven't acted that way.
And so, you know, back in 1926, Princeton and Harvard had a game, and there's just a lot of kind of stuff leading up to it. Princeton had won the last two years, so Harvard wasn't pleased with that because they thought they were better than Princeton. And Princeton was mad because it used to be, especially before the turn of the century, that Princeton and Yale finished the season with a game with one another.
But then it turned into a Harvard-Yale game that we all know ends the season in the Ivy League. But Princeton wanted it to rotate, you know, among the three teams. And Harvard was like, no, you know, we're not going to do that.
So, you know, Princeton was feeling like underappreciated and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, there's this kind of antagonistic relationship. And then so they're getting ready to play.
They're playing in Cambridge. On the morning of the game, the Harvard Lampoon, the student newspaper magazine, publishes a story about the Princeton coach dying. Now, he hadn't really died, but they still published a story about him dying, which the Princeton people didn't particularly appreciate.
So just lots of, you know, kind of ill will going in the game. And so I think the Princeton players did their best to take it out on the Harvard players. Six of the Harvard players had to leave the game with injuries.
And then Princeton wins 12-0. And, you know, it's just kind of this general ill feeling. But then, like at the end of December, early January, a former Harvard player publishes a story in some kind of social magazine or whatever it was.
But he publishes a story basically saying the Princeton players played dirty. You know, they did this and that. One piece that he used as evidence was that one of the Harvard's backs had a bloody nose and black eye.
And that area of his face or nose had a P imprinted on it. And it was because, you know, those signet rings where it's like a, you know, it's a ring that has like a letter on the ring. You know, they were claiming that a Princeton player wearing the letter P ring had punched this guy in the face and left this imprint in his face.
So, you know, apparently, you know, no one else backed this guy up. You know, none of the other people verified it. And all of Princeton's people were up in arms about it.
And they were basically saying, hey, nobody around Princeton wears a P signet ring. But there was one guy, their star player at the time, named Prendergast. And he was like, hey, my last name begins with P. So, guess where that came from? You know, and I don't think that was true.
But, you know, he was just going to keep things stirred up. So Prendergast would be better than Princeton. If anybody actually slugged this guy in the face with the P ring, it was Prendergast.
So anyway, that's kind of the gist of the story. But Harvard, yeah, Harvard and Princeton did not play football against one another for another eight years. So they definitely were not, they weren't, they weren't on, you know, nice, pleasant speaking terms at that darn Prendergast.
He's ruined football for that game for a couple of years. That's wow. That is an amazing part of football there.
Go ahead. And the funny the funny thing, too, is that I. Recently had another tidbit talking about the the executioner's helmets, you know, where they had the mask, so just a normal leather helmet. But then they'd have this mask across the front.
One of the images in that story is of Prendergast going to Princeton in the 1924 season because he had broken a nose and needed surgery in high school. And so then, you know, there were times when his nose got busted up again in college. And so he'd wear that executioner's mask.
So he knew. You know all about broken noses and that sort of thing. Wow.
That is a great story. I thought at first you were going to tell us that, you know, Mrs. Brown put a bee on your head when you didn't take out the garbage or something. But no, in my family, it would be the back of the frying pan or something.
You know, yeah, my wife's shorter than me. So her arms aren't that long. And so, you know, and plus, I'm, you know, you know, float like a butterfly.
So I could I could avoid her. Well, I see. I just think I just saw something flying across the room.
No, I'm just kidding. So, wow, that is a great story. There's, you know, really some opportunity for folks playing football, especially down in the piles.
You know, everybody that's played, we all know there's bad things that happen down there if somebody really wants to do something. And it's really hard for an official to see something that's happening down there. You have guys popping up all the time saying, hey, you know, he punched me in a place he shouldn't punch and, you know, pinch me, bite me or whatever, you know, you have all kinds of crazy things.
So it's nice to hear the the chivalrous episodes like you talked about, even in modern times, or players just. I mean, it's a brotherhood. And these guys are all trying to enjoy playing the same game.
And there should be some camaraderie to it. And it's great when that happens. But every once in a while, you get these bad apples and these scoundrels that decide to take things in a different course.
And they're interesting stories, but not fun if you're the recipient. That's for sure. Yeah.
And well, part of it, too, is, you know, you just, I think we have the impression of the Ivy League is being, you know, these nice. Nice fellows. And that definitely has not always been the case.
And they have some beautiful signature rings, too. Yes. Yes.
All right, Tim. Well, that is a great thing. That's not something you hear anywhere else.
But from you, some of these great little innovative stories that you've come across that are unique to the game of football but tell a certain history of the game and, you know, really round out our appreciation for what players have done and maybe not appreciate something that others have done. But it's all part of the game of football. And you talk about it each and every day.
You have a great little newsletter. Many different sources send it to folks every day. Maybe you could tell us about that and how people can join in.
Yeah. All you have to do is go to footballarchaeology.com. And, you know, if you are pretty much all over the place, you read an article, and you have an opportunity to subscribe. And if you subscribe, you can get an email in your inbox every night at seven o'clock or, you know, Eastern or so.
And, you know, then read it at your leisure, delete it, whatever you want to do. If you don't want the newsletter, you can follow me on Twitter, threads, or the Substack app. And those are also just, you know, search for football archaeology.
You'll find me. That's my name on each of those three apps. OK, and his name is Timothy P. Brown, not the name on the Substack apps, but he has footballarchaeology.com. Tim, we thank you for joining us.
And we will talk to you again next Tuesday.
Always appreciate the opportunity to talk football. Thanks there.
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.
The Football Archaeology of An Aerial Attack at Yankee Stadium
On February 25, 1942, an infamous false alarm saw American military units unleash a torrent of anti-aircraft fire in the skies over Los Angeles. — www.history.com
Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology.com reminds us of the precautions to have football games played in stadiums during World War II.
The story of how fear of the unknown led to mayhem in the skies above NY during WWII is told by Tim in this episode of our podcast.
-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on an Aeriel Atack Yankee Stadium
Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to another evening when we get to talk to Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com about one of his famous tidbits that comes out daily. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.
Darin, thanks for having me this evening.
I feel honored now that I am in the presence of a published author. Well, thank you. Just, hey, congratulations.
I mean, you know, I know the amount of work you put into it and just encourage everybody to pick up. I'll let you do the plug yourself, but, you know, just, you know, great stuff, great stuff on an old-time team. Well, thank you.
You were a big part of that, and I appreciate it. And folks, the name of the book is The World's Greatest Pro Gridiron Team. We've talked about it before in the podcast.
We won't belabor you too much on that. But Tim was gracious enough to do some research on some of the bonus content we have in there. We did something a little bit different.
So, not only do you have links to explore some things beyond the book in the e-book, but also in the hard copy books, we have QR codes. You can use your smart device to access them. And I think we have three or four from Tim that go in there and talk about some good old-time football, just to set the mood for 1903 football.
Cause most of us sit there and read it and say, what does this mean? Well, we have a man who knows that era very well through his research. So we appreciate your help there and the advice along the way. And we appreciate you, Tim.
No problem. Good time. Now we're going to go back into one of your tidbits tonight with, you know, back in the earlier days, I guess this one's from this year that we're going to be doing, but back a few months ago and talk about something, you know, we're not that familiar with wartime and sports and being in stadiums.
Okay. We know a little bit about COVID-19; we know terrorist attacks and going through security and everything. We're familiar with that, but we're going back to an era when the country was at war and could be in danger.
You know, people didn't know at the time if they were in danger or not. And I think it's really an interesting topic that you wrote about back in May, and you titled it an aerial attack at Yankee Stadium. And we'd love to hear all about it.
So this, this is, I mean, to me, just like you said, it's an interesting thing to try to put yourself back in the time and the uncertainty they faced. All right. I mean, there are things we know now that either the Japanese or the Germans had this capability or that, but they weren't sure, you know, they weren't sure how things were going.
So just to kind of set the stage a little bit, you know, it's so December 7th, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. And, you know, so one of the things, one of the consequences of that was that the folks on the West coast, the civil defense people, were concerned about trying to gather 80,000 people into the Rose Bowl on, you know, a glorious January 1st. So they said, no, you can't hold the game here in California.
The Rose Bowl was transferred to Durham, North Carolina because Duke was one of the teams that were playing. Likewise, the Shrine East-West game, which is an all-star game based in San Francisco, was transferred to New Orleans that year. So, okay, we get past football season, and then, you know, on the East Coast, you know, while the Germans didn't have aircraft carriers as the Japanese did, they had a lot of submarines.
And so there was, you know, back in the time, there were certain like planes that could launch from, from submarines, you know, just the old biplane kind of thing. But anyways, they, and, you know, the Germans were seeing a lot of shipping, you know, 630 some ships got sunk along the East coast, you know, during 42 and, you know, that period. So they did things like, you know, they, FDR green-lighted sports, but auto racing, motorcycle racing was banned to save, you know, tires and gasoline.
And in places like Yankee Stadium, one of the impacts was, you know, they just never knew what would happen if somebody attacked the place, right? If, somehow, the Germans had some capability, they would attack Yankee Stadium during a baseball game. And so they set up this process where they had signs all over the stadium that was basically, you know, evacuation boats, you know, I mean if you've been in cities like, you know, well, LA has them and, you know, other places where there's these tsunami signs, if you're near the beach, you know, the Pacific Northwest, same thing. It's like, okay, here's these signs.
Here's what happens if there's a tsunami, you know, you get out of there. Yeah. Yeah.
Run like hell. Yeah. But in Yankee Stadium, it was like, if you were in the upper deck or you were in the box seats or the grandstands with bleachers, whatever, you know, it had different escape routes for you.
And so that's all baseball stuff. And now, I also should have said that because of blackout conditions, like night games, they didn't have any night games, you know, at least in 1942. And so then, you know, Yankee Stadium at the time was still a popular place for football games, both college and pro.
And so, you know, I think I've sold it since, but, you know, I had a copy of a 1942 Army versus Princeton football program and, you know, played at Yankee Stadium. And, you know, with the inside of the, you know, one of the ads or pieces of information, you know, it had in there was just, it told you, okay, like I said, if you're in this section, here's your escape route, proceed this way, run out to such and such Avenue or whatever, you know, you can get the hell out of the Bronx. So anyway, it's just one of those things; you just can't imagine it.
You know, it's just not; I mean, now we do go through security. And so maybe it's, it is more imaginable now, but, you know, it's just one of those things you just, you just don't think about that happening. And so just one other little point about that game and that season was that, you know, Princeton and Army played on, you know, one Saturday, and then the next one was the Army-Navy game.
And so again, due to work time conditions, they moved it from Philadelphia to Navy Stadium in Annapolis because they wanted to have a smaller crowd, which was going to be the case there. And they would only sell tickets to people who lived within 10 miles of the stadium because they wanted to reduce people traveling to the game, you know, and eating up gas or whatever, you know. So it's just one of those interesting things that occurred.
And I think by 43, the concerns about hacks on the, I mean, there were still concerns about espionage, and concerns about attacks from a military standpoint had dissipated. But, you know, by then, you know, a lot of guys were getting drafted, being enlisted. So, you know, the NFL had teams merge, you know, the Steelers, and were they the Pirates then or the? The Steelers with the Eagles or the Steagles.
The Steegles, yeah. And then they had the pick cards the next year, or maybe vice versa.
So, you know, like in the pro game, you know, roster limitations, they merged a team or two. And then in colleges, you know, a number of colleges dropped football, you know, during the war. So, it's just due to roster limitations and other things.
So, yeah, just one of those, one of those things a little bit hard to imagine now, but, you know, that's what happened back then. Yeah. One of the interesting things, I mean, I learned a lot from that post, but one of the things that sort of resonated with me that I sort of outside of sports is I didn't realize that the Germans didn't have aircraft carriers.
So, you know, I guess maybe that's because I always wondered, I'm like, why did they move the Rose Bowl from the West Coast to the East Coast? You know, you're still on a coastal, why not have it in Oklahoma or somewhere or the Cotton Bowl or something where it's safe, you know, there's no water around where you can, you know, worried about an aerial attack, but I didn't realize that the Germans didn't have aircraft carriers. So thank you for teaching me that. So, probably some of the same things are why Yankee Stadium and Annapolis didn't seem so scary, too, for, you know, the submarines couldn't attack them too much from there.
You're a little bit too far away from it. Yeah. So, yeah.
So yeah, again, just different time, and you just, you know, it's interesting to try to put yourself back in those, in those periods and kind of, you just, things happen that you just think about. Yeah, definitely some fun football facts, and you have some of these each and every day; as we said, you call them your tidbits, and maybe you could share with the audience for those who aren't familiar with it, how they too can participate in reading your tidbits each and every day. Yeah.
So, you know, the best thing is just to go to footballarchaeology.com and subscribe. You'll get an email every day at seven o'clock Eastern with today's, you know, little story and, you know, read them at your leisure, delete them if that's really what you want to do. But otherwise, just, you know, I know people let them pile up over the weekend or read them over the weekend, whatever, but that's the best way to subscribe.
Okay. Well, Tim, we really appreciate you coming here and sharing some of these great football facts with us each week. We appreciate you sharing your football knowledge in the book and, you know, some of the other things that you've done to help us all understand that, as well as footballarchaeology.com. And we will talk again next Tuesday.
Very good. And congratulations again. Thanks.
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.
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