Football History

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Step back to the roaring twenties, a golden age of college football. Imagine two titans of the gridiron, the Yale Bulldogs and the Georgia Bulldogs, locked in a legendary rivalry that captivated the nation. In this podcast, we delve into the untold stories of this epic clash, exploring the athletes, the games, and the cultural impact of this historic matchup. From the smoky stadiums to the passionate fanbases, we'll uncover the drama, triumphs, and heartbreaks that define this unforgettable era of college football.

Are you ready to relive the glory days? Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology takes us back a century when these two programs were on par on the gridiron, and it was a Bulldog v. Bulldog matchup. This information comes from his original post titled:

Battle of the Bulldogs: Yale vs. Georgia

-Transcription of When Georgia played Yale with Timothy Brown


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

And welcome to another Tuesday. It's footballarchaeology.com day. Timothy P. Brown of that great website joins us each Tuesday to talk about another antiquity of football.

And we really have a great episode for you today because we're going to go back in time and talk about some of the structures of football. And Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, thanks, Darin.

Yeah, looking forward to this one. This should be a pretty fun one to talk about. Yeah, I think it should be.

This is really interesting, because it's got multifaceted, you got some, some mascots in there, you've got some, some, you know, good old programs that were, you know, at some of them at their height back in the day, and some of them we look at today, they're the top of the game. So really old meets new, and a lot of stuff in between. So we're interested in hearing about the history.

Yeah. Yeah. So this, this comes from a tidbit that I did back in May, May of the year ago.

And it was called the Battle of the Bulldogs. And, you know, so it basically is concerning, you know, two teams that had the Bulldog nickname. And, but back in, you know, back in, say, the teens and the 20s, there were very, there were really pretty few intersectional games, you know, transportation was just more difficult than, you know, it took longer to get, you know, by train from one section of the country to the, to the other.

And so teams just didn't, you know, I mean, they definitely didn't go out to the Pacific coast very much. But even like the North-South games and Midwest to East games were just few and far between. And so, interestingly, you know, we tend to think of the Notre Dame USC series as like this ancient, you know, ongoing annual game.

And it started in 1926. And, you know, they've played, you know, nearly every year since then, and maybe even every year, I don't know, but, you know, they've played a lot, right. And, or, you know, it's an intersectional, they're not the same conference, though, you know, nowadays, you can be intersectional and be in the same conference, but they aren't.

But so that started in 26. And so the interesting thing is that there was a series that we now would think of as kind of strange bedfellows. But a series, an intersectional series started three years earlier.

And it was the Battle of the Bulldogs. And it was between Georgia, who we all, you know, that's the team that's pretty good these days. And the other was Yale, the team that was pretty good back in those days.

And so they seem like kind of a strange combination of play one another. Um, but my understanding is there, there was a connection, I think there were some Yale graduates who helped either found Georgia or helped design the campus, you know, there were, there were just Yale folks who were involved in UGA early on. So turns out the two teams scheduled a little series and starting 1923.

So not too long after, you know, World War One ended. And they played every year until 1934. Other than 1932, they didn't play that year.

But, you know, it may have been really the first kind of long standing intersectional series. You know, I know that Pitt and Georgia Tech played, you know, a handful of games in the 1910s. And they were both like, nationally prominent teams, Heisman at Georgia Tech and Warner at Pitt.

So I mean, they had some really good teams back then. And, you know, I know Pitt won a couple of national championships in that in that era. But then they, you know, then that kind of ended.

So this one was really something else, you know, so you got this classic Eastern school that is, you know, now we look back and we know that they were kind of on the downswing of their power, you know, but they had dominated early football, them and Princeton really. So anyways, they set up a, you know, set up game and or a series and, as was normally the case, Georgia went to Yale each year. You know, back then Yale had the biggest stadium in the country.

You know, they could draw a big crowd. And so if you were looking to make some money by playing a game, you're, you know, like most teams, you're going to be better off going to Yale and playing there. Plus, Yale and Harvard both had some like faculty policies, you can only leave campus once a year.

So you'd either, those two would either play at Princeton or at Harvard, you know, and then switch it, you know, switch it, you know, each year. But anyways, so the first four games, they play in at Yale and Yale wins, you know, they were the better team back then. And, but then in 1927, Georgia upsets Yale, you know, at Yale.

And, you know, so, you know, that was kind of a big deal. And in 28, Yale, you know, ends up winning again at home. So they're, you know, they're standing like five and one in Yale's favor.

And then in 1929, Georgia was opening up Sanford Stadium. Until then they had played at Sanford Field, which was like a dual, you know, one of those old wooden dual purpose, baseball and football fields. So Sanford, which is where they still play now, but it's been remodeled, you know, 57 times.

You know, that, you know, 29 was the first game there. And, you know, Yale goes down there and wearing their heavy wool jerseys on a hot day in Georgia, and they lost 15 to nothing. So, you know, it's just, that's just kind of a funny little sidelight.

I wouldn't want to be the equipment manager carrying the laundry that day. No. And you would think that they would have thought ahead, but, you know, maybe they just figured out we're going to beat them anyways, you know.

But so then, then they played four more times, you know, they played in 30, 31, 33, and 34, all again, back at Yale and Georgia won all four of them. So, you know, it's just one of those games or a series where you just, you look at that and the sequence of losses, and then Georgia, you know, sneaks in there and wins one. And then, you know, then they end up winning, you know, five in a row in terms of games played.

That was also the first time anybody had beaten Yale five games in a row. So, you know, it's just, it kind of, it's kind of emblematic of turning the tide, you know, it's the shift of power from. I don't think you're allowed to use the word tide in Georgia in the same sentence.

I think that's a football law. I think they're against that. Well, you know, I wasn't aware of that law, but I will write that one down right here.

I think they probably find a fence to that somehow. But yeah, I mean, so it's just, it's just one of those great examples of the times they are a changing and, you know, Columbia went to the Rose Bowl in 34. That was a little bit of a fluke, but, you know, and Harvard had been in the Rose Bowl in 20, but, you know, it was pretty much, you know, that those classic Eastern teams were starting to fall on hard times and, you know, de-emphasizing and all that kind of stuff.

And, you know, now, you know, they play as the Ivy League today, but so clearly gone in a different direction than Georgia, but still, you know, cool, cool series, intersectional series, one of the first, and, you know, the relative strengths of the program switched during the course of the series. So, yeah. Sort of right at that tipping point where Yale is sort of starting to decline and Georgia's starting to incline.

So it's kind of interesting. It was a pretty balanced games. It sounds like a series.

Actually, even, you know, when Georgia won, I think one of the years they won by 14, but otherwise it was like, you know, they won by six or three years, you know, they were close games, but they just, they still won, you know. Right. Playing at Yale.

I wonder, I mean, there's probably no way to know, but, you know, it would be kind of a cool thing. You have Handsome Dan is the, traditionally the mascot name of Yale's Bulldog, and Ugga is the traditionally the name of the Georgia's Bulldog, you know, live animals, Bulldogs. And I wonder if they were ever at the same game during those years.

I wonder if they traveled. That'd be kind of cool, but an iconic picture if there would have been one. Yeah, I will.

I'll look into that, the Ugga and Handsome Dan. Yeah, that'd be, that'd be kind of interesting. That'd really bring the Bulldog versus Bulldog.

Yeah. I mean, you know, there's old pictures of, you know, the army mule and the Navy goat, you know, back in that time period, whether the, whether the dogs got together or not, I'm not sure. Yeah.

But yeah, so anyway, it's just kind of interesting story, you know, kind of a fun, yeah, fun deal. Yeah, definitely. It brings two traditional, you know, powerhouses of different eras together in one story.

And it's always fascinating to look at that. And you have a lot of different stories like this, Tim, where you go back in time and football and grab some of these things that we would never even imagine happening or who would think of Yale and Georgia playing today. Our modern brains can't even fathom that, but you have some great things like that, that people can enjoy on your website.

But maybe you could share with how people can enjoy this on a regular basis. Yeah. Best thing to do is just go to the footballarchaeology.com, subscribe, and then you'll get an email every time that I release a story, which, you know, nowadays I'm, you know, three, sometimes four a week, sometimes two, if I'm feeling lazy or just busy.

So that's the best way. You can also follow me on Twitter, on threads or on the app within Substack, which is, you know, where football archaeology is based. All right.

Well, that's a great, great investment of time to learn about football on a regular basis and see some of these things from antiquity. And we would love to talk to you again next Tuesday about another aspect of football history.

Very good.

We'll find something to talk about. That's all the football history we have today, folks. Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

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Footballs seem like they are suited for almost any player to use, and they currently are. That was not always the case, though. There was a time when footballs were indeed designed with handedness in mind. In this post, we'll delve into the history of handed footballs, explore the reasons behind their creation, and discuss why they eventually fell out of favor in professional football.

Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology visits us in this episode to share the story of the righty and southpaw editions of the pigskin.

If you love the football talk on history and evolution, then you should check out the original article Tim wrote : Right- and Left-Handed Footballs.

Transcript of Conversation of Right and Left Handed Footballs

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of Pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. it is Tuesday, and Everybody who follows us knows What happens on Tuesday. We have our friend Timothy P Brown of football archaeology calm Join us for another glimpse back in football history and learning something great Tim.

Welcome back to the pig pen. Hey there, good to be with you this evening. I look forward to chatting a little bit about football and Stuff like that. Yeah, you are very Festive between your background and the hat. Is that the Chicago Cardinals or Chicago Marines? I mean, that is correct. So this is the background from 1905, 1905, or 1906. I think it's 1905 Spalding's. You know, their official football guide, And so at least for our purpose today, I'm gonna say it's from the 1905 book, and Yes, since they have the all-American team for 1904.

It looks like, Yeah, So it's got to be that that's pretty and who was National Champions in 1905, in 1905, Michigan Chicago Maroons? Oh, were they okay? Cuz you gave it away to me, and I didn't even get me over the head with a bat, They beat Michigan in the last game of the season On a play that would no longer count the next year because, you know, they changed some rules But they won two to nothing So do nothing. Okay, I think we talked about that game in one of our episodes, and I think we did it.

We did a store or we did a Podcast on it, and I've also, You know, here and there, like on Twitter or something, somebody will say, you know, If you could go back in time and watch one game, what would it be for me? That would be the game. Yeah, Just think about the coaches from that game, Amos Alonzo Stag and Fielding Yost on Michigan's sideline. Oh, yeah. What's his name? You know, his longtime coach at Carnegie, Stephen Walter Stephan? You had Hugo Bezdek, And that's just the Chicago guys, you know, they're up, you know, right? Yeah, Great, great story.

We'll have to rekindle that link for that Podcast episode again so people can enjoy it. That's a good one to listen to, but tonight we have a topic That you wrote on a recent tidbit, and it's called right and left-handed footballs, which sort of caught me by surprise. I remember when I read it back in February when you put it on like, Wow, left-handed football; so it would never have thought so once you tell us a little bit about that tonight. Yeah, so, you know, it's Kind of a, I think it's a fun story just because, you know, When we think about balls being handed, you know, left I mean baseball gloves, There's left hand and right-handed and you know, or any kind of glove basically, I guess You know, but balls Especially round balls. There's tends to be you know You can throw it pick it up or whatever with your right or left hand Bowling balls are the only ones that I really can think of that aren't You know because you gotta stick your thumb in there and fingers and whatnot, so those are left and right-handed I believe but They're drilled right to the individual so yeah so so anyways, and then you know footballs obviously aren't round but You know, so we tend to think of them as universal anyways, right and for the most part that has been the case, but when When they started using footballs in the evening They started painting the balls that that's you know early 1900s as far as I know stag in Chicago actually were the first people That I've got documented, you know documentation that they they painted a ball white Because they had late classes and so they couldn't practice until it was dusk and yada yada So so they start painting balls and then other people picked up on that And you know generally the paint on the ball was Slipperier than Just the tanned leather so that was always a bit of a problem and But you know, they're just worth other than practice and then the really pretty occasional night games People didn't really need to use Painted balls but as as lighting got better and in the 30s in particular is really when lighting Kind of took off right and So, you know high schools were playing under the lights and a lot of colleges, you know added lighting And I think I think that I don't really have You know documented Evidence of this, but I believe that that was so for sure That's when striping came on to the on the balls. Now.

I think the primary reason for that was because If you striped the ball at the end, it wasn't a slippery as a fully painted ball So and they also there was also this whole issue of you know, what I call the camouflaging effect so that You know a lot of teams were still wearing the brown Friction strips or ovals on their jerseys and so a brown ball against the brown Patch could be Kind of hidden People were there teams are starting to wear white jerseys then Stanford was one of them and you know, there were others but so then a white painted ball against the white jersey, you know was problematic so anyways, they started striping them and again, I think it's both the slipperiness and then the So it's a functionality reason and then this camouflaging effect And so, you know, so it's just one of those things where like we know where the stripes go on the ball Right, right Everybody knows it's like two inches to two and a quarter inches in from the tip of the ball and yada You know, I mean, it's a set place and So, you know, we're used to that because that's the only thing we've ever known and yet if you go back and look at the balls of the 30s and into the 50s Originally a lot of the stripes were closer to the laces They had double striping And the you know striping in a couple different patterns they had stripes one or two manufacturers put out balls striped longitudinally rather than You know Latitudinally So anyways, it's just one of those things where you know, it's just Kind of a fun thing where You know, how did they figure this out? And so eventually, but by, you know, the early 1950s, guys like Otto Graham were complaining that the stripe on the ball just happened to hit exactly where he put his thumb. When he, you know, put his hand on the ball, and so, you know, he would complain about it, and then people like John Brody a little bit later. He'd scrape Scrape the paint off the balls that he was gonna use because that was still when teams supplied their own balls, and you know things like that, so eventually, You know, there were enough complaints about this at what the NFL did in around You know in the late 60s the NFL eliminated the stripe on the Underside of the ball. So, you know, each ball traditionally has four panels.

So on the panel Where the quarterbacks where a right-handed quarterbacks thumb would go, They got rid of the stripe on, you know on Well, it's on two different panels because it can hold the ball this way or that way, right, you know and so So if you look at balls from that era, there's a missing stripe on On two of the different two of the panels only have one stripe rather than two And you know two bottoms two bottom panels So then what you know, so Everybody is happy with that and then these two nimrods one called Kenny Stabler and the other Named Bobby Douglas who played for the Bears. They were left-handed, so they showed up. They're like, hey, you know these balls make sense for right-handed quarterbacks. What about us, right? Give me a little bit of love, and so, you know, Davis of Oakland complained about it, and then, in the preseason of 1970, the NFL provided left-handed balls in addition to right-hand balls. So then as an official, the official had to be, You know, They would mark the balls, and I think they just use like a magic marker and they put R or L on the balls To designate that it's a right or left-handed ball and depending on which quarterback was in the game that's the ball that they used and So, I mean, it's just you know, just added to the work that the officials had to deal with They had to inspect more balls, you know all that Kind of Stuff, right? And then somebody finally had the idea. You know, the NFL continued with their right and left-handed balls until 1976, at which point they dropped stripes, right? So before that, they'd use a stripe for night games, but the plain ball for day games, so then in 1975, the NFL or the NCAA Adopted the They adopted the ball that had no striping on the bottom panels Right.

So that's the way it is today if you look at an NCAA ball or stripes on the top two panels, the ones that had joined the laces, But there's no striping on the bottom panels, and this the CFL, on the other hand, They have stripes to go that encircle the ball so So I've always Kind of made the little joke that you know Apparently even though the CFL primarily has Canadian or has American quarterbacks in that league They somehow managed to throw spirals in Canada with a fully striped ball That American quarterbacks can't do when they're in America. So, you know, it's one of those things. I think a lot of times that's stuff. There's as much branding as anything else. You know, it's like CFL wants to have a distinctive ball, and That's one way to do it.

But you know, I don't know. I just think it's Kind of a funny little story. It definitely is the one thing that sort of made me think and I had to keep looking over It's like I have a high school ball.

That's Got the half stripes like you're talking about on the top two panels of the panels that touch the strings, And I'm sitting there thinking, okay, if the big thing was with the Brody and autogram of their thumb resting on it, Why would they put the stripes on that side of the ball? You would think their thumb would be Touching because their fingers would be on the strings, or their thumb would be on one of those two panels, right-handed or left-handed. You would think it almost makes more sense If that was the case; the stripes would be on the bottom two panels that aren't touching. The thumbs gonna rest on the bottom panels on the bottom panels so here is an arena football that one of my sons grabbed at some point. Most Davis to sign it, but So no striping, but if my hand, It's gonna be tough with the way this thing is working. But basically, you know your stripe or your fingers. Okay, so you're I got Okay, and then my thumb is down here on the bottom panel, okay I see I understand that, and if I'm a lefty, so my thumb is on this hand because I'm a righty Lefty, my thumb is on this panel over here.

It does go on the bottom panel. Okay, I'm sorry. You know, I have recently released the history of football in the book. I have images that I got from the Heritage Not Heritage Foundation, but you know, heritage auctions. They had sold a right-handed football, and they sold an NFL right-handed football. That sold a while back, and they gave me permission to, you know, to use those images in the book. Oh, nice. Yeah, So We'll come back to that in a second here, But I have another question. As I was thinking here now, a few weeks ago, You talked about how we had the helmet trickeration episode where that sort of spawned The markings on the helmet so that it would not look like a ball, and you know, you're so we're the stripes on the ball about the same time as the putting Decor on the helmets to make it so they didn't look good.

Yeah, so just to clarify, that helmet trickeration Story that we talked about was from like 1905 Now, and the striping on the helmets didn't kick in until, I Want to say like, 35 or something like that Anyways, you know, it was I think it was in the 30s, but it was for the same reason you know it was because people were There's a running back who would take throw his helmet his brown leather helmet off and to simulate a fumble As far so the first story that I first documentation I found of anybody adding stripes to a ball came in a BYU versus it would be Northern Colorado now and they had a game where one of the teams I think was BYU's wearing white shirts jerseys and Northern Colorado was gonna wear had brown pants that more or less matched the color of the ball, and so they Kind of got into a little bit of a peeing match on that and The the only way they could settle it was to put stripes on the ball So and maybe somebody else's done did it before that but that's the first story. I came across evidence of that happening. So Yeah, so it's it was Kind of. I'm gonna say 33 or something in that Kind of range. So, right in the same middle that decade, then for both interesting.

Okay. Yeah, and then it became, you know, So it's funny, you know, there's some inventions like that that the the manufacturers don't really pick up for a while. But that was one where pretty quickly there were balls available From the manufacturers that were striped or painted and painted and stripped because the white ones would have black stripes The brown ones would have white stripes. There were orange balls with black stripes, Yellow, you know, and ironically enough.

That's your favorite decade when they had the Uglies uniforms, According to some of your writings. Yes Yeah, so there was a lot of eye candy in the mid-30s for football Unf.ortunately, there aren't as many color photos from that period That I can use as Evidence, but some of them, even the black and white it, 's pretty clear how ugly they are Maybe some of those new modern AI apps that color in you know, your old family photos are in black and white and everything and they look pretty good So maybe some of that will help us to augment the history here Played around with some of those things and I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I want to be able to show using AI Images, I thought I thought earlier when you were going reaching back for the football. I saw a box of 64 Crayola's back there. So maybe, oh Wait, we can't. We can't see anything back there.

We just see you disappear into your back. Hey, I wanted to get you thinking a little bit, but Tim, you alluded to it a little bit that you have a book out Yeah on this very subject, and once you tell us a little bit about the book Yeah, you know, it's just so I'll just be real quick. But you know what I found is, You know, I've now got, you know, Coming up on a thousand articles on my football archaeology site, And I had two or three books that I published earlier on football. And so, you know, I've got there's Kind of information scattered all over the place I wanted to so I'm starting a series of books to Kind of condense or consolidate information on Specific topics and so the first one that I did was on the history of the football. So it just looks at Like where did the ball come from? How did it get its shape? Why why is it shaped? Why does have this? prolate spheroid shape You know, why is it constructed the way it's constructed? How did it change over time? Why did it change over time? You know, what were some of the influences when did it get smaller thinner? Etc.

And so, you know as a transition from rugby to football so anyways, just Kind of tells the story of all of those changes and You know, it's just a fun, you know, I think it's fun little read that Kind of just goes into as far as I know It's the first book that looks at you know, the history of the football and maybe that should tell me something But I you know, I think it was Kind of a fun topic No, no, it's definitely a fun topic and I appreciate you. You're letting me have have an advanced copy to read it and it's a great read folks and Definitely want to get a copy of that and Tim as long as we're plugging it. How can people get their hands on the book? Yeah, it's available on on Amazon and I don't know if it will be immediately available through like Walmart and Barnes & Noble, but I'll just tell you I make the most money if you buy it from Amazon I'll make as much money if you buy it from the other sources, but you know, if that's what you need to do Have at it, but it's it's available In you know paperback.

It's 135 pages. So, you know pretty quick read So it's available in paperback Kindle so, you know ebook it's now available on audio So if you prefer to consume in the car, it's not my beautiful voice. It's some, you know artificial voice But it sounds pretty good.

And then And if you you know, if you have Kindle Unlimited, you've got that subscription in the books free so My second favorite f-word free Yeah Kind of like, you know, it's like Spotify the artists still get paid if you listen to your music on Spotify, but just not as much As if you buy it straight up, yeah, well

Tim we appreciate it Of course folks you can visit Tim on his website footballarchaeology.com Check out his tidbits like the one that we talked about tonight and more that he has a thousand articles Like he said so

Tim we thank you for joining us and we will talk to you again next Tuesday.

Very good. Thanks, sir

Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology shares his research and a keen eye for unique helmet designs. This episode focuses on the "winged" helmet design and the homage paid to it by a few teams in the modern era.

Our conversation is based on a Tidbit of Tim's he titled: When Leather Helmets Earned Their Wings.

-Transcribed Winged Helmets with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends, Darin Hayes, PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pig Pen. And we have another great episode where we're going to talk to the resident expert, who says that we, well, are not our residents, but we go to footballarchaeology.com residents and talk to their great founder and historian, Timothy P. Brown. Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Darin, thank you. I have a leather helmet sitting here in front of me. Uh, I no longer, it no longer fits.

Yeah, I can see your name etched in the back of it there for, from your, from your playing days, I assume. No, this was for my uncle's playing days. Really? Okay.

So that is a genuine game-playing helmet, then? It's not a game that used Spalding helmets. And, uh, I actually did wear this in my backyard football day days in my youth. When the other neighborhood kids had those plastic, cheap plastic little things, I didn't have one of those.

So I pulled this baby out and protected my noggin. Well, Hey, it, uh, it's in your logo too. So that's, that's always a good thing too, or something similar to it.

So that's great. So folks, if you didn't realize it yet, our topic today is going to be a tidbit that Tim just a little while ago called when leather helmets earned their wings. So we're gonna get some history on these leather helmets that Tim just showed us.

So, Tim, I'll let you take it away. Yeah. So, you know, I think it's, uh, so, you know, fashion and styles are, you know, everybody's got their own tastes, right?

And I have made public my, um, my belief that the 1930s produced the ugliest football uniforms. I've written a poster too on that and provide photographic evidence, uh, which no one has been able to refute so far. Uh, I mean, it just, they just had stripes going.

There were so many stripes, uh, on some of those uniforms that it was just ungodly ugly. But the 1930s also produced winged helmets, which, um, now people associate, uh, typically with Michigan, Delaware, uh, Princeton, and then there's probably, you know, 300 high schools spread across the country that wear those ugly things. But so as not to offend you, if you're a fan of one of those teams, they're still ugly.

So, but then, the point, the real point is not, you know, I mean, I'm an equal opportunity ugliness kind of historian. So, I am willing to discuss the origins of wings and winged helmets. And I think really the funniest thing about them is that they, the first team to wear winged helmets, was not Michigan, but Ohio State, which is just kind of a fun little.

That's really ironic. Yes. So, so what happened, you know, um, in 1930, there were some new rules put in place that required helmets to have different colors or at least contrasting colors.

Now that could be done either by painting them or by, um, you know, I think most people are familiar with the straps that ran across the tops and there were different patterns, including, you know, what we now think of as kind of the Michigan helmet. There were straps running along the crown of the helmet. And so those could be painted or oftentimes when they produce the helmets, it would be the leather would be in different colors.

So the straps might be a dark Brown or a light Brown, and the rest of it, you know, you know, different variation. Um, but they did that because, in the late twenties, there were people who were, you know, uh, on their shirts, on the front of their jerseys, and on their, uh, on the inside of their arms and things. And they'd wear them in the same color as some of them would wear them in the same color as the football.

So then people were confusing the leather on the iron with the leather on the football. And there were even running backs who would like to toss their helmet off so that, you know, defenders would see the helmet bouncing along the ground and think that's a ball. So they kind of put it, put a stop to that, and they said, okay, your helmets have to have contrasting colors, uh, at the same time.

So there was, that was kind of a stylistic, but it also had a functional use. At the same time, the manufacturers were all trying to create better, more protective helmets. And one of the things that they all kind of did at the same time was to add pads on the front of the helmet about where, you know, the forehead is.

And so rather than just put a pad on there, which is what they had done previously, they started stylizing those pads. And so, um, you know, one version was the wing that we think of now where it kind of, you know, there's the, it kind of moves around a little bit, and then there's this, uh, you know, kind of these tips on either side, but there were, you know, that wasn't the only version. There were 20 or 30 different versions of these things.

Some of them were, I don't even know how to describe it. Cause I, I did some looking before we talked about the shape, but it's, um, it's like a cross between an upside down T and a shamrock with three, with three leaves, you know, that there's kind of had this bulb, bulges thing or bulbous thing, like where the wing would be, and then it would extend all the way up to the, to the top of the crown. So anyway, we're just a lot of different variations on these things.

And so the wings were functional because they pat, you know, they provide additional pads, but for the manufacturers, they were making them try to make them look cool, right? So that people would buy them. I mean, if it was between the DMN, DNM helmet, and the reach helmet, and they were the same price and presumably the same quality, well, whichever one looked cooler would be the one that you'd order. So, um, anyways, I mean, that's kind of the whole deal of it.

And the actual, um, tidbit shows a lot of pictures from sporting goods catalogs at the time. But what's happened is that despite there being many variations back then, every team that I see pretty much has the same today. You know, the same teams are all the teams today that use that winged look seem to pretty much have the same look, you know, they don't, you know, they don't, they don't use the other versions that were available.

So, if you're a high school coach or somebody out there who has an influence on helmet designs, you can go your own way and adapt to one of the looks from the thirties, which is something other than the Michigan helmet. Well, I'm going to have to, uh, make a true confession here that I didn't figure out that Michigan's helmet, 'cause that's the one that's the most popular of these winged helmets. I didn't realize, you know, it was a winged helmet.

I thought that was representing their mascot, the Wolverine. And I was trying to envision a Wolverine. I'm thinking, boy, Wolverines have stripes going down her back and down her sides like that.

And like the wings were sort of the ears of it. That's what I thought, you know, it was until I got into college and found out otherwise, but I never realized it was; they were sort of modeling it after the leather helmets that came before them on the plastic and whatever they make them out of now. But, uh, so very interesting.

So, I'm glad you felt comfortable sharing that with us. Yeah, I am. So there are probably people I'll get the mail coming in now.

You idiot. I mean, there's all kinds of things like that where, you know, I didn't realize that this is where that came from. Yeah.

I guess I never really put a lot of thought into it, but I just assumed it was a Wolverine. I mean, so, um, actually, in my book, How Football Became Football, I've got a picture of, I can't remember his name right now, but an offensive tackle for Ohio State and, you know, wearing the helmet from 1930. So, uh, proof positive that, uh, you know, Michigan didn't invent the things, but, you know, they're obviously the ones that are all associated with them.

And it takes a Wisconsin fan to point that out about the Michigan state. Actually, there's a Michigan state fan who has documented a fair amount of this stuff on the internet. So you want some others to, uh, to jump in on that big ten rivalries, uh, going back in history and picking on their headgear, uh, all good stuff.

Well, Tim, that was really enlightening. And I appreciate you coming on and sharing this tonight. Now you have these tidbits that come out each and every day, uh, seven days a week, 365; you're a busy guy and, uh, you, you like to share them, and you like people to enjoy them and comment and, uh, share them with other people.

Why don't you, uh, tell folks how they can get a hold of your tidbits on a daily basis? Sure. So, the easiest way is to go to footballarchaeology.com. Um, when you hit the site, if you haven't been there before, it's going to ask you to enroll or subscribe. All you have to do is just enter your email.

Uh, it's free. You'll get, uh, you'll get an email every night with whatever the story is for that day. And, uh, you can also follow me on Twitter.

You know, obviously, I'm going to throw out some other things on Twitter besides, you know, more commenting on somebody else's things, but I do share all my tidbits there, but subscribing just ensures you get it. And then you can, you know, it's in your inbox. You can ignore it for two weeks and then read whatever you want to read.

So, you know, that's kind of the value of subscribing to you. Um, but yeah, it's supposed to be fun, and hopefully, that's the way it comes across. All right.

Well, folks, I highly recommend you, uh, take Tim up on that offer to get the tidbits and whatever your preference is to get it and, uh, visit footballarchaeology.com and see the wisdom and knowledge of Timothy P. Brown in action. Tim, thanks a lot. And we will talk to you again next week.

Thank you, sir. Look forward to it.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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When we go to a football game or watch one on TV, there are lines on the field, and they are preset because, most of the time, the fields are artificial grass fields. Somebody has to line the field, but we have modern equipment. How did they do it in the early days of football? Well, Timothy B. Brown of football archaeology joins us to tell us how they lined the field back in the day.

Of course, this discussion all stems from Tim's original article titled: Factoid Feast VII .

The audio-only podcast of the discussion can be found at: How They Lined the Fields in Early Football.

Football archaeologist Timothy P. Brown joins the show to shed light on this forgotten aspect of the game. He's known for his captivating "factoid feasts," where he unearths little-known nuggets of football history. Today's feast features a particularly intriguing tidbit: how they lined the field back in the day.

The Solution: A Goofy-Looking Tool

Prepare to be amazed! Timothy reveals that they used a wheelbarrow-like contraption to mark the field. This contraption had a large barrel filled with lime or chalk solution and a spigot at the bottom. The solution dripped onto a grooved wheel, leaving a line on the ground as it was pushed across the field.

Imagine the Challenge!

Darin paints a vivid picture of the difficulty involved. Pushing a heavy wheelbarrow in a straight line is hard enough, let alone controlling the flow of the solution and ensuring precise markings. Images in the show notes (check them out!) provide a delightful visual of this quirky tool.

A Look at Football Archaeology

Timothy's website, footballarchaeology.com, is a treasure trove for anyone interested in the forgotten stories of the game.

He encourages listeners to subscribe for email updates on his latest articles.  

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The modern-day football helmet seems to be changing almost annually to make the game safer. At no time since the inception of wearing protective headgear did it change more drastically than when leather helmets were replaced with the new plastic technology?

One of the top experts in early football rules history Timothy P. Brown joins us in the discussion to chat about the transition of the material composition of helmets. Timothy Brown's FootballArchaeology.com has a daily football factoid that he shares that is really quite interesting in a short read.

This chat is based on Tim's original Tidbit titled: Transitioning from Leather to Plastic.

-Transcribed Leather to Plastic Helmets with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends, this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And we like to look down that portal every Tuesday and go into some football archaeology with our friend Tim Brown of that very site, Football Archaeology. Tim Brown, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, Darin. Thanks for having me back. Looking forward to chatting once again.

Yeah, we are really enjoying these these Tuesday meetings that we have and, you know, talking about some different aspects of football that are sort of some of them are a little out there. They're not directly related to the game. Some are very directly related to the game, but they're all very interesting indeed, and we really appreciate you sharing these with us.

Yeah. You know, I just love football in all dimensions, including the technical side of the game, the fan experience, and how it's handled in the media. And so equipment and uniforms, all that kind of stuff.

And so, you know, I just try to approach it from a different place, you know, every couple of days to, you know, basically try to mix it up, you know, try to do some different things. Well, I'm glad you said you would like to talk about the uniforms and some of the equipment because I think that's a subject I'd like to discuss today because you had a recent tidbit out, and you called it the transition from leather to plastic. It's one of those things that's not directly involved in the game of football, but it's such an important element of it and such a big change that happened to the game.

And I'd sure like to hear about it. Yeah, well, I mean, I think the development of plastic helmets and then, you know, metal-reinforced face masks is one of the defining elements of today's game. And so, I mean, obviously, a lot happened before that, but the game just has changed dramatically as a result of that development.

So, you know, I think the thing that's that, you know, maybe people don't recognize it when they, with the Intercollegiate Football Association, adopted word for word effectively, adopted the rugby rules in 1876. I mean, they changed three or four rules, but nothing, nothing really significant. Well, one of the rules that came along from rugby was a rule that basically said that you could not players could not wear anything that had a hard substance.

And they cited a substance called gutta-percha, which was some kind of rosin or, you know, it was basically like what we might think of as an early plastic. And, you know, it came off of trees from Indonesia or whatever. But so, you know, anything that was hard could not be worn on the uniform.

So, you know, all the protective gear early on was soft leathers. Right. So when they had any kind of head harness, there's a softer leather is heavily padded, both on the outside and inside.

You know, the shoulder pads that they wore were, you know, fairly just pads filled with felt and horsehair and things like that. They used a little bit of sole leather, which is harder leather, on helmets for a little bit around the turn of the last century. And then they got rid of those.

They basically outlawed them. So so then, you know, football went, you know, continued with this no hard substances thing and then, you know, for decades. And then they kind of started allowing a little bit more sturdy helmets.

Right. Those still those tended to be fairly soft on the outside. But then in 1940, Rydell introduced plastic helmets and Northwestern was first team to wear them.

A few other teams had them early on. And then they also the U.S. Army got a hold of them and actually borrowed helmets from West Point and then basically modified it. And then Rydell became a supplier to the Airborne.

So, you know, Airborne trainees wore Rydell football helmets when they were jumping out of airplanes. You know, you see images of that here and there. But so, the football helmet preceded the crash helmet that the pilots were wearing.

Yeah. So until then, you know, there were people who tried, you know, I mean, if you think about the early guys in planes flying around like gliders. All right.

There was a if you were if you're going to hit the ground, you were really going to hit the ground. And so, you know, they tried to do tried to wear various types of pads on their head. But again, it was more like a football helmet.

And a lot of them, you think about the World War one ace and Snoopy and everything, you know, they're just wearing a leather kind of hood. But so they ended up. They started, you know, they used the because of World War two supply issues, they really couldn't produce any more civilian helmets.

So it really wasn't until after World War two that the helmets kicked in the plastic ones. And so they they were adopted pretty, pretty quickly. But there were still a lot of people holding out there.

You know, folks who just thought these things were too hard. They're causing a lot of injuries. Most guys didn't wear face masks at the time.

So, you know, you got hit in the face by a hard helmet. You know, that didn't feel that good. So and, you know, that's, I think, part of the reason why additional people started wearing face masks.

But yeah, I mean, it was just there was this constant battle of should we retain more of the rugby element where you don't pad up and then let the game go wherever it goes, or do we try to protect players from, you know, I mean, what the plastic helmet did was it protected people from skull fractures. Right. I mean, the leather helmet did that to some extent, but not really.

Plastic helmets did do that, but again, they came at the cost of now you're hitting somebody else with a hard plastic helmet. And then coaches started teaching, you know, spearing and things like that. And, you know, some of the blocking changed to take advantage of the hard helmet.

But they eventually outruled all of that or outlawed all of that. So anyway, it was just kind of an interesting period of time. And, you know, really, I think basically by 61 or 62, pretty much everybody had been switching over to plastic helmets.

You can still buy them, but you can still buy leather, is what I meant. But typically, it was, they're selling, you know, pretty much all over or all. So, it was such a long period of time to, you know, like over a decade, it sounds like maybe a couple of decades for that transition; it wasn't like a wide sweeping change where they, you know, the rules maker said next year, everybody wears plastic helmets.

So you had games for probably some participants were wearing leather and some were wearing plastic. Is that true? Oh yeah. Yeah.

And in fact, so the this, that, that tidbit about the transitioning from leather to plastic, there's an image or two that shows some guys wearing the old leather helmets with the straps, you know, crossing the head or crossing the, you know, the top of the helmet. And then other guys, what's clearly a plastic helmet. So, you know, I think through probably 1949, 50, you would see a lot of that.

And then after that, it became, you know, there were just certain people who just, Hey, this is a helmet I always wore. I wore it in high school. So I'm going to continue wearing it.

You had guys who didn't wear helmets at all. You know, you had the Tommy McDonald's of the world, um, in the NFL who didn't wear a helmet. Um, so, but you know, I think there were just some old school coaches who didn't, you know, who just thought that the, the leather helmet was safer.

Um, I think they were wrong, but that's what they thought, you know? So, um, but the, you know, the other thing was that you know, the, you know, the leather helmet, there was like, it kind of, it wasn't a suspension system, but there were, you know, there was padding inside of it, then, the early plastic helmets were all suspension systems, you know, and I don't know if you ever wore one of those, but I did, you know, and there was, you know, it didn't offer anywhere near as much protection as the padded and the airfield ones that, you know, I was able to wear a little bit later. Um, but you know, the other thing that, you know, you, you mentioned about, you know, there wasn't a rule that said you had to wear a plastic helmet, um, that still really didn't come into place. Um, the, um, the national testing organization, I think it's people call it Noxie, but N O C S A E always got the little stamp on the back of the helmet.

Um, that opened its doors in 68, started certifying helmets in 73. And it wasn't until 78 that the NCAA required anyone playing in a game to have one of those stickers on their helmet. That's I didn't realize it was as recent as that.

I was thinking it was back in the fifties or sixties, but yeah, very interesting. That, you know, it was, um, you know, there was, there was a lot of, you know, testing, a lot of universities were involved in testing the helmet quality. Um, Wayne state, uh, here in the Detroit area was big.

Michigan was big on it. Uh, North Carolina was big on it. So, you know, there were various, um, uh, Northwestern did a bunch of.

Uh, testing in the early sixties with like sensors to measure how hard, you know, the level of contact and, you know, the strength of the hits that were occurring. So, anyway, it was all academic research. And so it wasn't until somewhere in the seventies that they really kind of figured out and had a reasonable set of standards that they could even try to enforce.

Isn't it kind of interesting that, uh, sort of the more things change, the more they stay the same? Now we are seeing teams; all the NFL teams, I think, had to wear the guardian cap over their hard shell, which is a softening. I'm not sure exactly what the materials, but I know it's, it's like a dead deadens, any blows that you take it to the head, uh, where you, you know, instead of having that impact, you know, hard plastic, the hard plastic, whatever the materials they make them out of now.

And, uh, it almost goes back to those days of the, the leather of, you know, that impact, but you still have the hard shell underneath it to give that extra protection. So I'm actually, uh, writing an article on the history of the pad, you know, the external pads, uh, just, you know, partly driven by, you know, kind of the prevalence of the, the guardian, uh, pads, but, you know, so it's, it's an interesting thing. There was a Cornell did a lot of development work on that and, you know, their, their students or their players wore, I think it was just a strip, um, you know, through the middle, but the challenge that they had initially with the external padding was, um, that the, like if it's plastic to plastic, it's fairly clean hit boom.

It's that's it. Whereas with the padding that they had then the, the two helmets stayed in contact with one another and increased the force and increased some of the torque. So that was part of the reason why that never really went forward.

And I think that's probably still part of the case, but I know I'm not enough of a technologist to know that. Just as a side note, I think you probably remember the pro caps in the 1990s. I think a couple of members of the Buffalo Bills wore them.

Um, they were the sort of like that, um, almost like a styrofoam, almost like a wrestling mat type material that you'd put over the top of the helmet. Those were made, uh, or actually found by a guy about five, 10 miles from here, founded them here near Pennsylvania. And they were making those.

So, but never, never took off though. Well, actually I think it's called the thing was called materials called Insolite, but that's the stuff that Cornell initially put on top of their helmets and then Ohio state, Oklahoma, Duke, others use them. Um, that was also Insolite was the first material used to create the initial like wrestling mats that weren't made of horsehair and felt and all that stuff.

So, there's a connection between the two. I mean, it was sort of what I described as a wrestling mat. I wasn't too far off then.

Oh, very interesting. Well, Tim, you did it once again, you educated us on something that was a little bit off the beaten path that, uh, maybe us football fans wouldn't pay attention to, but you're keen. I caught another one and we appreciate that.

Uh, why don't you let folks know, uh, where, where they can find more of your material and, uh, follow you on social media? Yeah. So, um, you can just find me at, uh, footballarchaeology.com. Uh, there's an option.

There's always an option to subscribe. And if you subscribe, you'll get the content into your email box whenever I post anything, which is at least once a day. Um, otherwise follow me on Twitter.

Um, and again, just look for football archaeology, and you should be able to find me. Okay. Tim Brown and football archaeology.

Thank you very much. Once again, we'll talk to you next week.

Okay, cool. Thanks, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

-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?.

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The Football Archaeology of the Football Men Who Endorsed and helped Goldsmith Sporting Goods to make football equipment in 1935.

Helmets are probably the first piece of equipment we think of when someone asks us about football. The head covering may be the most recognizable element of the gridiron.

Timothy Brown, like many of us, is enamored by the evolution of the football helmet as a product and safety device. Tim collects football catalogs selling the equipment and then dives into the variations and innovations that were derived along the way.

In a recent post, 1935 GoldSmith Sports Equipment Consulting Staff, Tim delved into the 1935 Coaching Consultants and reps that GoldSmith had and then came on to share what he found with us on a podcast episode.

-Transcription of 1935 GoldSmith Sports Equipment Consulting Staff with Timothy Brown

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

Thank you, sir. Look forward to chatting again, as always, and hopefully we'll have something interesting for people to listen to.

Yeah, you, Tim, you have some amazing things happening, you know, each and every day, and every once in a while you get some of these zingers that like, just like, I can't call it an earworm, I don't know what it is, it just, it stays with me all day when I read it. I read it in the evening and it stays with me through the night. I'm laying in bed thinking about it, wake up next morning, and one of those is, you keep going into the Goldsmith's catalog, and you had one that, you know, that you had back in September out as a tidbit that talks about some staff that Goldsmith's catalog got some information from, so maybe you could talk a little bit about that tonight.

Yeah, so, you know, so I guess, you know, first off, just, you know, by way of background, I have something on the order, you know, 30 or 40 vintage sporting goods catalogs, you know, so I collect them over time, or I've collected them over time, it's just a way to be able to look up, okay, well, you know, some of it's just images, you know, for the tidbits, but it's also just, you know, you can look at them and understand, okay, this is what this equipment was made of at the time, and how things changed and things that they created that disappeared because they didn't really work very well, or they were uncomfortable, you know, whatever it may have been. Anyways, I collect these catalogs, and most of them, I'm just, you know, I'm buying them online, and so I don't, typically, I'm only seeing like cover photographs, a couple of inside pages, but I don't know what, you know, it's not like, you know, it can be a 90 page catalog, but I'm only seeing images of a couple of them. Anyways, this was one of those, you know, I bought this, Goldsmith was a big brand at the time, and I didn't have a lot of Goldsmith catalogs, so I, you know, picked this one up.
And, you know, then once it was delivered, it was like, right away, okay, this is really cool, because in addition to just normal pages, showing the equipment, the pricing and everything for shoulder pads and helmets and whatever, each of the different major types of equipment, they had a lead in cartoon page that kind of told the history of that type of equipment, the history of football shoes, the history of helmets. And so, it was, number one, it's just kind of fun imagery, they're interesting cartoons. So, it was just a way to, you know, kind of go through those, and then, you know, what I've done, you know, it's a series of, there will be an eighth week now, but, you know, so it's just a way to publish, to do these, show these cartoons, and then just go through the equipment of the time.

And so, this is mid-30s, you know, so what was equipment like, you know, then. And so, this, the first of those cartoons was about what they called their consulting staff. And so, that was, you know, essentially, consulting staff was like, the coaches, and one trainer, who were their, like, their advisory staff, they were the guys who they would go to, to talk through, you know, what kinds of changes do we need for the equipment, or if they had a research and development group, they would show them, they'd show these coaches, hey, here's what we've come up with, what do you think about this? Can you have you guys wear this stuff in spring practice, or in regular practice, and see how it performs? You know, so they were, you know, obviously, these coaches were paid.

And in many cases, they, that, you know, the manufacturers would then, you know, just like your old baseball gloves, where it was like, the Mickey Mantle glove, or whatever, you know, there were, there were pants, and helmets, and footballs, that had the Newt Rockne name on it, or who met Pop Warner, and John Heisman, and, you know, so. Well, Tim, was, was Goldsmith, were they sort of in the Midwest? Is that what I'm getting a sense of? Or what part of the country were they centered out of? You know, a lot of the coaches that are on this advisory staff are Midwest guys. So, I kind of get a sense of that.

But, you know, there was a lot of Midwest, like D&M was out east, they were like a Massachusetts firm, but Spalding was Midwest, Reach, I believe, was Midwest, or a couple down in St. Louis. So, yeah, I don't have that catalog in front of me. But I could, you know, I could look, look it up.

And I can, you know, let you know, you know, kind of where they were based. Yeah, that's, that's what I was, Is there a reason you ask her? Well, I know that Spalding was out of Chicago, and it just seemed, you know, and it seems like, like you said, this, a lot of these coaches are Midwestern teams, Western Conference, Big Ten teams. And I just wondering, you know, if there was a reason why maybe, you know, distribution or something that they were in the center of the country because you really, you think about that area, you know, football starting in the east and moving west, you'd almost think the equipment would be more of an eastern-based, you know, industrial shipping out.

But just curious. Yeah, I think, well, my understanding is a lot of it was the stockyards in Chicago, you know, so there was access to leather. Okay, you know, so I mean, so much of the early equipment, yeah, so much of the early equipment was leather, that, you know, it made more sense to be where you could pick and choose and get high-grade leathers and yada, yada, yada.

So, yeah, I mean, it's funny, it's one of those things you wouldn't even think is, you know, there's no reason anymore, you know, to be near a source of leather.
Obviously, you know, baseball gloves are a different story. But otherwise, you know, most football equipment, there's no leather involved anymore.

And then the ball, you know, obviously, the balls were leather. So anyways, yeah, that's, that's why I love it, you know, started in the Midwest. That makes perfect sense.

Okay, thanks. Yeah, so, so then, you know, like these coaches were, you know, the folks that they had on at that point, so in 1935, they had a Hunk Anderson, who was at North Carolina State, but it just finished a tour at Notre Dame. So Midwest, then he had played at Notre Dame.

Noble Kizer was at Purdue. Fritz Crisler was at Princeton, but he had been at, he had played at Uof Chicago. He had coached Minnesota before going to Princeton.

And then obviously ended up at Michigan. Doc Spears had been all over. Well, he kind of he was a journeyman, he was actually a doctor, but a football coach, but he was at Wisconsin at the time.

And I can't remember if he had just gone there. I think he got fired after that, and then went out to Oregon, or it could have been the other way around. And then this guy, Frank Major Wandel, from Yale, who was, he was one of those interesting guys at the time, there were a lot of, it's kind of like, you know, there are these strength and conditioning coaches now who are, you know, kind of, they have their own brand, they're, they're nationally known, nationally recognized guys.

And, you know, back then, there were trainers like that, too. And he was one of them. So he'd been longtime trainer at West Point, and he ends up down at, I think it was LSU for a couple of years.

Then he ends up at Yale, which is where he was at at the time. So, so actually, the mix isn't that much Midwestern. But it's interesting, because the image that you have, and folks, if you've got to enjoy these images that Tim's talking about, we have link in the show notes, you can go to Tim's page and see some of these, he's talking about these cartoons.

But Major Wandel, you know, everybody else is sort of wearing like white knickers. And he's got like, I don't know if they're plaid knickers, or, but that's what jumps out of you on the page to me, is these knickers. And it's he's in the lower right hand corner of the page I'm looking at, but he must have been a character to have some like looks like he's golfing, maybe.

Yeah, I mean, he's one of those guys who just like came out of some gym in New Jersey, and ended up eventually hooking in with, he did some training, you know, during World War One, and then ends up at West Point for quite a while. But yeah, I mean, back then, trainers were function both. They handled both the kind of sports medicine side, you know, they weren't physicians.

But when we think about athletic training, we're thinking about, you know, hot baths, and cold baths, and, you know, taping guys, and, you know, some kind of contraption, you know, so it doesn't hurt, as well as strength and condition. So they were both at the time, and mostly conditioning, they didn't do as much strength work. But yeah, a lot of these guys were, you know, they're big on the whole, getting guys to roll on the ground to toughen them up.

Things that we now think are pretty absurd, but, you know, that was kind of core beliefs at the time. Yeah, I can remember back when I was playing when I was, like, I think the first year I played, maybe I was in fifth grade or something. I remember our coach, he was old school.

He was an older guy. And you'd have part of your calisthenics, you'd run in place, and then drop and make sure your stomach hits first, because that's going to toughen your gut up, you know, as everybody gets the wind knocked out of when you hit the ground, and you're gasping trying to get back up. But I picture that kind of training.

Yeah, that was the deal. But one of the things I thought was kind of cool, I can't remember, you know, which eater left this as a comment or a question, but, you know, I'm a Purdue fan. And, you know, there were a lot of schools back in the 30s that wore winged helmets, right? I mean, we now associated with just a select few schools.

But back then, it was very common. Nevertheless, you know, this guy made a comment that you know, back in the 30s, mid-30s, in particular, Purdue wore winged helmets, you know, so wing in front straps, you know, going back, kind of, you know, the Michigan, Delaware, Princeton style now. But she's like, so that's where you know because Noble was one of these advisory coaches.

And so I would bet if you look at images of the Purdue team from that era, there probably weren't some, some form of Goldsmith helmet, right? So as opposed to some competitive brand. So anyways, but for him, it was kind of a neat insight because it's like, so that's why they were those, those stupid. Now, with these coaches, sort of being on the board of directors, or the consultants of the now the day, is that, you know, their teams buy all their equipment from a Goldsmith, then is that was that's part of the deal of, you know, I've never really seen anything that goes into the details of those kinds of contracts.

I mean, I've read a few things about Knute Rockne because he was like, I mean if you think that there's somebody that, that is on every commercial nowadays, like, you know, save been, you know, down in Alabama's on a fair amount of stuff. But Rockne was, I mean, he was pitching, obviously, all kinds of athletic equipment. And then he pitched Ramblers or Studebakers, you know, one of those brands, he made coffee, he did all you know, stuff for Kelloggs, a lot of stuff for Kelloggs, and they had coffee at the time.

I just thought Barbasol was big on Barbasol. So he was from a Holmes and Travis Kelsey, eat your hearts out. Newt Rocky was first.

That's right. Major sponsor ambassador. Yeah.

Okay, so well, yes. Did the coach or did the teams buy that brand of equipment? And so I've never really, you know, I've never seen anything definitive. In that regard, and I have this kind of a storyline I've never checked into.

You know, I have read a number of things with Newt Rocky and his, you know, he, he promoted a lot of different kinds of consumer goods, but then also a lot of football equipment. So I mean, I have to believe that they, at minimum, they benefited from the, you know, they got discounts on the equipment, and in some cases, free stuff in order to test it, you know, it had to be that kind of thing going on. But, you know, the research I've done in the past about, you know, like when logos first came, you know, when logos became prominent in the 60s, really Adidas, you know, among track athletes that whole thing got going, and they were, you know, giving away equipment, paying athletes to wear their branded goods.

So that's really where that started. But there were probably, you know, less, you know, maybe a little bit less formal, you know, kinds of, you know, deals in the past, right? You know, yeah, I'm just picturing like a high school coach or athletic director saying, Hey, you know, Fritz Kreisler's endorsing this product, goldsmith, we better write our equipment there, because, you know, we're, we're Fritz Kreisler fans, or, you know, you know, Hunky Anderson fans, whatever, you know, they see they're endorsing it. And, you know, that's probably a lot of the attraction from for having them on the covers.

Yeah. And, you know, I'm sure they got that they got paid something just like, you know, the baseball gloves. And, you know, those athletes got things, and somehow they get money when their gloves are sold.

Right. So right. But, you know, the details of it, I don't understand, or, you know, really know anything about.

I wonder, I picture, you know because you have some great images of the helmets. I wonder maybe, you know, we can look back at some old photographs. Maybe I'll do that in some spare time here and look and see if you can tell a goldsmith helmet from, you know, a Spalding or some of the other manufacturers.
And maybe you can tell that way and say, Hey, you know, Purdue was wearing a goldsmith in 37 or. Yeah. And yeah.

Well, even in that article, I did do that. I couldn't find a good sharp image of the Princeton team from that era to see, well, what helmet they wore? Well, in fact, what I, the only thing I really found was a, it was a painting or an illustration from a year, you know, Princeton yearbook. And the helmets of Princeton players are wearing what we think of as a classic winged helmet.

It was. There's a helmet style. It kind of looks like, now I'm blanking on the term, but it's kind of like a three-leaf clover sort of design. It's, you know, so anyway, but, you know, and Goldsmith offered that helmet and, or that style of helmet, but I think others did as well.

So sometimes it's hard to tell like what brand, because, you know, people, you know, they, they wore, you know, they had similar designs, you know, different brands. Okay. Gotcha.

All right. So go ahead and continue. Yeah.

Well, I was mostly just gonna say, I'm not sure, you know, I'm just, I put together some notes in advance. And so I don't know that I had had anything else. I mean, other than just one of the things that's pretty remarkable, as in all the catalogs or in all the different products, is it like on helmets, you could go from, like, say, a $15 helmet down to like one that costs $2 and 35 cents.

So the, you know, they, they end up having these high end helmets, and then, then there's kind of moderately priced ones, and then there's pretty inexpensive helmets. And so you just gotta, you know, it's like now, every helmet has to meet a certain base at least, you know, performance level, you know, based on Noxi. But, you know, back then, it was like, well, no, we, this is a helmet, it's good.

You know, but there's no measurement standards or anything. It's just like you're taking somebody's word for it. Yeah, that leads into one of the questions I was gonna ask you because the the ad for the helmets that you have on this tidbit, you know, it has three examples of helmets that they were promoting.

And all of them say leather lined. Now, what would be the alternative to leather-lined in that era? Would it be like, you know, cloth or something? Or, you know? Yeah, I think the internals were either leather or felt for the most part. And so you'll, you'll also see things.

You pretty much have to look at the less expensive ones to get a handle on the alternatives. For example, moleskin was kind of a high-end material for pants. It was not as popular in the 1930s, but it was still a high-end material.

Canvas was a low-end material. And then there might be different kinds of twills and maybe duck and whatever. I don't even know what some of those things really are, that they're one form of cotton, you know, material or another, but then by the 30s, you were getting into, you know, silk, and a lot of times it's like airplane cloth, which is actually a form of silk.

So silk, and then I'm blanking on the kind of the really shiny material that satin, you'd see that satin, yeah, it's so you'd see satin on the front of you know, certain, certain teams pants. So yeah, I mean, some of it was once they got into some of the, the not-so-like silk, one of the real values of it was lighter, much more water repellent, you know, so it didn't soak up sweat and, you know, water in a rainy situation. So the players, you know, felt lighter, but it also silk is much easier to dye.

And you can do a much broader range of colors, whereas the duck and canvas pretty much always had earth tones, you know, one or tone or another. So everybody wore kind of the same look in pants until New York versus wearing purple pants. So, you know, I mean, it's, you think about it, that was a big deal.

Awesome. Somebody, hey, they're wearable pants. Right? Yeah, I was just trying to go when you were saying, you know, that from the $15 helmet down to the $2 and 35 cent helmet, I'm picturing, you know, hey, you know, varsity players, you get the $15 helmet with a leather lined and freshmen, you're going to get the burlap lined helmets, you know, uncomfortable.

Yeah, well, I'm sure that sure that was short, obviously, the freshmen who were wearing the stuff, those latest and greatest 10 years ago. Right. And the thing on some of that is, I was looking at, so I'm still writing, you know, writing one of these, and it there's, there's kind of like a flap in the back between kind of the ear hole area in the back.

It's got some kind of flexible extension, some kind of elastic band there. So there was that part of the sizing. If you look at the catalog, sometimes not a lot is said about helmet sizing.

And so, you know, I always had a big old water bucket head. So I needed a big helmet. I've got a younger brothers, you know, got a pinhead.

And, you know, so, but presumably, we would have been issued the same helmet. So, yeah, I'm sure they had some kind of size variations, but, you know, they don't talk about much of the catalog size variations. You had to stuff some straw or a rag in the back or something to make it stay on your head.

Tim, that's a fascinating stuff. And you've, you've got a lot of these goldsmiths that you've been coming out as you said, you had an eight-part series on it, but you have a lot of other interesting stuff coming out, you know, seven days a week. Maybe you could share with folks how they could get in touch with you to learn about your tidbits and read them each and every day.

Yeah. So, you know, so my preferring would be that it just visits the site and you subscribe. And, you know, that way, basically if you're subscribed, you can, you'll get the, you'll get the tidbit by email every night.

Cause I assume it's seven o'clock Eastern. If you, if you're a Substack reader, you can also just get it and follow me on Substack. And then, you know, you'll, you'll be able to get them every night.

Some people don't want the email, but there you go. They like getting it on Substack. I also, at least for now, tweet it every night.

And then I also posted on the application threads. So me on one of those, it's always Football Archaeology. You know, if you enter that, you'll find me.

And then it's kind of like happy reading. All right. Well, Timothy Brown, thank you.
Once again, footballarchaeology.com is the place to go and we appreciate you, sir. And we will talk to you again next Tuesday.

Very good.

Thank you. Thanks, Tim.

Transcribed by TurboScribe

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Darin Hayes welcomes Timothy P. Brown from Football Archaeology to explore an intriguing aspect of football history: the evolution of helmet colors tied to the advent of the forward pass. The conversation dives into the significance of helmet design, particularly focusing on the 1925 Iowa football team, which was one of the first to adopt painted helmets. These helmets were not only practical for visibility but also became a symbol of innovation in the sport. Brown recounts how the first team to paint helmets did so to distinguish eligible receivers on the field, showcasing a blend of psychological insight and practical strategy that defined early football tactics. The episode weaves through historical anecdotes, questioning the legitimacy of claims regarding the psychological impact of helmet colors made by the Iowa psych department, leading to a humorous discussion about the eccentricities of early sports science.

Of course, this story is based on Tim's Factoid Feast Tidbit I in a section called Iowa's Passing Fancy.

We also have an audio-only podcast on the topic found at: The Evolution of Football Helmets: A Colorful History.

Throughout the episode, listeners gain insight into the cultural and strategic transformations in football as the sport evolved from leather helmets to the more modern iterations we see today. The hosts delve into the challenges of maintaining painted leather helmets, discussing the durability of paint and the practicalities of upkeep, which were as complex as the game itself. This thoughtful examination highlights the intersection of sports and psychology, illustrating how something as seemingly simple as helmet color can have a profound impact on gameplay and perception in American football.

Listeners are invited to explore more of Timothy's work at footballarcheology.com, where he offers a treasure trove of stories that celebrate the rich history of football, showcasing how these narratives contribute to our understanding of the game's evolution over time.


The podcast takes a deep dive into the fascinating story of how helmet colors in football came to be, with a particular focus on the Iowa team in 1925. Darren Hayes and guest Timothy P. Brown engage in a lively dialogue that spans the practical implications of helmet design and the quirky historical anecdotes surrounding it. The discussion reveals that the act of painting helmets was not merely an aesthetic choice but was rooted in the strategic needs of the game—specifically, the need to distinguish players during the chaotic action of a match. Brown elaborates on the origins of painted helmets, highlighting how one of the first instances of this practice was motivated by the need to enhance visibility for quarterbacks attempting forward passes. The episode cleverly juxtaposes these historical insights with modern perceptions of the game, drawing parallels between past and present approaches to player visibility and safety.

Moreover, the conversation also touches on the bizarre claims made by Iowa’s psychology department, asserting that their helmet design was “psychologically perfect.” Brown humorously critiques the validity of such claims, suggesting that the supposed scientific rationale may not have held up under scrutiny. This blend of humor and historical analysis not only entertains but also provides listeners with a richer understanding of the complexities involved in the evolution of football equipment.

The episode also serves as a reminder of the often-overlooked details that shape the sport we know today, encouraging fans to appreciate the history and innovation behind every aspect of the game. For those curious to learn more about the intersection of psychology, design, and sports history, Brown's insights are invaluable and can be explored further at footballarcheology.com, where he archives many of these fascinating stories.


Listeners are treated to a unique exploration of football history, specifically the evolution of helmet colors, in this engaging podcast episode featuring Darren Hayes and Timothy P. Brown. The discussion centers on the Iowa football team of 1925, one of the pioneers in the use of painted helmets, which were intended to improve visibility for players on the field, particularly the quarterbacks looking to pass. Brown provides a detailed narrative about how painting helmets became a strategic innovation in football, illustrating how the sport has continuously adapted to improve gameplay and player safety.

As the conversation unfolds, the hosts explore the quirky history surrounding the psychological claims made about helmet designs by Iowa's psychology department, leading to a humorous yet critical examination of the relationship between sports, psychology, and design. Brown's insights into the challenges of maintaining painted leather helmets during inclement weather add depth to the discussion, emphasizing the practical considerations that teams faced in the early days of football. This historical context enriches the listener's appreciation for the game, showcasing how even small changes, such as helmet color, can have significant implications for strategy and player interaction on the field.

The episode paints a vivid picture of the early football landscape, filled with unique stories and facts that highlight the sport's evolution. Listeners are encouraged to visit footballarcheology.com, where Brown curates a collection of historical narratives and insights that celebrate the rich tapestry of football history, ensuring that the legacy of the game continues to inspire future generations.

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The narrative unfolds around the historical encounter between Penn State and Notre Dame, marking their first clash on the football field. I engage in a detailed examination of the circumstances leading up to the 1913 game, emphasizing both teams' relatively modest standings prior to their ascendance in collegiate football. My personal bias as a Notre Dame enthusiast is evident, yet I strive to maintain an objective lens while discussing the significance of this matchup. The episode provides a platform to reflect on the transformative journey of both programs, from their nascent stages to their eventual prominence in the sport.

This information comes from his original post titled: The First Notre Dame-Penn State Game.

Timothy P. Brown and I engage in a spirited dialogue about the broader implications of this game, including the societal and cultural contexts of American football during the early 20th century. We discuss the impact of coaching philosophies and the evolution of playing styles that characterized the game at that time. The reference to the football landscape of the era, especially the religious affiliations of many institutions and their influence on the game, adds a rich layer to our discussion. I highlight the innovative strategies that coaches like Jesse Harper employed, which would lay the groundwork for future developments in college football strategies.

Ultimately, the discussion serves as a recounting of a specific game and a reflection on how historical narratives shape our understanding of contemporary college football. I encourage listeners to consider the broader implications of this history and its relevance to the current landscape of the sport, as well as to engage with the memories and traditions that continue to define these iconic programs.

-Takeaways

-The inaugural meeting of the Nittany Lions and the Fighting Irish occurred in 1913, marking a significant event in college football history.

-Both Notre Dame and Penn State have storied football programs that were not always as prominent as they are today.

-The first game between Notre Dame and Penn State took place when both teams were relatively lesser-known and unestablished in the national football scene.

-Darin Hayes and Timothy P. Brown delve into the historical context and significance of this classic college football matchup in their podcast.

-The podcast provides insights into college football's evolution and highlights team prominence's changing nature over the decades.

-Listeners are encouraged to explore footballarchaeology.com for further historical tidbits and insights related to the sport.

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In this rich and engaging podcast episode, we delve deep into the annals of football history, centered around the captivating narrative of PA Corbin, a Yale football player whose innovative tactics changed the course of a pivotal game against Harvard.

This podcast is based on the original Tidbit of Timothy Brown found at Pa Corbin and A Trick Well Executed

There is also an audio-only version of the discussion found at Unearthing the Legacy of PA Corbin: Yale's Football Pioneer or on your favorite podcast provider; just search for the latest Pigskin Dispatch Podcast episode!

Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology joins me in dissecting Corbin's unique playstyle and the context in which he operated. We examine the transition of football from its rugby roots, emphasizing the strategic shifts that occurred as the sport began to formalize its rules and gameplay. Corbin's infamous trick play—a deft dribble kick that led to a touchdown—serves as a focal point of our discussion, illuminating the creativity and tactical acumen that defined early football. The episode not only recounts Corbin's contributions but also reflects on the evolution of the sport itself as we consider how the foundational principles established during this era continue to reverberate throughout today's football landscape. Throughout our dialogue, I emphasize the importance of understanding the historical context of such plays, allowing listeners to appreciate the complexities and challenges faced by players of yore.

-Takeaways

-The Pigskin Daily History Dispatch podcast delves into the rich history of American football, illuminating significant events and figures in the sport.

-Timothy Brown discusses the remarkable story of PA Corbin, a Yale football player known for his innovative trick play during the early development of football.

-Listeners are encouraged to explore footballarchaeology.com for daily insights and tidbits about football history that enhance their understanding of the sport.

-The evolution of football rules is highlighted, particularly the transition from rugby-style play to more structured American football.

-Corbin's trick play, which involved a strategic dribble kick, exemplifies the creativity and athleticism present in the early days of football.

-The episode underscores the importance of teamwork and precise execution in executing successful plays, showcasing how all players contribute to the outcome.

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Listeners are invited into the depths of football history as Darin Hayes and Tim Brown uncover the life and legacy of Frank Hering, a figure whose contributions to the game are both innovative and surprising. Herring, a quarterback with the University of Chicago in the 1890s, is celebrated for his development of the overhand spiral pass, a technique that transformed the passing game and paved the way for modern football. The conversation highlights the challenges of the era, including the unwieldy size of early footballs and the strategic limitations of the time, providing a rich backdrop for Herring's achievements. As the narrative unfolds, the duo recounts Herring's pivotal moments on the field, including his experiences during the Chicago Maroons' groundbreaking travels to play against Stanford and other teams, emphasizing the significance of these early games in the context of football's evolution.

The conversation stems from one of Tim's famous Football Archaeology TidBits titled: Frank Hering, The Overhand Spiral, and Mother's Day

We have the audio-only podcast version at: Touchdowns and Traditions: How Frank Hering Became the Father of Mother's Day

Frank E. Hering was an American football player and coach. He is best known for his time as the head football coach at the University of Notre Dame from 1896 to 1898. Hering is often called the "Father of Notre Dame Football" for his role in transforming the program from an intramural activity into a competitive intercollegiate sport. He also served as Notre Dame's first basketball coach and coached the school's baseball team.

In a twist that captivates the audience, the episode also links Herring to the inception of Mother's Day. Tim Brown shares the intriguing story of how Herring's involvement with the Elks led him to propose a day dedicated to honoring mothers, culminating in the formal recognition of Mother's Day by Congress in 1914. This unexpected connection between sports and social advocacy adds depth to the discussion, highlighting how individuals can influence culture beyond their primary fields. Hayes and Brown's engaging dialogue seamlessly weaves these two narratives together, showcasing the profound impact that one person can have in both the world of sports and society at large. This episode not only enriches listeners' understanding of football history but also celebrates the often-overlooked contributions of those who have shaped our cultural traditions.