Football Daily

A great gridiron historian and author of numerous books on football history. many of them center around the World Football League.

Mark has written numerous articles and books on the history of the WFL, its players, teams, and other people connected to the now-defunct league.

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When did American Football actually first start being played? Timothy P. Brown answers the question of when football began, dispelling many of the mainstream experts' erroneous preconceptions.

While there's no single definitive date for the birth of American football, several key events and influences mark its evolution from a blend of other sports to the game we know today:

-1869: The first intercollegiate game played between Rutgers and Princeton using rules heavily influenced by soccer. This is often cited as the "official" birth of American football. It was more like soccer than anything else, though.

-1876: The Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) is formed, standardizing rules and fostering the development of a more unified game.

-1880s: Walter Camp, known as the "Father of American Football," introduces key rule changes like the line of scrimmage, the snap, and the forward pass, shaping the game into its modern form.

-1892: The first professional game is played between the Allegheny Athletic Association and the Pittsburgh Athletic Club.

-1906: The forward pass is legalized, revolutionizing the game and opening up possibilities for aerial attacks.

-Transcribed Conversation of When Football Started with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes, PigskinDispatch.com. And once again, it's Tuesday. We're going to have another great chat with football archaeology's Timothy P. Brown.

Tim, welcome back. And glad you're here tonight.

Thank you, Darin. I'm glad to be here myself. It's always a good thing, isn't it? Yeah, you know, I'm starting to get to the age where it becomes dope. But I know that I am. Here I am.

I know the feeling. Well, we're certainly glad you're here tonight.

And we're even more happy that you're here to talk a little bit about football history from one of your recent tidbits. And you've got one that really caught my eye, and I think it would be very interesting to all listeners interested in football history. And that's when did the football history really begin? When did the start of football happen? Yeah.

So, you know, I wrote that piece. It was actually the anniversary, the first anniversary of today's tidbits. So that's why I chose that topic to say, OK, what better thing to talk about than where did football begin? And so, you know, the received wisdom would be that football began with the games between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869.

So and then, but you kind of have to go like, well, why do we consider that to be the first football game? What was it about those two games that made it the start of football? And for me, when I look at it, I go, well, though that wasn't the start of football, I don't, you know, I mean, yes. You know, I wrote a book about the hundred first hundred first 50 years of football, and I based it off the ninth or 1869 date. So, you know, I'm part of the problem, but I'm trying to make amends.

So they've got everybody drinking that Kool-Aid. That's right. That's right.

You know, so but, you know, it really kind of comes back to, you know, what was going on back then and, you know, regardless of what was happening. How would you judge? You know, what is the basis of when a new game begins? It's kind of like the difficulty biologists get into in terms of evolution. When does a new species begin? You know, what came first, the chicken or the chicken or the egg? But in this case, I mean, for me, you know, I look at at that the 1869 games.

And it was a, you know, negotiated rule, but it mostly resembled association football or what we call soccer. You know, you couldn't carry the ball. It was a round ball.

There were 25 players per side, and, you know, there were other things going on. So, like, was that really football? I mean, it was an intercollegiate game between two schools, but those had happened before, too. So, you know, in my mind, the main reason it's considered the start of football is that Park H. Davis went to Princeton, whatever, you know, 25 years later than that.

And he is the first football historian. And he decided that that was the first that was the start of football. And so, therefore, you know, given the influence that he has had on football history, that's what it is, you know, and then nobody ever doubts that.

I mean, a lot of other people have, but. And I just look at it and say, OK, so that's not good enough. You know, what would mark the start of the game of football? And for me, I think of it as when did when did football break away from.

Soccer or rugby, it's kind of two, you know, origin, you know, origin games, but it wasn't a wasn't a soccer game. So I'm then saying, OK, get rid of soccer. When did football move away from rugby? And for me, it's it's the 1876 meeting where the IFA set up a new set of rules.

So. The IFA, the Intercollegiate Football Association, was founded three years earlier, but they adopted soccer, you know, I mean, they didn't adopt this specific set of rules; they just said, hey, we're going to follow the association game rules from London. So they were just playing soccer.

Then, the next year, Harvard plays McGill. First in a Boston rules game, then in a rugby game, and they end up saying, hey, we like this rugby game. So they start playing it, and then they play Yale the next year in what they call the concessionary rules game, which is a mix of, you know, an adapted rugby game.

And then in 76, they adopt what are now the basis of they adopted the IFA rules, which is the basis of football. And then. You know, from there, you can trace.

You know, those rules got adopted and then adapted year after year after year, and there's a continuous line of football rules that come from that original 1876 set that are now the rules we play under today, you know, and in the 1890s and early 1900s, there were multiple rules committees, and there were some conflicts because one group didn't like the other. But at the end of the day, you know, all of the all those committees all use, you know, the preceding rules that had come from 1876. So, for me, I look at it as, hey, they created a new set of rules, and they only made a couple of changes from the rugby rules of the day, but they took a different path.

Rugby then went on and made all kinds of changes to their game. You know, so the rugby game of 1876 is not the game that's played today. They made a lot of changes, too.

But, you know, our football took a different path. And, you know, it's kind of like, you know, maybe anybody who's, you know, Catholic or Lutheran or maybe, you know, Episcopalian, something like that, where there's this whole succession of bishops, you know, from Peter all on down finds that logic attractive, you know, or understands that logic. But it's, yeah, there's a succession from here, you know, from a starting point to now.

And that's kind of the way I see the IFA rules. It was a starting point for football. Let me entertain you.

Oh, wait, you're not going to argue with me, are you? No, I'm not going to argue. I'm just going to propose something to you. All right.

I totally agree with you. The 1869 Princeton Rutgers game. And I agree with your whole theory on Park H. Davis having the influence on it.

Of course, Park H. Davis, in that 1911 book, also had biblical references to football, Roman, and Greek. And he had a bunch of ancient societies football. So the people really hung on to the Princeton Rutgers game.

But I agree with you. Let's take that out of the equation. I don't know.

I mean, I think the IFA rules were important to the development of football. But I think the 1880 rules meeting when Walter Camp proposed the line of scrimmage in the center and the quarterback followed through, players were 11 aside. That was sort of when that got sort of hammered in stone.

And I almost wonder, could we not consider that the birth of American football? 1880. Well, yeah. So, I mean, by your logic, I could argue that 1906 is the birth because that's when the forward pass came in.

So, I mean, you're totally right that 1880 was a big deal. 1884 was a big deal. The whole 1906 to 1912 period was a big deal.

But I would just always go back to the fact that 1876, the rules that they modified and made some like line of scrimmage and things like that in possession in the 1880 or early 80s, those still, they were modifying the rules that they set in 1876. So, it was. I've posted this on an earlier tidbit, but if you go to the Canadian Football Research Association site, they have an 1873 set of rules that they adopted, which are almost word for word, the ones that were the rugby rules at the time and that the Americans then adapted. So, but for me, it's just, they formally said, these are the rules we are going to play under.

The game has been played under those rules since then, subject to annual changes. But that's the point when they said, here's, we're going to play this new game. In fact, in the first half or most of the season of 1876, they played under the kind of a mixture of rules, but the games played after that meeting followed the 1876 rules.

And so, you're saying that because of the standardized rules that were adopted widespread, that's OK. I'm basing it more on 1880 is when American football shot off of rugby and became basically a different game. That's scrimmage from scrummage thing.

That's why I said, but I will, you know, defend what you say to the hilt because that's your right. The standard rules came out, and that's the derivative of what American football came out of. So, yeah.

And I mean, there's lots of things like, you know, the scrimmage thing that was going on before 1876. And I mean, it was just a terminology difference. They were using scrimmage and scrimmage in the UK and here.

So, you know, now the difference is obviously in 1880, you know, you had what we now really consider a scrimmage. So, controlled possession of the ball for multiple downs, right? So, you know, so you retain possession. It wasn't the toss the ball, you know, in the middle kind of thing.

But, you know, I guess I view that as just one rule to change the game, but there have been hundreds and thousands of rule changes. And while I consider that one of the top 11 changes, it's just one of the top 11. Yeah.

But I guess at the end of the day, if you look at those three games that were association football, rugby, American football, they're, you know, probably the three of the most successful athletic ventures of organized sports in the world that has popularity right now. You know, they're definitely in the probably top five. I reached back and grabbed a book that I still hadn't finished, but it was by a guy named Tony Collins.

He's a professor in the UK. The book is called How Football Began. And he basically, you know, goes back to the stew of games that was going on in the UK.

And, you know, I think sometimes we have this impression, or at least I always, you know, used to have the impression that, well, they just had, you know, they just had a couple of different versions. But in fact, you know, in the UK, they had a bunch of different versions of football, and then they kind of started consolidating, and you got into an amateur and professional differences, which is, you know, we're like rugby union and, you know, rugby, you know, anyways. Anyway, it's a really interesting book, and it gets into Australian rules and other things.

So it's just, you know, he kind of goes from where everything was muddled together to how it started breaking off. So it's really a fun read. If somebody's interested in period football, I would say definitely grab that one.

But it's really interesting. Well, Tim, a great subject, great discussion. Really appreciate you being able to talk about that.

Why don't you share with the audience where they can get information like your tidbits that this came out of on a daily basis? Yeah, it's very simple. I've got a site on the Substack platform, but it's just footballarchaeology.com. So you just go on and check out an article and there's a sign up process that you go through. And so you subscribe for free and then you'll get an email every day.

In your inbox is whatever that day's article is. Other people subscribe on Twitter. But if you're interested enough, I'd say just subscribe to the site.

And I have some people that read 10 articles in a row and they just store them up when they're flying or whatever it is. But other people read stuff every day. So either way, do what you want.

All right. Excellent. It's a great investment of time, whether you do it daily or build up 10 of them.

It's a great read and something different every day. And I highly recommend it. Tim Brown of footballarchaeology.com. Thank you very much for joining us.

And we'll talk to you again next week. Thank you, sir. Enjoyed it as always.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

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

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on Opponents Visitor Scoreboard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very good. Thank you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

Here the story is told best Visitors on the Scoreboard Football Archaeology Tidbit.

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Football Archaeology takes an in-depth look at a unique down and distance measuring device from the late 1930s called the Honest Headlinesman.

The concept was said to be more accurate on the poorly lined grass fields of the era and would allow for a more "fair and level playing field " for the participants and an easier discernment by officials if the line to gain had been reached.

Football Archaeology has excellent details on the concept and some images of it and its use. Timothy Brown has a nose for the unique stories from football antiquity and can tell a tale to enlighten us of what those in the gridiron past were doing.

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

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

From Necessity to Innovation:

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

Birth of a Game:

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

Spreading the Game:

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

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Collectors Digest posted this on Longtime Cleveland Browns fan and sports memorabilia collector Ray Prisby owns one of the largest Browns collections in existence, including a large assortment of Jim Brown items.

Born in Eugene, Oregon, Mrs. Vanderyt lived in many places from coast to coast as the family followed the playing and coaching career of her famous father, NFL star Norm Van Brocklin. From Oregon, California, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota she has experienced the gridiron in multiple locales. Karen attended Cornell University and met her future husband, Bill, there. They later married and moved to Atlanta, making their home in Georgia and raising a family.

Historian and author Greg Tranter is a major fan and collector of Western NY and Buffalo Bills football history.

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Author of multiple books on sports history, including Lords of the Gridiron I and Lords of the Gridiron II, Matthew is also an accomplished podcast host of the The Packaged Tourist Show, as he spends his days archiving some of the great items in museums.

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The bio of the gridiron historian, author, and founder of the Football Learning Academy, Ken Crippen, as found on the FLA website.