Football Daily

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Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology.com reminds us of the precautions to have football games played in stadiums during World War II.

The story of how fear of the unknown led to mayhem in the skies above NY during WWII is told by Tim in this episode of our podcast.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on an Aeriel Atack Yankee Stadium

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to another evening when we get to talk to Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com about one of his famous tidbits that comes out daily. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Darin, thanks for having me this evening.

I feel honored now that I am in the presence of a published author. Well, thank you. Just, hey, congratulations.

I mean, you know, I know the amount of work you put into it and just encourage everybody to pick up. I'll let you do the plug yourself, but, you know, just, you know, great stuff, great stuff on an old-time team. Well, thank you.

You were a big part of that, and I appreciate it. And folks, the name of the book is The World's Greatest Pro Gridiron Team. We've talked about it before in the podcast.

We won't belabor you too much on that. But Tim was gracious enough to do some research on some of the bonus content we have in there. We did something a little bit different.

So, not only do you have links to explore some things beyond the book in the e-book, but also in the hard copy books, we have QR codes. You can use your smart device to access them. And I think we have three or four from Tim that go in there and talk about some good old-time football, just to set the mood for 1903 football.

Cause most of us sit there and read it and say, what does this mean? Well, we have a man who knows that era very well through his research. So we appreciate your help there and the advice along the way. And we appreciate you, Tim.

No problem. Good time. Now we're going to go back into one of your tidbits tonight with, you know, back in the earlier days, I guess this one's from this year that we're going to be doing, but back a few months ago and talk about something, you know, we're not that familiar with wartime and sports and being in stadiums.

Okay. We know a little bit about COVID-19; we know terrorist attacks and going through security and everything. We're familiar with that, but we're going back to an era when the country was at war and could be in danger.

You know, people didn't know at the time if they were in danger or not. And I think it's really an interesting topic that you wrote about back in May, and you titled it an aerial attack at Yankee Stadium. And we'd love to hear all about it.

So this, this is, I mean, to me, just like you said, it's an interesting thing to try to put yourself back in the time and the uncertainty they faced. All right. I mean, there are things we know now that either the Japanese or the Germans had this capability or that, but they weren't sure, you know, they weren't sure how things were going.

So just to kind of set the stage a little bit, you know, it's so December 7th, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. And, you know, so one of the things, one of the consequences of that was that the folks on the West coast, the civil defense people, were concerned about trying to gather 80,000 people into the Rose Bowl on, you know, a glorious January 1st. So they said, no, you can't hold the game here in California.

The Rose Bowl was transferred to Durham, North Carolina because Duke was one of the teams that were playing. Likewise, the Shrine East-West game, which is an all-star game based in San Francisco, was transferred to New Orleans that year. So, okay, we get past football season, and then, you know, on the East Coast, you know, while the Germans didn't have aircraft carriers as the Japanese did, they had a lot of submarines.

And so there was, you know, back in the time, there were certain like planes that could launch from, from submarines, you know, just the old biplane kind of thing. But anyways, they, and, you know, the Germans were seeing a lot of shipping, you know, 630 some ships got sunk along the East coast, you know, during 42 and, you know, that period. So they did things like, you know, they, FDR green-lighted sports, but auto racing, motorcycle racing was banned to save, you know, tires and gasoline.

And in places like Yankee Stadium, one of the impacts was, you know, they just never knew what would happen if somebody attacked the place, right? If, somehow, the Germans had some capability, they would attack Yankee Stadium during a baseball game. And so they set up this process where they had signs all over the stadium that was basically, you know, evacuation boats, you know, I mean if you've been in cities like, you know, well, LA has them and, you know, other places where there's these tsunami signs, if you're near the beach, you know, the Pacific Northwest, same thing. It's like, okay, here's these signs.

Here's what happens if there's a tsunami, you know, you get out of there. Yeah. Yeah.

Run like hell. Yeah. But in Yankee Stadium, it was like, if you were in the upper deck or you were in the box seats or the grandstands with bleachers, whatever, you know, it had different escape routes for you.

And so that's all baseball stuff. And now, I also should have said that because of blackout conditions, like night games, they didn't have any night games, you know, at least in 1942. And so then, you know, Yankee Stadium at the time was still a popular place for football games, both college and pro.

And so, you know, I think I've sold it since, but, you know, I had a copy of a 1942 Army versus Princeton football program and, you know, played at Yankee Stadium. And, you know, with the inside of the, you know, one of the ads or pieces of information, you know, it had in there was just, it told you, okay, like I said, if you're in this section, here's your escape route, proceed this way, run out to such and such Avenue or whatever, you know, you can get the hell out of the Bronx. So anyway, it's just one of those things; you just can't imagine it.

You know, it's just not; I mean, now we do go through security. And so maybe it's, it is more imaginable now, but, you know, it's just one of those things you just, you just don't think about that happening. And so just one other little point about that game and that season was that, you know, Princeton and Army played on, you know, one Saturday, and then the next one was the Army-Navy game.

And so again, due to work time conditions, they moved it from Philadelphia to Navy Stadium in Annapolis because they wanted to have a smaller crowd, which was going to be the case there. And they would only sell tickets to people who lived within 10 miles of the stadium because they wanted to reduce people traveling to the game, you know, and eating up gas or whatever, you know. So it's just one of those interesting things that occurred.

And I think by 43, the concerns about hacks on the, I mean, there were still concerns about espionage, and concerns about attacks from a military standpoint had dissipated. But, you know, by then, you know, a lot of guys were getting drafted, being enlisted. So, you know, the NFL had teams merge, you know, the Steelers, and were they the Pirates then or the? The Steelers with the Eagles or the Steagles.

The Steegles, yeah. And then they had the pick cards the next year, or maybe vice versa.

So, you know, like in the pro game, you know, roster limitations, they merged a team or two. And then in colleges, you know, a number of colleges dropped football, you know, during the war. So, it's just due to roster limitations and other things.

So, yeah, just one of those, one of those things a little bit hard to imagine now, but, you know, that's what happened back then. Yeah. One of the interesting things, I mean, I learned a lot from that post, but one of the things that sort of resonated with me that I sort of outside of sports is I didn't realize that the Germans didn't have aircraft carriers.

So, you know, I guess maybe that's because I always wondered, I'm like, why did they move the Rose Bowl from the West Coast to the East Coast? You know, you're still on a coastal, why not have it in Oklahoma or somewhere or the Cotton Bowl or something where it's safe, you know, there's no water around where you can, you know, worried about an aerial attack, but I didn't realize that the Germans didn't have aircraft carriers. So thank you for teaching me that. So, probably some of the same things are why Yankee Stadium and Annapolis didn't seem so scary, too, for, you know, the submarines couldn't attack them too much from there.

You're a little bit too far away from it. Yeah. So, yeah.

So yeah, again, just different time, and you just, you know, it's interesting to try to put yourself back in those, in those periods and kind of, you just, things happen that you just think about. Yeah, definitely some fun football facts, and you have some of these each and every day; as we said, you call them your tidbits, and maybe you could share with the audience for those who aren't familiar with it, how they too can participate in reading your tidbits each and every day. Yeah.

So, you know, the best thing is just to go to footballarchaeology.com and subscribe. You'll get an email every day at seven o'clock Eastern with today's, you know, little story and, you know, read them at your leisure, delete them if that's really what you want to do. But otherwise, just, you know, I know people let them pile up over the weekend or read them over the weekend, whatever, but that's the best way to subscribe.

Okay. Well, Tim, we really appreciate you coming here and sharing some of these great football facts with us each week. We appreciate you sharing your football knowledge in the book and, you know, some of the other things that you've done to help us all understand that, as well as footballarchaeology.com. And we will talk again next Tuesday.

Very good. And congratulations again. Thanks.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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Eddie Dooley was many things, including a journalist and a politician: A sports reporter and columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He also had some radio broadcasts that Football Archaeology covers in the gist of the feature story.

Here are some other accomplishments of Dooley that led to his popular name in the gridiron realm of the era:

-Edwin Dooley: A Dartmouth College football star and All-American quarterback nicknamed "Death Dooley" for his killer instinct on the field. He later served as a successful businessman and public servant.

-Eddie Dooley (football coach): Head coach for the University of Kansas football team from 2009 to 2011.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on Eddie Dooley

Hello, my football friends; this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to another Tuesday where we get to talk to Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com about one of his famous tidbits, some daily little factoids of football that make you think and appreciate the days gone by in the realm of the gridiron. So, Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Thank you, Darin. I look forward to chatting again today and seeing what we come up with.

Yeah, Tim, I want to attend one of the entertaining ones. It takes you back to a different marketing era and using football. You titled this tidbit back in September 2022.

Can you believe it's been that long since you wrote this? It's called Eddie Dooley's 1936 All-America Team Contest. So why don't you explain to us what that is and what Eddie Dooley was doing? Yeah, so I think anybody who reads or listens regularly probably knows that I collect old.

Well, they're composite schedules, but, you know, they're these little giveaways that used to be available. They're just like the little pocket card schedules we get today. But they were available at least from the 20s and probably a little bit earlier than that.

And I'm talking 1920s, not, you know, 2020s. So, you know, it would have listed all the games, and for every team that's in the play, it would have listed their schedule for the year. And then it would have just little things about, you know, the teams they expected to be, you know, great teams this year and who the All-Americans were last year, things like that.

These were just little things you carried around. And, you know, they didn't have the Internet then, so you wanted to see who's playing this coming Saturday.

Boom, you looked at the schedule. And so this particular one was put out by Royal Typewriters. So, you know, if you went into a typewriter store, you could potentially pick up one of these little booklets.

Then, their star was a guy named Eddie Dooley. So he was a quarterback at Dartmouth in the 20s, then became a newspaperman, and then became a radio announcer. So he had a syndicated radio show that basically ran on Thursday nights where he would make predictions about that Saturday's game.

And then, on Saturday, Saturday evening, he was based out of New York. So Saturday evening, he's running through the scores, who won the big games, and that kind of stuff. And I'm sure at the time, the West Coast fans got all PO'd because they may not have finished their game yet.

So he couldn't report on him. And, you know, so they felt like they were getting shat upon East. But anyway, strikes again.

Yeah. East Coast bias back in 1936. So.

So anyways, so so this is a 1936 season. And so one of the things they did, you know, I mean, it's no different than what we do today to try to engage our our followers or to try to. And, you know, if you're selling something, you're trying to get people involved in the brand.

And so what they did was in the booklet, there was a little form that you could fill out at the end of the season that where you'd list the what you basically what you try to do is Eddie was going to name an All-American team. Then, you submitted your list of names for the All-American team. And there was a seventy-five-dollar third-place prize. There was a hundred-dollar second place and a five-hundred-dollar first-place prize.

So for whoever could. Come the closest to matching Eddie's All-American. So, you know, it turned out that Eddie's All-American team.

Kind of had East Coast bias, so there were four Ivy Leaguers, some of whom I'm sure made sense, including one who won the Heisman Trophy, Larry Kelly. And, you know, there were still five guys from New York and further to the Northeast who made this team. So he wasn't quite as bad as what Walter Camp did, where almost everybody was.

From the Ivy League. Yeah. I mean, Camp one year had all eleven Yale players.

Right. The first, second, or third All-American team, but they were good. So anyway.

So he held this contest, and then it turned out that this was my favorite. Just there were guys, and I forget, you know, I don't really care about them who were first and second place. But third place was Mrs. Eva Lou Edwards of Hammond, Louisiana. So she picked up seventy-five bucks for coming in third place.

That's like a week's payback, then to seventy-five dollars. I still have a chump change. That's good.

Good money. Yeah. That was some serious cash.

Then, each of the players who were named to Eddie's All-American team got a Royal typewriter, too. So nice. I mean, that would be like, you know, it's like getting a computer or whatever today.

One of the other fun little things about that was that Eddie, the guy who came in third in the Heisman that year, named him to the team. And I don't know how you pronounce his name, but Ray Buivid, Buivid, something like that. It's B-U-I-V-I-D.

And he played for Marquette. So, it's not a school that we associate with, you know, football All-Americans. And he's in the Midwest.

How do you make that team? Yeah, well, he made it. But he did. You know, he came in third in the Heisman.

So he was nationally recognized, and Marquette played in the Cotton Bowl that year. You know, so they were, you know, considered a pretty top team. And so that was Marquette's first and only football bowl that they played in.

And then, you know, they eventually dropped football in, like, 1960. But so, you know, this Eddie Dooley was, you know, he was like it, you know, he would have been whatever the Kirk Herbstreit or somebody like that of his age, you know, nationally prominent guy. And then, you know, he announced for a number of years.

And then eventually he ended up getting into politics and he served three terms in Congress. So I forget exactly which state he served with, but or for. But so anyways, you know, even back then, former football players or coaches or whomever or media stars, you know, got themselves elected to Congress.

So, some things never change. Yeah. And you have a great image of Eddie. It must be in one of the promo ads on the football archaeology dot com story on this.

And folks, you can follow that in the show notes of this podcast. Go right to Tim's site to see this. And Eddie has a great face for television.

He probably would have been great at the television, too, because he just has that look, you know, the hair's, you know, perfectly parted, and you sort of got the shit-eating grin on his face, and he's ready to go and talk some football. So he's got me pumped up. So a great story.

Love it. I love the typewriters. Eddie would have played.

I'm just thinking about that. Eddie would have played for Jess Hawley because Hawley was the coach at Dartmouth at the time. And he was, you know, I mean, they had a really good team.

They were national champions. He's six, you know, and Hawley had coached Iowa before before Dartmouth. So he was.

Now, like I said, he's kind of a Herb Street only is probably a better quarterback in college, you know, but that's kind of the nature of the person, you know, the the media star that he was. Yeah, you could tell he's got a little bit of personality to him, I guess, is what I was trying to say in the image of him, too. So great, great stuff.

You know, you have these things from your collection, and you share and dig up the story and the research. And you do this, you know, on a daily basis, which is amazing and a real tribute to what you're doing and for your tidbits. People love to read this stuff and love to hear you when you come on the show, and you get great responses from it.

But maybe you could share with the audience how they, too, can enjoy your tidbits on a daily basis. Yeah, so the easiest thing is just to go to footballarchaeology.com and subscribe. You know, there are a bunch of different ways you can subscribe there.

It's free. You can also do paid subscriptions, which is perfectly OK with me. But, you know, it's available to you.

And if you don't want to get the email every day, which, you know, just ensures you're going to get it. You can also just follow me on Twitter, where I reach about three people every day. Or, you know, that's not true, folks.

He has good following on Twitter. Yeah, but only three of them see it every day. But anyway, that's another story.

And then I'm also on the Substack app because that's where I publish and then threads, you know, or just bookmark the site and pop in whenever you're in the mood for old-time football stuff. Well, excellent job as always, and we really appreciate you sharing with us each week of some of your great stories. And we would love to share with you again next Tuesday.

Very good. Look forward to it.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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Pop Warner is one of the most well-known names for early football coaching. The innovator contributed much to the game in its early years.

Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology sat down with us to chat about the first season that Glenn Pop Warner coached at team. It was at his alma mater and it was a significant season.

-Transcribed Conversation on Pop Warner's 1sy Season with Timothy Brown[b]

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 talking about football history, we are going into football archaeology mode because it's Tuesday, and Timothy P. Brown is here to visit with us once again to talk about one of his fantastic posts that he puts out each and every day.

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

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

This every Tuesday is really quite remarkable. Love hearing about your tidbits. You know, it's good to see your tidbits each and every day, but having a conversation about them once a week is really an amazing thing. Takes you a little bit more in-depth. You have Some other great facts through your research on some of these tidbits.

And today, you're going to talk about one of my favorite people in football, Glenn Pop Warner, who was born probably about an hour away from where I live, south of Buffalo, not too far from Erie. And, you know, I love Pop Warner stories, and he has so many great ones. He coached all over the country. So this one's a really interesting one from one of his early years that I love to hear about.

Yeah. Yeah. I think Pop Warner is just a fascinating character.

And so, you know, love him as well. But so, yeah, I think this is, this is another one of these where, you know, we bring certain assumptions to our view of football here in the 2020s that just were not the case back in the 1890s when this story is based. And so the key point here is that with Pop Warner being one of the guys like this, but, you know, before 1900 for sure.

And then even after that, a lot of people, a lot of, you know, young men ended up on college campuses who had never played football before and yet who went out for the football team. So, you know, if you lived out East and you were going to Harvard or Yale or something like that, well, chances are you probably attended some prep school, and they had a long history of football. You know, they started playing fairly early on, but if you were from, you know, small-town Kansas or Minnesota, they might've played and they might not, you know, I mean, there were certain, there was certainly football going on in the smallest and remotest of towns, but there was a lot of places where they just, they just weren't playing yet.

So, you know, you'd be aware of the game, it'd be in your local newspaper, but you may not have ever played. And so many top-notch athletes showed up on campus, not having any football experience. And so part of the coach's job was to figure out how to get those guys to join the team and try.

And so, you know, we've talked in the past about the alums who would come back and help coach. And a lot of that was they were teaching entirely, you know, they were teaching guys who had never played the game before. How do you block? How do you tackle it? How do you get out of your stance? All the stuff that, you know, most people now learn in youth football, or as freshmen in high school or sophomores in high school, whatever it may be, you know, they were, they had to pick up those skills as freshmen in college.

So, you know, the article is basically about him and the challenge of, you know, trying to get, at he was coaching at Cornell. He was; he had gone to Cornell and played for four years. And then I think he was gone for a year and came back at the time that, you know, this story occurred, but, you know, he's trying to figure out how do I get all these guys to join and then to get them schooled up in order to, you know, to feel the good team.

And so, you know, he was commenting that a lot of times back then, they used to call it the talent level, but they would call it the material. We have fine material, but it's inexperienced, right? And so that was his thing. And, you know, another piece of that was that it was just interesting. In that particular year, he had an athlete who had played center in the past, and he was considering having the guy play left halfback or right halfback.

And it was like, okay, how many times today in a college setting do you have one player, and you're going? Should I play him at center or halfback? Right? I mean, that just doesn't happen nowadays. You know, the body types of morphed and training and all that kind of stuff. But back then, I mean, that was just a kind of normal everyday thing.

Unfortunately for the guy, he ended up playing center. But, you know, yeah, so, you know, I think it's just that, you know, our thinking, you know, now we live in this world where these kids are recruited, you know, I mean, they're heavily recruited, and they've, you know, there's a game film, you know, there's plenty of film on every high school kid that's out there, you know, nowadays. And so, you know, but then it was like, you just, you called for, you know, he had tryouts, you called for everybody to come and join the team.

And it was whoever was there; it was there, right? And, you know, you would often have some guy who was a star fullback or tackle the previous year that, for whatever reason, financial or whatever, just didn't show up the next year. You know, the coaches wouldn't know necessarily, you know, they wouldn't have a whole lot of advance notice and just be like, oh, Bill didn't show up this year. So we got to find somebody else to play tackle.

You know, it's just the kind of manpower planning and depth charts that we think of today. Well, it might be turning back to that with the transfer portal. It seems like somebody's leaving constantly on teams, and new people are coming in.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a whole other story.

I mean, you know, just for one, I'm all for it. I mean, I may not like what it's doing to the game, but for the individual kids, I'm all for it. You know, I'm glad they get to go wherever they can go.

So, but yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, the, the, the center versus halfback thing is interesting just cause, you know, a lot of times, you know, centers were pretty good athletes back then, you know, meaning, you know, they were more like halfback or fullback type guys. A lot of times, teams pulled centers or, you know, expected them to do some special stuff. Um, you know, so they had to be pretty darn good athletes, but not a whole lot of, uh, not a whole lot of guys shifting from O line to the backfield these days, high school level.

Sure. Right. But it was a single-platoon football back in that era, too.

So, you know, they could use their athleticism at the center on defense, which we call a nose guard today, uh, you know, shooting gaps or whatever they had to do wording off to get a tackle. So, and it takes some certain athleticism to, uh, you know, rules were different than to, to get the ball snapped without getting your head knocked off too. I'm sure you had to be pretty quick at that.

So I can see where the transition is. That was a fascinating point, but it was something I really took out of that. It's sort of, uh, you know, like I said, I, uh, I like to read about pop Warner and I don't know that I've ever remembered this story and it's sort of, uh, you know, his humble beginnings, you know, I'm, you know, most of us are used to pop Warner, you know, developing, you know, a complicated single wing offense and the double wing and all these innovations he brought into football.

But just to sit there and think about the man, uh, you know, taking, having to take football, the very fundamentals and teach somebody that's not familiar with the game and, you know, put them out there on a Saturday to play as a, maybe a starting center or halfback or whatever. Uh, you know, it's just kind of an interesting aspect of the guy of the band, and probably all coaches at that time had to do something like that, or they couldn't, you know, have their schemes on play until they got the people up to speed. So, yeah.

Well, and I, but to your point, I think the fact that, um, Cornell wasn't the only school in that position, right? I mean, all their opponents, or any of their opponents anyway, were in the same kind of situation where, you know, they had a bunch of guys that had never played before. So, and, you know, I mean, that was one of the reasons why the freshmen rule, you know, worked to their advantage. Um, but, uh, you know, yeah, so it's, um, you know, Warner was just, uh, you know, he grew up in, like, as you said, I can't think of the name of the town, but a small town, you know, Western New York.

Springville, New York. Yeah. And, uh, and he was just a big dude, you know? I mean, he was, so he showed up on campus, and they were like, Hey, he started his first game, you know, and he didn't know what he was doing.

Uh, but he started just cause he was just, you know, pretty thick, you know, assorted guy, maybe not the tallest man in the world, but you know, big, thick dude. And so they, you become a lineman that way. Yeah.

I'm going to have to look it up. Cause I, you know, you may just make me think, I think Park H. Davis is in that same area. He's from Jamestown, New York, which is not too far.

I wonder if they ended up ever playing against each other. If they were in, maybe they weren't in the same years of, uh, playing high school. Yeah. I think Davis, well, Davis would have been at Princeton in the 1880s, right? In the early nineties.

Oh yeah. Maybe he's quite a bit older than Warner. Yeah.

Cause, you know, Warner showed up at Cornell at like 91, 92, something that range. Um, so I think, you know, Davis is just that much, um, just that much older. Cause he was, he was coaching Lafayette when, um, Fielding Yost, you know, was the ringer for him, you know, That's, that's true.

Yeah. He's probably 15 years older than Warner probably. Well, there goes that fantasy of seeing those two head-to-head.

I love the stories about, you know, guys who grew up in the same areas or, um, you know, even if it's cross sports, but you know, guys who knew one another or, you know, those kinds of stories and, you know, just the connections that you just normally don't think about. So it's just, it's kind of fun. So, you know, real, real fascinating, you know, from Cornell, the Carlisle, the Pitt, the Stanford, you know, Pop Warner was all across the country and had a lot of success everywhere he went and pretty interesting guy and pretty humble guy to sit there and pick out athletes and teach them how to play the game.

So I guess, uh, it's very aptly named the, uh, the junior football today. Most of them are called Pop Warner football. So very interesting.

Another great tidbit, Tim, we really appreciate that. And, uh, that you share these with us each and every day and the listeners, uh, you know, there's a way for you to, to pick up on Tim's Tidbits and get a copy of them sent to you too. And Tim will explain that to us right now.

Yeah. Uh, if you're, if you're interested, just go to footballarchaeology.com and, uh, down at the bottom of most of the pages, you know, just to, you can, um, click on it and subscribe. And if you subscribe, you're going to get an email every evening at seven o'clock and then a couple, a couple of others here and there.

Um, you know, basically, it's just whatever, whatever got published that day shows up in your inbox. And so you can read them at your leisure. Um, I also, uh, I'm still putting out everything I post on Twitter.

And so if that's your way of receiving, you know, various forms of news like this, then, um, you know, follow me on Twitter. But you know, the best thing is probably just to do them, to subscribe and make your life easier and more, much, much more pleasant. Yeah.

And it's a great site—footballarchaeology.com — and it's also a great conduit to some of Tim's books. He has his most recent one, how to hike with some football terminology, and one of my standbys, how football became football.

It's a great read, especially learning about early college football. I highly recommend both those books to anybody interested in football history because Tim does a great job on them. So, Hey, Tim, thanks a lot for joining us here again.

And, uh, and we'll talk to you again next Tuesday. Okay. Looking forward to it.

Thank you, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

Sometimes when you round the corner at a location you have visited many times before, you see something new. A similar feeling occurs when encountering a story that sheds new light on an old topic you’ve researched in the past. The other day, however, I found an article about Carlisle’s hidden ball trick, when Pop Warner had football-shaped brown patches sewn on the front of Carlisle’s uniforms for their 1902 game at Harvard. When Harvard kicked off, Carlisle retrieved the ball before the — www.footballarchaeology.com

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Ever wondered why quarterbacks wear the number 12 and running backs rock the digit 28? Today's episode dives into the fascinating origin story of American football jersey numbers. We'll travel back in time, uncovering the surprising reasons these numbers were first stitched onto jerseys, and how they evolved into the iconic system we know today. Get ready for a journey through gridiron history, filled with unexpected twists, forgotten rules, and the stories of the legendary players who cemented the tradition of numbered jerseys in the game we love. So, buckle up, grab your favorite jersey (with its number!), and join us as we unveil the fascinating tale behind football jersey numbers!

The early beginnings and origins of the uniform numbers on players are explored in this Football Archaeology feature.

-[b]Transcribed Conversation on Player Number Origins with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to Tuesday. You know what it is. It's footballarchaeology.com day. And Timothy P. Brown of footballarchaeology.com is here to talk about another interesting tidbit he's had out recently. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Darin, how are you? Good to see you. I hope I've got your number tonight.

Well, you got my number. I don't know what the origin of that number is, but I think we're going to find out some of the origins of some player numbers. You had a recent tidbit on that very subject.

And it's something, you know, again, we've talked about this before in other episodes that we've talked about. Some things that we just don't appreciate all the time. You know, what the player number does on the jersey, you know, it's it's identifies the player.

It's almost like their name, you know, for a lot of places. For example, when you see the number 12 out there on a New England jersey, you're probably thinking of Tom Brady. First thing, you know, just but we associate that number with the player.

But it goes back into some things that are beyond that even. And I'd sure like to know the origins of these player numbers. Yeah.

So so some of this this one, you know, I've written about the origins of player numbers a bunch of times in the past. And but I was trying. Well, I was I did an article recently about the the hidden ball trick that the Carlisle executed against Harvard in 1903.

And just in doing that research, reading an article, there was a comment made. And so just to kind of reset the stage on that, you know, what happened is that the. Carlisle.

So, you know, brown patches on the front of their jerseys that match the color of the ball. And so that they could, you know, have their back, who didn't get the ball or whomever else kind of hunched over, act like they're carrying the ball. And, you know, the defense would be confused.

So and so, then they did that. But then they also, in that game, you know, they basically executed this play where there was a. On the kickoff, they were receiving a second-half kickoff, but anyway, they're receiving the kickoff. The Carlisle players go back to form a wedge, and the guy who gets the ball or, you know, who caught the ball.

You know, he kind of gathers the wedge in that web and stuffs the ball in the back under the shirt in the back of one of his teammates who had this elastic band at the bottom of his jersey. So the ball would stay there, you know, under the shirt. And so then they then they boom, they all scatter in different directions.

And this guy who's a was a guard or a tackle who doesn't look like a guy who you would give the ball to starts running upfield, acting like he's going to block, you know, for one of his teammates. And so because he's acting like he's blocking, all the Harvard guys are avoiding him. And he just takes off, runs down the field, and scores a touchdown.

So, you know, that's kind of everybody, you know, I'd been aware of that story and all that kind of thing. And he probably looked like Quasimodo running down the field, too. That's right.

The guy had no idea what to do. But there was a comment made in one of the articles about the game where the guy said, you know, the reporter said it would be great if all the players had numbers; we would have known who this guy was as he was running down the field. And so I thought, OK, I'd never come across that before.

And this is a 1903 game. So it's just got me to go back one more time to look at, OK, when, when did, as I had previously come across Amos Alonzo Stagg calling for numbers in 1901. So, two years before this Harvard-Carlisle game, I just figured, OK, I'll go again.

Can I find anybody else mentioning player numbers? And so then I ended up finding a 1904 reference. And I'm sorry, an 1894 reference from the Harvard-Yale game where some guy along the sidelines must have been some influential alum who said that you know, the players should be numbered. His comment was that the average observer finds as many differences in individuals as in a flock of blackbirds.

So, the first time I heard that reference. But, you know, but the point was that you know, you couldn't tell players apart half the time back then because they didn't have numbers. You know, they, they all kind of, the nature of the game, everybody bunched together.

It's hard to tell who was who, you know, who got the ball, who advanced it, who made the tackle. So, you know, people then, you know, people like Stagg started promoting using numbers. But the challenge and the pushback that they got was people saying, you know, there were basically three main challenges.

One was that they said if you number the players, which they'd started to do in baseball, and I think at first, it actually occurred in rugby in New Zealand. But if you number the players, then that promotes individualism. Football is a team sport.

And so we don't want to promote individuals. So it's this idealistic argument. There was also, from a coaching standpoint, a lot of coaches said, I don't want to number my players because that makes it easier for scouts or for the opposing player to identify who was who.

And to quickly figure out, OK, this is Smith's best running back. You have to watch out for Smith, and you have to make sure you know where Smith is lining up in the playoffs. Now, that all seems kind of dumb. I mean, I get it, but especially from the opposing player's standpoint, no one was wearing numbers on the front of their jerseys; it was only on their backs.

So the opposing players couldn't see them when they lined up anyways, you know, so, so that, you know, but that was, you know, that was the main challenge. And then there was also, you know, people also would say, well, football is for these college players, it's a college sport, you know, there's none of this pro stuff yet or very little of it. And so it's not for the fans.

We don't want to change the game, we don't want to do things in the game to make fans happy; everything should be to make the players happy. Now, you know, as money increasingly got involved in things, and the fans were paying for the players, there are professional marketers of the gridiron just running off the podcast right now.

But, you know, that was a very common sentiment. So anyways, so then it. You know that, as far as I've been able to research, the earliest game in which players have war numbers, and it was a picture in the newspaper, and I published the picture a bunch of times, was a 1905 Iowa State at Drake game on Thanksgiving Day, and both teams were numbers and then, you know, over the next four or five years pit.

As far as I know, Pitt was the second team. They like to claim they were the first because they ignore the night, the Iowa State v. Drake game. Wichita State in 1908. Pitt was the first team in 1909. As far as I can tell, they were the first team to wear them for all games because a lot of times, the team would say I'll wear them, but only if the opponent wears the pit was like no, we're wearing them.

Part of their motivation was that they loved selling scorecards. So there's money involved, right?

Right. And then, in 1909, Michigan and Marquette formed, and then the same year, Cincinnati was too late for them, so those were, as far as I know, the whatever six or seven earliest examples of teams and/or games were. You know, players were numbers.

Yeah, you've done a great job of telling us that, and as you said, you've had a bunch of other fascinating posts on the numbers and some of their intricacies. We'll try to throw some of those links into the pigskin dispatch for this episode. So people can go back and enjoy some of that work with the alphanumerical and all the other crazy Roman numeral numbers. Yeah, four-digit numbers, and we'll put some of those up to so people can enjoy because there's a lot to do with the numbers on jerseys, and it's a lot of fun, so we appreciate that you're doing that and doing the research on it.

You do research on some aspects of football, like every day. It's what you have: plucking things out of the air all over the place and taking us on a wild ride. Sometimes, you have themes like these numbers, but they usually spare my part. Where can people enjoy your tidbits each day? Just go to football archaeology calm.

You can subscribe there. If you subscribe, you'll get an email every night at seven o'clock Eastern with that, you know, that day's episode, and you know there are people who read them five minutes after I publish them, there are other people who, you know, I can just tell by, you know, certain patterns that I can see in the data. Some people like storm up, and they read them on the weekend, so at least you know you have them. If you get the email, you have them. Otherwise, you can follow me on Twitter, Threads, or the subject platform.

All right, Timothy Brown of footballarchaeology.com we thank you very much, sir, for joining us here and we will talk to you again next Tuesday. Very good. Thanks as always.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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The huddle, a ubiquitous feature of modern football, serves a crucial purpose: concealing play calls from the opposing team. But its origin story is far from today's high-tech headsets and complex plays. It's a tale of innovation born from necessity, showcasing the ingenuity of American football players in the early days.

Historian Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology and his recent post Gather 'Round, Boys: A History of Huddling.

Who invented the concept? When was the first huddle and what was the purpose? These answers and more are converted in the lively discussion with Tim.

Here is the Transcript of our conversation on the origin and history of the huddle

Darin Hayes
Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history, and welcome to another date with footballarcheology.com's Timothy P. Brown. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Timothy Brown
Hey, Darin, I look forward to chatting about huddling today.

Darin Hayes
Tim, you had a title out a little over a year ago called Gather Round Boys. One of your tidbits mentions a history of huddling. But we'd really like to hear the history of this application in football.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, you know, sometimes you look back, and I hadn't looked at this tidbit for a while. And I realized I liked this; it was one of my favorite tidbits. Part of it is that I like the stories where you figure out how something developed. And its function today is not what it served when it first came about. And so huddling is a classic example of that. The other is just that it was one of those tidbits where, while we can't get anybody to see the images that were in the tidbit or that are in the tidbit, I would encourage people to go out and take a look at it. Because, you know, it's just one where I found some great images of the different types of puddles. So, so huddling, you know, there's the first huddling that people have been able to identify was, you know, Gallaudet College in Washington, DC. It's a, you know, college for the people, you know, hearing, hearing impairments. And so, you know, they actually, they used to go up, you know, this is back in the time, the four teams huddled, they would come up to the line of scrimmage, and the quarterback or a captain, somebody on the team, would yell out signals. So, you know, you read all the time in the old newspapers about signals. And it was just, kind of like Audibles, but essentially, you know, what teams did is have a sequential list of numbers for all their plays. And, you know, whereas like, I know, you know, used to be like, if it ended in an even number, it was a play to the right, or if it was odd, it was a play to the left. And, you know, sometimes the first number told you, you know, a 42 meant that it was going to go to the left half back or the right half back or whatever, you know, different kinds of systems made sense. But early on, it was either just a random string of words or a sequence of numbers. So, if you were a player, you had to know what you did on an 83 because that's all you heard. Now, they would hide those numbers in the signaling'd like to do a string of four numbers. And one of them was a code saying the next number is the one that is the play. So anyway, that's kind of the way it worked. A couple of teams here and there huddled, but pretty much nobody huddled until Illinois, and Bob Zuppke changed that in 1921. And they began huddling. But back then, they didn't initially huddle. I mean, part of the purpose was, you know, Zuppke would claim part of it was to get everybody to settle down and be able to listen to the play. It was typically a quarterback then who would call the play. But it was mostly the advantage of huddling was, that was a period when, you know, you had the Minnesota shift, you had the Heisman shift, he had the Notre Dame shift. So teams would line up at the line, you know, one played in, they line up on the line of scrimmage. But often, they would line up in a, say, pre-lineup, like a traditional team. And then shift, there'd be a moment where they'd shift to unbalanced right or unbalanced left, whatever it was. And then they, you know, there wasn't. While the rule said everybody had to pause before starting the play, there was no length of time that they had to pause. So basically, teams would shift in, and boom, the ball would be snapped, and you'd catch the defense, you know, off guard. So Huddle, the Huddle did the same thing, they would call the play in the Huddle, you know, so let me go back, a team that was shifting would line up, call their play, and then at some point, they'd shift, and then execute the play. What huddling did was that they would call it play in the Huddle. And then everybody would quickly run the line of scrimmage, get lined up, and boom, the ball was snapped. So it had kind of the same advantage as that pre-snap shift. But it happened even faster, right? And you know, the defense couldn't react, you know, They couldn't shift anywhere near as quickly as the offense could line up. So that's when Huddling came about in 1921, and teams started applying it. A lot of people said we shouldn't have it; it delays the game, this, that, but ultimately, it proved effective. And so they started using it. And in about 26 or so, the implementer rule said you had to pause for at least one full second after the shift or after coming out of the Huddle. So then that kind of calmed things down a bit. But then, to me, one of the fun things and where these images come into play is that business that I could figure out. There were three or four different styles of huddling. So there were the first Huddles, almost all of what people called the closed, circular, ring, or oval Huddle. So that was where everybody formed the ring. Sometimes, the quarterback is kneeling down, kind of inside the ring. And the lineman tended to be in the front, closest to the, facing away from, but closest to the line of scrimmage; the ends were at either end of this little ring. And then the backs were on the other side facing towards the line. And so that was normal for a long time. That was the classic Huddle. Then people said, well, if we're going to do all this Huddling, we should devise a better way to Huddle. And so, as far as I can tell, Bucknell got it started in 33, but people like USC used it in World War II and da -da -da. And it was called either a V or a triangle Huddle. And so the way that worked was if you think of a V or a triangle, there's kind of like the fat end or the open end of a fat end of a triangle or open end of a V., And so what they do is it had the quarterback at the open end along with one other back. And then the rest of the folks would be in kind of in a V shape, typically facing toward the line of scrimmage with the quarterback on the back facing away from the line of scrimmage. And they could call the play. Most of the team could see the defense and what they were doing. And so that was kind of a cool way to do it. Then, the next one that came along, the late 40s, is the best I could tell. There's a guy named Tom Nugent who was a coach at VMI. Later, he became Lee Corso's coach in Miami. And so he had what was called either the open classroom or typewriter Huddle. And so that was one where, and it's very, teams still use this one, commonly today, quarterback faces away from the line of scrimmage. Sometimes, they turn it around, but he's facing away from the line of scrimmage. And then initially, they'd have the lineman facing the quarterback bent over, and then the backs and ends were facing towards the line of scrimmage standing up, right? That's where almost everybody stands now, but that's probably the most common Huddle today.

Darin Hayes
I see a lot of teams resurging. They're doing that, but the quarterback is standing behind the linemen who are facing the defense, which is kind of interesting—talking in the ear holes or something, I guess.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, in some way, it's always made more sense to have the quarterback facing the defense. He's the one who's calling the place, or he can potentially spot something. But, again, this all is based on the assumption that the quarterback is calling the place, as opposed to a coach on the sideline calling the place. And so all these huddling things were happening when quarterbacks called the place. And, you know, then those rules went away in the early 60s. So, coaching from the sideline, that whole thing disappeared in the early 60s. And so all of a sudden, some people like, you know, Sam, I believe it's white, or white, white, I don't even know how to pronounce his last name, white, white. So, you know, Bengals coach in the 80s. He's the guy who pioneered the no-huddle offense. It's just like, why do we have them huddle anymore? We'll just put them somewhere in the lawn of scrimmage and signal in the general formations that they can get the right spot, and then they can watch us watch our signal, the baseball-style signals from the sideline. And then they've used numbers, you know, all kinds of coaches assistance on the wrists and, you know, the different signage that teams hold up. So you got all that stuff going on, in terms of just ways to signal and plays, but it's a big difference from the days of quarterbacks calling the plays versus the coaches calling the place. So now, just one other thing that I just wanted to add that I mentioned in the tidbit, but I think this is going to make some of them are coaches listening to the podcast, some of them are going to be angered by what I'm about to say or just.

Darin Hayes
Wait a second. Is the coach getting angry?

Timothy Brown
Yeah.

Darin Hayes
This is the first I've heard of this.

Timothy Brown
Well, well, okay. And so one of the things that they used to get angry about, they used to spend all kinds of stupid practice time perfecting, was the Huddle. You know, coaches would go nuts about you having to stand up the right way or you have to snap out of the Huddle. I know, you know, at least in my high school conference, I remember there was a team that when they left the Huddle, the linemen so that they would huddle so like the correct tackle was on the left side of the Huddle and then he would lead people out and as the right card would be next to him. And then so they had this like chain thing where they came out in formation, and it was just a wasted damn time. And so coaches used to spend unnecessary time trying to get a nice neat huddle. It was like making sure your socks are pulled up or make, you know, whatever, you know, it's just like either you can either you make the play, or you don't, either you follow the play call, or you don't execute your assignment, or you don't, I don't care what you look like. Thankfully, like my high school coach was a guy who was, in many ways, a crusty old dude. But he was; he didn't care what color you were, what your background was, what you wore; he just either ran fast, you didn't jump far, or you didn't. And you either made the tackle, or you didn't. So he didn't, you know, concern himself much with what I consider the stupid stuff that many coaches hang on to.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, we, I had a coach; I think it must've been grade school. He was very anal. We were the old, you know, the quarterback would, he, after you get done calling a plate, say, you know, ready. And we'd all go break and have to clap, you know, and break the Huddle that way. And I think, which I think a lot of teams still do. And, uh, if we didn't all clap or he couldn't hear us, like if you're in practice, he stands behind the Huddle and doesn't hear you say break. Oh my God, you, it was an ass-chewing coming from probably some laps being run. So they're anal.

Timothy Brown
I mean, I get, you know, being anal, but that's just being anal about the wrong thing as far as I'm concerned, but

Darin Hayes
Especially when you're in the fourth quarter in a game in August, when it's like 85 degrees, and the last thing you want to do is be yelling, break, and clap, and you wish to, you know, try to get through the rest of this game. Cause you're, you're sweating bullets, and you know, you're tired.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, well, again, at least any negative comments about this will come to you, not because it's on your podcast, not because it's on my site.

Darin Hayes
That's true. So, you know, I've got a couple of interesting comments from some guests that I've had over the years, some claims, you know, you're talking, you know, 1921 with the, you know, this being formalized by Zupke, which is like a few years before Red Green Shop played with Illinois, interesting enough. But we have an author, Jennifer Taylor Hall, who wrote a book on Amos Alonzo's Stag, and she has some claims in her book that give credit to Stag possibly being one of the innovators of the Huddle, using it here and there, not as a formal, you know, every play type of thing. When I just heard recently we had an author, Sam Hatcher, who wrote the book Iceman's First Trophy; it was about the Cumberland Georgia Tech debacle, the 22 and 22 to nothing game, where the Cumberland players didn't want to go up to the line any faster than they had to, so they were sort of hanging back and, you know, catching their breath, licking their wounds, whatever you want to call it, before going up. So he gave some nods to that; I just wanted to mention some of those things, but, as I said, they were not formalized huddles like you're talking about that happened in the 20s.

Timothy Brown
You know, so this is like almost anything else. Amos Lanza Sttag was an absolute coaching pioneer and stud who invented many things. He also gets credit for about 75 things that he should have done. Right? I've done enough research on this stuff, and I'm confident that Subkey is the first one who used it regularly. I know there was a guy named Hargis. I think I have it. Well, anyway, he was a coach at Oregon State. He was a guy from Emporia or one of those schools in Kansas. He ended up at Oregon State in 1919. And, the evidence is he used a huddle in at least one game. There's something unique about about that. So yeah, there were some people who periodically or once or whatever used it, but in terms of using a systematic game after game, using play after play. As far as I know, no one has any evidence of anybody other than Zuppke being the first to do that. So if somebody else has more information, get a hold of me on football archaeology comm, and I will be happy to add a postscript.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, I wasn't saying they were arguing with what you're saying. I was just, cause the, the Huddle has had a bit of history, whether, you know, I, I don't have it confirmed or not, but I'm just saying they, they made mention of it in their writing. So it's just,

Timothy Brown
And yeah, there are all kinds of things like that, like who the first face mask was. What was the first face mask? Okay, define face mask, right? What is a face mask? What's the difference between the old nose guards, some of which became pretty huge, and a face mask, you know, or like, so what's a huddle? What does it mean to huddle? Right, so depending on how you define that, you might go, you know, in a different direction. I'm using huddling the way we use it today.

Darin Hayes
Call it calling the play. You have a gathering to call it the play. Here's what, yeah, okay. Well, very, very good, enjoyable as always, Tim. We appreciate it. No, you have a lot of fascinating tidbits and pieces of information that are Built on what we know of as football today and some of the elements of it in foot-on football archaeology. You could share with the listeners how they can find your site and what to expect.

Timothy Brown
Yeah, go to footballarchaeology .com. It's a Substack site or newsletter. You can go there any time you want. But also, you can subscribe. You'll get an email every time that I open or that I create a new story. There's a paid version. There's an unpaid version. You can also follow me on Twitter, threads, or the Substack app. And if you're somebody like this, you can follow them on the Substack app. And if you want to follow but have yet to get the emails, well, you'll get it that way by a Substack. So, whatever suits your fancy works for you.

Darin Hayes
All right, well, that's very good. As always, this is a fascinating topic, and we really appreciate you coming on here and sharing with us. We'd love to talk to you again next week.

Timothy Brown
Very good. I look forward to seeing you.

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Join us as we delve into the fascinating tradition of handing out game balls in Gridiron football. We'll explore its origins, how it's evolved over time, and why it's become such a coveted symbol of victory. From legendary quarterbacks to surprise heroes, this video will uncover the stories behind the pigskin. So, buckle up and get ready to learn the history behind the iconic game ball!

Football Archaeology.com's Timothy Brown explains as he tells us about one of his recent Tidbits titled: A History of Game Balls

Here is a full transcript of the conversation with Tim Brown

Darin Hayes
It is Tuesday and football archaeology is on my mind. And we have the founder of that great website, Timothy P. Brown with us. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Timothy Brown
Hey, Darin, this should be an awarding podcast to participate in.

Darin Hayes
An awarding podcast? You're, segueing into our subject nicely, I think. And we're going to find out a little bit more of that. Your title of your tidbit that you had just a few months ago, or maybe a few weeks ago, is a history of game balls and a pretty broad topic. But it sounds like you have some direction for us on that.

Timothy Brown
Yeah. Well, so I took a very narrow view in this case of game, game balls, you know, more in terms of the awarding of the game ball, you know, the, the game ball being, you know, trophy value, you know, kind of a game ball. But, you know, I kind of started that article talking about, you know, for an NFL game, at least nowadays, there are 36 balls prepared to be part of the game. So 12 submitted from each team. And then I think each team also submits six kicking balls. Right. And so, or no, no, I'm sorry. The kicking balls come directly from Wilson because the league, you know, too many people are manipulating the kicking balls. And so they, they get those directly from the league. The teams do get a chance to like massage them and whatever beforehand. And if Tom Brady's playing, then four of them have to be at eight pounds. That's right. Well, so, you know, the inflate gate thing is a whole other story. Um, but so, but the game ball, one of the, one of the coolest things about, I published that article on March 29th. And since then, I have uncovered a whole other slew of information that tells me that I was wrong, or at least, you know, that I didn't find as early information as I thought I had. So at the time, I was saying, look, you know, that game balls, you know, that whole awarding of game balls at the time that I wrote it, as far as I could trace it back to was like 1882. No, 1886. When, you know, just, it was mentioned in an article about a Princeton commencement, you know, ceremony. And they were mentioning that the game ball from the game that they had played when they had beaten Yale was on the, like, the rostrum or whatever, you know, for the commencement. So it kind of tells you how important, you know, what the football game was to those guys. But so, you know, through, because of another path of research that I'm doing, I was trying to, trying to dig into, you know, what all is, you know, what all is going on, or, you know, kind of the background of game balls. And, and, and part of it was that, you know, for, for a long time, like from when American football began, and, you know, to my liking, it began in 1876 with the IFA, you know, the funding of the IFA, when, when American football first got started, they only used one ball per game. You know, that was it, you know, rain, shine, snow, sleet, whatever, they played with one ball. And those balls weren't anywhere near as, you know, the leather wasn't as well protected, etc, as, as they are now. So, you know, these balls get water logged. And in the days of drop kicking, you know, you drop it on the ground, and thing was barely bounced off, you know, so, but then as a forward pass came in, you know, into favor, then in 1917, they allowed the referee to decide on a wet day, if he would allow a second ball to be used for the second half. And then eventually, you know, things spread. But you know, so there was this whole thing of, you know, you played with one ball. And so then, this whole tradition developed around awarding or presenting the game ball to the victor. So, you know, back in the day, the home team provided the ball. And then, if they lost, you know, the right thing to do was to award the ball to the visiting victorious team, for them to then go home, go back and paint the score on it, or whatever, put in the trophy case, whatever they were going to do with it. And so, so that was the tradition, you know, for some time. And So then, you know, since then, I found out a couple of new things. So one was that I, you know, recently acquired a copy of a book called The Gilbert Story, which is a story of the Gilbert Firm, which is one of the two main oblors and rugby ball makers in Rugby England, where the primary provider of rugby football, you know, rugby balls for like the World Cup and, you know, those kinds of things. So anyways, I got a, you know, copy of their ball, and it goes back through the history. And they talk about at the rugby school, there was a tradition of having two balls available for each game, and they got switched at half. But then I got ahold of Tony Collins, who, you know, has been on this podcast. And if anybody hasn't heard that one, that is you know, a fabulous podcast to listen to, because of Tony. But in any event, and he, you know, he basically confirmed that, you know, that that rugby never really had the tradition of multiple game balls. So it was a rugby school thing, but it didn't spread to rugby more generally. You know, they didn't really have a one ball or two balls, they didn't really have a standard. So somehow in the Americas, this one ball tradition came about. And then it turns out that there was an earlier awarding of a game ball came about when, you know, I think most people are aware that Harvard played McGill in 1874 in a rugby match. And that is really what led to Harvard playing rugby, and which is what led to American football developing from rugby. Well, in 1875, maybe the second and 1876, there was an all Canada team that played three games against Harvard. And in one of those games, all Canada, they lost all three, all Canada lost all three to Harvard. In at least one of those games, they awarded the ball to Harvard. So that then becomes at least best as I can tell, so far, the first awarding of a game ball in at least the football tradition. But the fun thing about that is that, you know, there just weren't a lot of rugby balls paying around the US, because people weren't playing it. But you know, they were starting to make that transition. So, you know, the IFA meets in November 1876, and they agree to play rugby instead of, you know, whatever soccer and other games they're playing. And, and so the, the weekend after that meeting, Princeton was the home. team for a game against Yale, but they didn't have a rugby ball, and yet they were supposed to play under rugby rules. So somewhere in that whole process, Harvard gave Princeton this ball that all Canada had given them, and then Princeton loses, so they give the ball to Yale, and that ball now sits in a trophy case at Yale in their gymnasium. So, you know, it's just kind of cool that it's literally probably the first game played under the IFA rules, IFA rugby rules. So in my mind, it's the first real football game, and yet that ball is still around sitting in a trophy case at Yale, because it was the game ball. You know, so I just think it's just kind of a cool... you know, kind of the way this whole story ends up that the game ball tradition preceded American football, you know, because the Canadians are the ones that, you know, gave it to the, you know, started it as far as we're concerned. And, and that and yet that first ball is still around sitting in a trophy case at Yale. I just think that's, for me, there's something magical about that. You know, now that you say that you make something a tour of, I took a veil probably about 10 years ago, makes some sense because I got the had the opportunity to with my wife's cousin was assistant coach at Yale.

Darin Hayes
And I got to got to tour the Yale Bowl and the locker rooms and just see all the tradition and, you know, the Walter camp, sort of, I guess not really, it's a monument, I guess, it's what looks more like a facade to the White House from the White House. But I got to see that. But we also got to go through the gymnasium you're talking about with all the the halls of trophy. And it's a very great place. And I there's one ball that really stood out that just didn't look like a football at all. And very tattered old, you can tell. And I wish now I wish I would have took a photograph of it because that's probably that ball that you're talking about. Yeah, so I mean, let me describe the ball to you.

Timothy Brown
I've not seen it myself, but you know, I've images of it. So it's it is a classic melon ball. I mean, it is almost round. And there's a big silver plaque embedded into the ball now, with, you know, what basically tells the story of, hey, this is awarded by the all Canada team, we gave, you know, it went from Harvard to Princeton, Princeton, Yale, and now it sits here. So it's there's, I think, I think I put the link in, you know, I've added a postscript to the story on the website. And I think I think I have a link to it. Cause I found it on a site called, is it College Antiques? But anyways, there's a, another guy kind of lays, went through this whole thing, which is where I kind of picked up on this story. And then I found other stuff on it. But anyways, I think it's just a cool, yeah, a cool story. And to my knowledge, the oldest, the oldest existing ball in, in American football. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's an awesome story. And I didn't realize, you know, it went back that far of exchanging that game ball. Now, wasn't there sort of a, in that era and all the way up into the, maybe early 20th century, where teams didn't have but one ball? Cause I can, I could recollect there's a story, I think of the big game, Stanford and Cal, like a 1901 or 1902 game, where they forgot to bring that one ball to the game. The home team, the visiting team didn't even bring a game ball. It was the only, the home team had that one game ball. Yeah, you know, and I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember the story. And I think you're right about, you know, Cal Stanford. And so it was one of those things where like they they sent people into town to go get one, you know, and they couldn't find one. And the same thing happened with when McGill visited Harvard in 1874. They didn't bring a rugby ball. I guess they thought, you know, Harvard would have one, but they didn't. Harvard just had a round ball, so they played. They played the first game under Boston rules, which is somewhat rugby ish, because you could carry the ball. And then they played the second game under rugby rules, but they used a round ball. So. Yeah, and there's a whole other thread that I'm working on about. There was a thing called the American ball, which best as I can tell, is actually developed by Charles Goodyear. He probably built created the first one because he created vulcanized rubber. It was like a canvas ball that was kind of covered with vulcanized rubber can canvas ball that was inflated. I don't think it had a separate bladder. But so a lot of the round balls that people used in America in the 1860s and 70s were these American balls. So it may be even that the Harvard Princeton or the Harvard McGill game, they could have played with an American ball or and then also even like the Princeton Rutgers game or games in 1869. Those were played with a round ball. It could have been an American ball. And that's that's what everybody called the American ball. As compared to an association or soccer ball or a rugby ball. No, no, that that ball that Charles Goodyear invented. Was it the color of a black, you know, I've seen descriptions of it being red and then and also black. So could I sit there and I know I have an old book on Walter camp and it starts off as him as a boy playing, you know, he had a black rubber ball that he just kicked around the yard and, you know, kicked over his mother's clothes line into the clothes and everything. And that's how he, you know, trained to get become a football player eventually. And I wonder if maybe that was one of those Charles Goodyear balls, because that would have been right around the time frame. I think his rubber was in the late 1830s. So probably, I think 40s and 50s is probably the ball. His stuff, maybe a little bit later than that. But anyways, yeah, I think so. Basically, if it was leather covered, it is probably an association sort of ball. But even their balls were like, you know, it wasn't real. you know, they didn't agree on a certain ball until 1872. So, you know, things are kind of, you know, it's kind of whatever you could get your hands on, frankly, you know, back in the day. And they had all kinds of different sizes, you know, I mean, rugby, American in and association balls all came in like multiple sizes in like three inch increments. And so like, size number five had a 27 inch circumference. And so if you think about one of the most popular balls in American football has been that the J5V or and proceeding that was a J5. Well, that J was the model, the Spalding model was a J. And before that it was a lily white rugby ball from England called a J. And the number five was the 27 inch circumference. So that J5 name goes all the way back to the beginning. Okay. So as you said, the number five, I was going to ask you if it will respond to the J5. So I'm glad you cleared that up. Yeah, yeah. So the letter was the model. And the number was the size because they were selling size two, size three, size four, five, and six. So like a 33 inch, 30 and 33 inch balls were, you know, whatever. And I know they don't do footballs anymore size and I was like junior and whatever pro and whatever, you know, an FHS, but soccer balls still have their sizes on them. I know you have like my daughter when she was playing, used a four. And then I think the pros in high school and colleges are number five. So well, so it's the same. It's the same sequence. And, you know, there's still junior footballs because, you know, my kids played with them, but I don't remember it being, you know, a number based system for identifying them.

Darin Hayes
I think they just called it a junior, but, you know, whatever. Yeah, maybe they still use a numbering system. And I have a junior ball right here and I don't see a number on it I have a Wilson TD and I don't see a number on it. So it's just the Wilson TD Junior Yeah, so I mean, it's just one of those cool cool things about the old balls that you know Here's something that carried out from literally from the beginning that we see every day and never think about Oh, I they call it a J5. Well, that's why you know, yeah fascinating Great stuff The Tim you have great stuff like this, you know a lot on your website and your posts And maybe you could introduce the listeners who haven't heard or read your before How they can you take part in what you're writing?

Timothy Brown
yeah, so best thing to do is just go to Football Archaeology.com and You know find the site just subscribe you can subscribe for free You can there's a paid version as well. You can also follow me on Twitter And on threads and on the substack app. So, you know, you can find me on any of those four methods or just Go out and search the site whenever you want to

Darin Hayes
Great stuff as always we really appreciate it and it's really enlightening About the the ball, you know and some of the history of it and we really thank you for that and Love to talk to you again next week about some more great football history

Timothy Brown
Very good. Look forward to it. Thanks

---

Let's face it: we, as football fans, were subjected to a lot of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce during the 2023 Football season and postseason. This is not a new thing though as celebrity treatment inundating our favorite sports has gone on for over a century. Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology shares with us his original Tidbit Post of Travis, Taylor, and Teddy Roosevelt III.

-Overview
Tim joins us to tell of the celebrity attraction of President Theodore Roosevelt's son, Teddy and his college football career and the way the people flocked to see him.

We have video out on this story too! Check it out at Taylor & Travis Phenom Compared to a Football Celeb From a Century Ago with Timothy Brown.

-Transcript

Darin Hayes
Hello, my football friends. This is Darren Hayes at pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal to positive football history. And it is time for some great gridiron information from yesteryear. Timothy P. Brown of FootballArchaeology.com joins us to tell us about one of the recent articles he's posted on the website. Tim, welcome to the Pigpen.

Timothy Brown
Thank you for having me here. As always, I look forward to chatting with you tonight.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, and this is very relevant to the last month, anyway, of this article that you wrote. You had it titled Travis Taylor and Teddy Roosevelt. And I know that at least two of those names were ones that my wife and daughter became interested in watching, at least the AFC side of the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl, where at least one of those names was interesting.

Timothy Brown
So how do that, at least the Travis and the Taylor I'm thinking of, and Teddy Roosevelt tie together in this piece you wrote? OK, I'm a little surprised you're familiar with Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift. That's that's interesting because, you know, a lot of people wouldn't even know who they are. But you're just kind of tuned in to this stuff, I guess.One of the things that just struck me is, you know, people going all gaga, not Lady Gaga, but just people going nuts about Travis and Taylor, some, you know, angry about it for some reason or another. And others are just excited because they're big Taylor fans, the Swifties. So anyways, it just, you know, got me thinking about, OK, what are some similar kinds of situations in the past in the sports world where somebody who is a love interest or familial interest kind of brings, who's from another field, you know, brings some kind of excitement. So I was thinking about Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, right? That's an obvious one you think about, right? But then I went to Teddy Roosevelt and his son Teddy. So, you know, back in 1905, you know, President Teddy Roosevelt has this meeting with Princeton, Yale, and Harvard and says, you know, you got to get your act together, get the football communities to act together, this game's too dangerous, do something about it. And then he sends them away and... But the interesting thing about it was, I mean, Roosevelt was a big football fan. He was too late, or he's too old to have ever played the game because it didn't appear until he was out of college. But, you know, he was a rough and tough guy. And so, you know, his oldest son, Teddy Jr., was a freshman at Harvard in 1905. And he had played, I think he went to Joe, but, you know, he went to an Eastern prep school, and yet had not played much because he was pretty, he was like 5 '8 by the time he got to Harvard, but he's pretty lightly built, or slightly built. So he goes out for the freshman team, you know, and it's one of those things, you know, the president's kid, you know, everybody's pretty doubtful about him. He's not the biggest guy in the world. And it turns out that he was a pretty tough little nut. And so, I mean, everything I read just said, you know, people kind of came off the field, his opponents would come off and go like, you know, he's not the biggest guy, but he's pretty tough. And so anyway, they play whatever, a five or six-game schedule. And somewhere early in the year, I think they were playing like Worcester Polly or somebody like that, you know, they broke his nose in a game early in the year. And so then, you know, it gets better. I don't know if he wore a noseguard or not. However, the final game of the Harvard freshman season is against the Yale freshmen. And, you know, it's a big deal. And so, in that game, and I should say that you know, just like everything was getting documented, and there were paparazzi, you know, surrounding Travis and Taylor, the same thing happened with Teddy Jr. Here, people are taking pictures of him everywhere he goes. Reporters are trailing him. So the kid just, I mean, he's struggling to have a normal college freshman life because his dad's the president of the country. And so, he's apparently handled all that well, too. So in the lead-up to the Yale game, the Yale folks are all like, hey, I want to play. I want to play the right end in this game because Teddy was the left end for Harvard. And you know, those were days you played both ways. So it turned out that, you know, they just, Yale didn't change their lineup, but the guy who was their Yale's right end on the freshmen team was kind of the captain of the freshmen and then as a senior, he was a. You know captain of the of the ELI team so he's a real good ball player and so he's up against Teddy the whole game and you know sounds like he was kind of beating Teddy's butt but you know he hung in you know Teddy hung in there he made some pretty good tackles made some good plays but in the course of the you know towards you know somewhere like in the second half he apparently broke his nose again and had you know big black eyes and um and so he he left the game with a few minutes left uh you know to play and um so then you know but it was written up you know a syndicated article shows up in you know newspapers nationwide there were pictures of them in these newspapers there were cartoons about him um and so then you know season ends and then he actually started gaining a little bit of weight and as but as a sophomore he went out for the and they still tell now you're too small you know you can't play with you can't play with the big boys so you might have played for his class team or something but uh then as a junior he goes out again and i think you know sounded like he was kind of holding his own uh but then he you know was injured during the preseason and that basically that was the end of his playing career so the only the other thing that was interesting about him he was like i think he was like president or ceo of american express i mean he he had a big you know business career i mean he is obviously well connected person but you know nevertheless sounds like you know pretty pretty stellar guy and um so pretty bully guy huh yeah yeah that's yes so he uh so he ended up um when world war two you know came around he had volunteered i think he had served in world war one as well um any uh Anyways, he was on the, he was in general, and he was on the, he was on the first wave that D -Day was, you know, kind of, there's stories that, you know, he was inspiring guys to try to get over, over the sandbars and, you know, keep moving. So he was, you know, trying to coordinate a lot of that effort. And you know, as a result of that, he was recommended for the Distinguished Service Cross. And then, but he ended up dying of a heart attack two weeks later. And so they ended up awarding him the Congressional Medal of Honor, you know, instead. So, they upgraded the DSC Medal of Honor. You make it through probably one of the most stressful situations in world history on D-Day. And two weeks later, I'm sure, I'm sure things weren't pleasant for him then. But still, you would think D-Day would be the stressful part of that. I want the irony of it. So anyways, I mean, you know, I mean everything I can tell you know pretty much of a guy to be admired. Yeah, you know, he just Tried to be as normal a person as he could Despite who his father was. Yeah, when you're living in that big of a shadow, that's Probably a lot rougher than most normal people have ever experienced, and I'm sure it's good. It's an easy thing to overcome, and it's very interesting.

Darin Hayes
Yeah, great story. Now. It almost reminds me a little bit. I interviewed Craig Cole, who quit just a little while ago, and he ended up playing for the University of Tennessee in college right before his junior year. That's when Johnny Majors Left Pitt won the national championship with Tony Dorsett and then went to Tennessee took over the program and that's where he's from And of course and I can remember, you know I was a youngster them but watching and you know Lee Majors was a six million dollar man at that time and he was always on the sidelines and of course his wife was Farrah Fawcett she was under so we talked a little bit about but that and you know Craig was a punter So he wasn't you know, he only had to worry about a few handful of plays each each game and he told me he goes Yeah, he goes that was distracting goes But the worst thing was on the sideline is you know, Johnny Majors loved to have celebrities there He was friends with Jimmy Buffett and Jimmy Buffett would be on the sidelines and you know wearing forget whose Jersey he was wearing I think one of the receivers or something that Name escapes me the guy played for the Patriots after we had a great career in the NFL but he would always wear his jersey and he said Jimmy Buffett was always like where the special teams was and you know, of course the fans and everything we get you know, we're trying to you know look and see Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors, I'm like, I can't even imagine that on a sideline today and especially in college football You know these coaches are so stoic you would never see Nick Saban allow something like that or something like that.

Timothy Brown
But yeah, well, you know, it's, Um, yeah, for a while, the NCAA was going to make a move to reduce the number of people that can be on the sidelines. Still, you know, when you see like the USC UCLA game, there's always one of the games where there's always celebs, uh, just, you know, because of the location and some of their alums. So yeah, it's exciting enough to see as former players have played for that school show, you know, Joe Burrow shows up on the LSU sideline or, you know, that's kind of cool to see that, you know, the guys that have made it. And, uh, you have any of these Hollywood stars showing up. That's all different, and Taylor Swift has a different story. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's amazing; I mean, that whole phenomenon is just amazing to me. I mean, I'm, I'm, I don't have any. I'm not a fan of hers. I don't, I'm, I'm just indifferent, right? But yeah, obviously admire, you know, what she's done from a career standpoint. And then, the influence she has, I think, you know.

Darin Hayes
I mean, good for her, right? And I think the NFL likes the extra exposure to new audiences. They watch their products. So yeah, brilliant. It is not fun as a traditional football fan to go to the stands after every play, but the NFL for ratings and, you know, cause the NFL needs the money.

Timothy Brown
So they got to get that, you know, they do it, you know, mother's sisters, you know, all the stuff. I can't think of the guy's Name, the former quarterback at Notre Dame. And they always had his sister and his girlfriend, and yeah, I mean, if they think there's a story there, they're going to play it up and, you know, they do all those, let's step away for a minute and listen to the story of, you know, Bobby Joe Smith, right? It's like in the Olympics, they do that all the time because nobody knows who the speed skater is, but, you know, they step away into the profiles. And yeah, it's pretty, it's kind of the same thing. Yeah. It's all in the ratings. All in the ratings. Well, Tim, that was a great story. And, you know, taking us back, you know, a hundred and some years ago and tying into some modern stories of football. So that's, uh, you know, brilliantly done and a great story. And I appreciate you letting us know and filling us in on Teddy Jr. a little bit and, you know, his heroics on the football field and the battlefield and, uh, you know, somebody that should be honored and remembered.

Darin Hayes
And I appreciate you doing that. And you do a lot of that where not only people are remembered and preserved but also, you know, events and little intricacies of the gridiron on your football, archeology .com website. And maybe you could tell the listeners how they can partake in that and enjoy your website. Yeah. Um, so you know, you just go to the site and, uh, you can just go and browse, but the best thing to do is just subscribe.

Timothy Brown
If you subscribe for free, you get cut back. Access to about a third of the content. The paid subscription is five bucks a month or 50 bucks a year. And then that gives you access to everything, including all of the archives. I also post on threads and Twitter. So, if you want to monitor things that way, I've added it as well. All right, well, very good, Tim. We appreciate you coming on and sharing these little bite-sized chunks of football history over a hundred years.

Darin Hayes
But these are different instances, and we appreciate it. We would love to talk to you again next week about some more great football history.

Timothy Brown
That's very good. Thank you, Darin.

---

Ever wonder what it's like to be a champion? To have nerves of steel and a winning arm?

Then buckle up, because we're diving into the incredible story of Otto Graham... not just as a football legend, but as a comic book hero! That's right! Today, we're tackling touchdowns and thought bubbles as we explore this rare piece of football history. Was Otto Graham just a great quarterback, or did he have the moves to conquer the comics too?

Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology joins us to tell of these rare football funnies, the player they were about, and why they were made. Tim's original Tidbitis titled, "Otto Graham and the Championship Football Comic Book."

You can also enjoy our podcast version of the conversation, Otto Graham Comics.

-Transcribed Conversation of Timothy Brown on the Otto Graham Comics

Darin Hayes:
Friends, this is Darin Hayes of pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to another day where we get to go down that road of football history with our friend, Timothy Brown, of footballarchaeology.com. Tim, welcome back to the Pigpen.

Timothy Brown:
Hey, Darin, I'm looking forward to chatting again, and hopefully, this will be a comical segment.

Darin Hayes:
I think it will be, and that's a nice segue into the subject matter we're going to be talking about. It's one of your recent tidbits titled Otto Graham in a Championship Football Comic Book. But as a kid, I loved comic books. I still have my comic book collection, and I love football, so these are two of my favorite things all combined into one, so this is great.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, well, so I'm old enough to remember going to, like, especially when I had a paper out, and I had, you know, more spending money than I have now, um, you know, I could, you know, we still had corner drug stores back then. And I had one, you know, five, six blocks away, and, uh, you know, it could go in there, and they had a rack of comic books. And I was more of a Sergeant Rock, you know, kind of a war hero, you know, kind of a comic book rather than a fantasy superhero. So, um, so I, I went through the comic book stage and, um, but I never had an auto Graham comic book. I know that. So, so this one is, um, this is an item, you know, so now a day, I've, I've, I've collected different things over the years, but now the three main things that I collect are all focused on things that I can use for football archeology. You know, if I don't think I can use it for football archeology with very few exceptions, I don't buy it. And so my three things now are RPPCs or real photo postcards, you know, which were like the kind of function like the, you know, Twitter message or the, you know, whatever of the day, um, sporting goods catalogs, you know, those with football sections and then advertising premiums, which were, you know, giveaways that, you know, they're still around today, mostly today. They're just a single card with a football scheduler and a baseball schedule. You throw it in your pocket; it's in your wallet. Um, but you know, back in the day, a lot of retailers of all kinds of sorts, but mostly those that attracted men because I was kind of their target audience, they produced these booklets that, uh, would have like summaries of the season, previous seasons and schedules of all the different teams. And so I liked those because, well, all three of them provide visuals that I use in my tidbits, but these premiums also, they're just like point-in-time summaries of what were people thinking going into the 1952 season, you know, who did they project were going to be some of the top stars, some of whom you've heard of some of whom you've never heard of. Right. Um, just like, you know, today, somebody, you know, somebody makes predictions. So in 1954, the Pennsylvania athletic company or like products company, whatever it was, you know, they're still around, and they're best known for the tennis balls. You know, you'll see tennis balls with a pen on them. That's the company. And this company made just all kinds of different balls. You know, you name the sport, they probably made a ball for it. They especially made a lot of rubber balls, which I'll get back to in a little bit. So they, um, they put out this comic book, and I think, you know, 25 to 30 pages. It was like a normal comic book, with beautiful drawings, nicely printed, and the whole shebang. It was about Auto Graham and a kid named Jimmy Farrell. And we've all known a Jimmy Farrell in our lives. Um, it was kind of, basically, leaving it to Beaver. It's kind of a Leave It to Beaver story three years before Leave, Leave It to Beaver premiered. Um, not that he was a goofball, but he was a little bit of a goofball, not like he was like a Beaver. He's probably more, more of a Wally, you know, as it turned out, he's more like a Wally than a Beaver. But, um, so anyways, it's kind of that, that being that all American, you know, happy family, you know, mom and dad and mom looks good and dad's, you know, hardworking guy and dah, dah, dah. So, Jimmy, you know, the story opens with Jimmy. He's a fan of Fairview High School, which is in Ohio, and you know, he just, you know, they win a big game. And so he, they're driving home, and he tells his mom and dad that he's going to play for Fairview someday. Right. And so then, like a year or two later, um, you know, Jimmy's practicing, and he's just not a natural athlete, at least not at that stage. And so he's trying to kick, and he's doing all these things, and he basically just doesn't; he's not very good. So, the time comes for him to try out for the high school football team. He tries out, but he gets cut. And so poor Jimmy, you know, he just, he's just not good enough. And so then he's got his side. Okay, am I just going to fold up? Or am I gonna, you know, bite the bullet and pull myself up by my boots, bootstraps, and all those good things and start a football?

Darin Hayes:
a football history podcast. Yeah, he could have done that. But he did. You sound like you're smart. You're smarter. You're smarter than that.

Timothy Brown:
So, Jimmy, his dad, buys him a really good ball to practice with. And it turns out, we'll find out later, that it's a pin football and probably a rubber football, which was kind of innovative at the time. And so he's taking it to the park, and he's kicking it around. And he's not very good. And one time, he kicks it over near this car that's parked, you know, and there's this one man, a single man sitting in the car watching him kick the ball around. Now, in certain neighborhoods, that might be considered, you know, maybe a guy you don't want to go talk to. But, you know, the guy gets out of the car and starts talking to Jimmy and patting him on the back and giving them pointers on how to play football. And then, you know, he eventually tells Jimmy, well, you know, if you want to, if you want to get better, I'll be here every Saturday morning, and I'm willing to work with you. Again, it sounds sketchy, but he mentions that Jimmy and his parents live in Fairview. So that's why he comes there every Saturday. So Jimmy tells his parents that at dinner, and his dad says, well, that's probably Otto Graham that, you know, we spoke to. So then the whole thing, you know, starts happening with Jimmy shows up every Saturday, he's got his pen, you know, his Pennsylvania, you know, product ball, and Otto Graham's given him pointers, and he gives him so much enough pointers, where he kind of reaches a point where he says, you know, you got to get you can't keep practicing, you got to start playing. So bring your friends, and we'll let you know, they'll start playing too. So then Otto's, you know, drilling all those kids and giving them pointers on here's how you kick the ball. Here's how you punch the ball. Here's how you pass the ball. Here's how you handle handing it off. Here's how you tackle it. And, so all the boys are having fun, they build their own goalposts, you know, in the park, which I think is just a normal thing to do. And so then eventually, you know, the year passes, and Jimmy tries out for the team the next year. And he is so impressive that the coach names him the quarterback. And so before the first game of the season, Otto Graham comes over and has dinner with Mom and Dad, you know, on Friday night, they play the game on Saturday. Sure enough, Jimmy throws the touchdown pass to win the game. And, you know, they all live merely, they're happily ever after. So, it's just kind of a cool thing. You know, here's this guy who was an absolute stud: Otto Graham. And so he's in this comic book, and then he ends up retiring after that 54 season, though Paul Brown convinced them to come back the next year. And then that he was finally done. But it was like, you know, one of these succession stories where Jimmy Farrell is gonna, you know, yeah, we're gonna miss Otto Graham, but there's this whole line of new young stud quarterbacks who are going to be coming up through the system. And Jimmy Farrell is one of them. So it's just kind of a Horatio Alger, you know, rags to riches, an American story; I mean, it's just fabulous. And beautifully, you know, artworks are just great. So

Darin Hayes:
It's a great story, definitely a great feel-good story, unless you're like me and you live in Western Pennsylvania. And we had our mutual friend Jeff Payne on not too long ago, and he was showing me some cards that were made by Penn and that of the Cleveland Browns and those great Browns teams who thought, you know, the autogram was on, autogram was one of the trading cards that he had and he sheets. And like I told him, Jeff's from Western Pennsylvania as well. And I'm sort of thinking, okay, in that timeframe, you know, if only Penn would have invested a little bit in some Pittsburgh Steelers memorabilia, maybe guys like Johnny Unitas and Len Dawson and Jack Kemp, maybe one of those quarterbacks would have stayed in Pittsburgh if they would have been ordered like autogram was and Steelers would have done better back then. But they helped an Ohio team, you know, what are you gonna do?

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, yeah, well.

Darin Hayes:
And it's interesting, Fairview. Pennsylvania is probably about five miles from me. So it's, it's less than 20 miles from the Ohio line. So, uh, you know, that, that resonates a little bit there, too. And there, there was always a football powerhouse, too. So it's a, maybe it's just a name Fairview, uh, makes that.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, so I don't know. For me, it was just like I came across that thing. And it's one of those things where, you know, most of these items that I'm buying, you know, they're not worth a whole lot of money. This one's worth a little bit more, but I think I paid $5 for, you know, but it's just such an entertaining piece of little, you know, football history, and advertising history that, you know, it's just really fun.

Darin Hayes:
You just took me back. You are telling that story. It just takes me back. Like you were reading me a nighttime story. I'm, I'm ready to hit the hay now. So I thank you for that, too. Good stuff. Sweet Dreams by Chris. Tim, you have a lot of different interesting things, whether it be comic books or, you know, these RPPCs or just an interesting story about the great game that we all love and enjoy. That's why we're all here tonight listening to and viewing this. Maybe you could tell us how folks can read some of the items that you have in football archeology.

Timothy Brown:
Yeah, so, you know, it's all sitting there on-site called football, football, archaeology .com. There are about 1000 articles out there now. So you can just go in there. There are search functions, so you can search topics and see if there's something out there on it. So, and if you're once you're out there, you can subscribe, you'll get an email whenever I, I send out a, you know, whenever I publish a new story. Alternatively, you can follow me on Twitter, on threads, or on the Substack app. So whatever suits your fancy.

Darin Hayes:
Well, Tim, we, we appreciate it once again for the great story and a great look at football back some 70, some years ago, and, uh, just enjoyable story and feel good story, you know, whether you're not a bronze fan or you are a bronze fan or, or not. I still feel good about it. So that's a great thing with a football legend. And indeed, you know, the guy that, uh, won seven championships in the ten years that he played, that's better than Tom Brady. And so that's, that's pretty good.

Timothy Brown:
You know, there's something else, there's something else.

Darin Hayes:
Absolutely. And so we thank you and we'd love to talk to you about some more great football history next week.

Timothy Brown:
Very good and sleep well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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

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

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

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

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

Hello, my football friends; this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to Tuesday, FootballArcheology.com day. We have Timothy P. Brown, the founder of FootballArcheology.com, joining us as he does each and every week to talk about one of his famous tidbits.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very good. Thank you, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.