Football Daily

Football – a sport synonymous with grit, athleticism, and bone-crushing tackles. But behind the roar of the crowd and the electrifying plays lies a crucial element often overlooked: safety. This series delves into the fascinating evolution of American football equipment, exploring how both player protection and field technology have transformed the game over time.

We'll embark on a journey through the gridiron's history, starting with the early days of leather helmets and rudimentary padding. Witness the rise of iconic innovations like the facemask and the gradual shift towards prioritizing player safety. We'll explore the science behind modern helmets and protective gear, and how advancements continue to push the boundaries of injury prevention.

But our exploration doesn't stop there. We'll also delve into the fascinating world of field equipment, examining how technology has transformed the way the game is played. From the evolution of the football itself to the rise of instant replay and sophisticated tracking systems, we'll uncover how equipment has revolutionized officiating, strategy, and the overall viewing experience.

So, whether you're a die-hard football fan or simply curious about the science behind the sport, join us on this exciting exploration. Prepare to be surprised by the ingenious innovations, the constant battle to balance risk and reward, and the ongoing quest to make football safer and more spectacular for everyone involved.

The roar of the crowd, the electrifying energy, the dazzling displays of athleticism – these are the elements that define the spectacle of American football. But beneath the bright lights and booming sound systems lies a crucial, often overlooked, element: the field itself. This series delves into the fascinating evolution of the American football field, exploring how its design and technology have transformed the way the game is played and experienced.

-The Humble Beginnings – A Patch of Grass and the Birth of Tradition (Late 1800s-Early 1900s)

Our journey begins in the late 1800s, where football fields were more akin to muddy patches of land than the meticulously manicured surfaces of today. Early stadiums offered minimal amenities, forcing players to battle the elements alongside their opponents. We'll explore the challenges and ingenuity of this early era, where players and fans alike embraced the raw essence of the game.

-Standardization and Innovation – The Rise of the Gridiron (Early 1900s-Mid 1900s)

As football gained popularity, so did the need for standardized playing surfaces. This era witnessed the birth of the iconic gridiron, the painted lines and yard markers that gave the field its distinctive look and facilitated strategic play. We'll delve into the fascinating history of these markings, the challenges of maintaining playable surfaces, and the early innovations in field technology.

-The Material Revolution – From Grass to Artificial Turf (Mid 1900s-Present Day)

The mid-20th century ushered in a significant shift: the introduction of artificial turf. This innovation promised better drainage, increased durability, and year-round play. We'll explore the initial controversies surrounding turf, its impact on player safety and performance, and the ongoing debate between natural grass and artificial surfaces.

-Beyond the Basics – The Future of the Football Field (Present Day-Future)

The evolution of the football field doesn't stop at materials. Today, we're witnessing advanced technologies like heated surfaces, sophisticated drainage systems, and even integrated sensors that monitor player movements. We'll explore these cutting-edge innovations, their potential impact on player safety and performance, and the exciting possibilities for the future of the gridiron.

Join us on this captivating journey through gridiron history! We'll uncover the stories behind the lines, the science beneath the surface, and the fascinating evolution of the field that continues to shape the game we love.

This series invites you on a fascinating journey through the helmet's remarkable transformation, a story of innovation, tragedy, and an unwavering pursuit of protecting the heroes of the gridiron.

Prepare to step into the past, when players donned rudimentary leather caps, offering little more than a symbolic nod to safety. We'll witness the birth of iconic designs like the single-bar facemask and the winged helmets that soared alongside aerial attacks.

But this tale isn't just about aesthetics. We'll delve into the dark chapters, where concussions plagued the game, and tragedies spurred a revolution in helmet design. From revolutionary materials like polycarbonate to cutting-edge sensors and shock-absorbing technologies, we'll explore the relentless quest for safer headgear.

Beyond the technological advancements, we'll meet the pioneers who dedicated their lives to protecting players. We'll listen to the stories of inventors, doctors, and even players who dared to challenge the status quo and demand better.

This isn't just a story of protection; it's a story of human resilience. It's about pushing the boundaries of science, confronting the dark realities of the game, and ultimately, celebrating the spirit of innovation that keeps players taking the field, game after game.

So, buckle up and join us as we explore the remarkable evolution of the football helmet. From humble beginnings to the high-tech wonders of today, get ready for a journey that will reshape your understanding of this iconic piece of football history.

Beneath the roar of the stadium, hidden beneath sweat and glory, lies a silent army. They aren't the quarterbacks slinging bombs or the running backs carving paths through defenses. They are the unsung heroes, the forgotten foot soldiers of the gridiron – the equipment.

In this series, we embark on a pilgrimage, a hymn to the humble helmet and the mighty cleat. We'll peel back the layers of leather and padding, delve into the science of fiberglass and polymer, and unveil the stories embedded in every stitch and screw.

Prepare to meet the pioneers who crafted these shields and swords of the gridiron. We'll shake hands with the leather craftsmen who birthed the first helmets, their stitching still echoing whispers of a bygone era. We'll clink glasses with the innovators who dared to defy tradition, forging lightweight plastic armor and revolutionizing the game.

But this isn't just a technical odyssey. We'll explore the human stories woven into each piece of gear. We'll celebrate the touchdown saved by a perfectly angled facemask and the record-breaking run fueled by spikes biting into turf. We'll mourn the tragedies averted by ever-evolving padding and the careers saved by advancements in helmet technology.

Fun facts about how the size of the football field has changed in size, shape, and dimensions.

Before foam and Kevlar dominated the gridiron, a far stranger form of protection reigned: the pneumatic pad. In the early 20th century, players donned inflatable armor, resembling futuristic gladiators more than athletes. This essay delves into the rise and fall of these curious contraptions, a chapter in football history that is both innovative and ultimately deflated.

Timothy P Brown has a geat post on this on Football Archaeology titled: Getting Pumped Up for Pneumatic Football Pads.

The story of air-filled helmets has an early tie to 1903 with a full-page ad for “Spalding’s Pneumatic Head Harness in Spalding's sponsored Football Rules Guide for that year.

Initially, the idea seemed revolutionary. Pneumatic pads boasted impressive shock absorption, reducing the thud of tackles and promising a new era of player safety. However, problems surfaced quickly. The cumbersome air bladders restricted movement, turning agile athletes into clunky robots. Leaks were frequent, leaving players feeling vulnerable and, ironically, deflated. The technology proved impractical, and by the 1940s, air had all but vanished from the playing field.

Despite their short-lived tenure, pneumatic pads hold a significant place in football history. They represent a bold, if misguided, attempt to address player safety, paving the way for future innovations like leather and foam padding.

Their comical appearance remains a quirky footnote in the sport's evolving narrative, reminding us that the quest for protection is often a bumpy, deflated one.

- Transcribed Conversation of Pumped Up Pneumatic Jel with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends; this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to another edition where we get to talk to Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com about football from yesteryear and one of the famous tidbits that he's had out recently. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Darin, thank you. Looking forward to chatting and getting pumped up. Yeah, like the old Saturday Live skit where they say, we're going to pump you up.

My worst German accent there. So I apologize for that. But yeah, your title is very fitting.

We're saying that because the title of your tidbit from back in August of this past year is getting pumped up for pneumatic football pads. A lot of P words in there, a lot of big words, and a lot of exciting stuff for equipment. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about that story.

Yeah, so this is one of those stories. Last week, we talked about what might have been with St. Louis U football, you know, had they continued playing or if things had gone differently back in the day. So this is kind of similar, but it's one of those things where for, I mean, this happens in all kinds of different product areas and industries, but you know, you kind of have to have this confluence of technology and inventiveness and engineering and manufacturing prowess and everything in order for a product to be successful. And so this is a story where the ideas were there well in advance of actually being fully implemented, but they just couldn't get it done to make it practical.

So, this is really about the first use of pneumatics. So, you know, like inflatable tires and things like that. You know, the first use of pneumatics in footballs was, it was an attempt to, they made like canvas and rubber covered thigh pads, and they'd blow them up, and then you'd insert them into your pants.

And, you know, at the time, most of the thigh pads were like bamboo and other kinds of reeds. You know, if you see somebody looking at the old pictures, you see all these tiny vertical slots. And so it was either that or like quilt material.

So, you know, they're trying to avoid what the, you know, Charlie horses and that kind of thing. So somebody had an idea of pumping up these little pads and using those. So they did that in the thigh pads.

And then there was also, there were also some attempts in the late 1890s to maybe apply it to helmets. And they weren't helmets at the time. And, you know, in my terminology, a helmet has to have some kind of hard protective cover or a crown.

Helmets initially were head harnesses, similar to wrestlers' headgear. So they tried to do that with foot helmets. It didn't really work, but they did use them in France for cyclists and the Tour de France.

And then it just goes, you know, kind of the pneumatic world goes dry as far as its application of football until the 1950s. And then you have the guy Cecil Cushman, who was the coach at the University of Redlands in California. And he was there for a long time, but he was an inventor throughout his time there.

He also got a patent in 1952 for this pneumatic lining for the inside of helmets. By then, helmets had plastic linings, so the idea made sense.

It never, you know, for whatever reason, I mean, it just didn't work. Maybe they just couldn't manufacture them. They weren't reliable enough when you did use them, something happened, but so they never took, took on or took off.

But Cushman is actually, besides being the coach there, he's best known for being the inventor of the strap on kicking tee or kicking shoe, kicking toe. So I've shown this in other tidbits, but I was trying to imagine what the strap on kicking key was. I'm like, yeah, yeah.

Sorry. I misspoke. So it's a kicking toe, but you know, I played long enough ago, you know, we still had straight-ahead kickers and, you know, we had an offensive in college.

We had an offensive tackle who would pull off his shoes, you know, somebody throw the kicking shoe to him, and then he'd, you know, put it on and try to kick the point of the field. Right. So, I mean, teams had done that forever.

So he invented this is basically a big solid block of rubber that fit around the cap of the shoe. And then it had a rubber strap on the other end that you put around your heel. It was actually, you know, pretty, pretty good invention.

But so anyways, that's what he's known for. So then it wasn't until like 1970s when both Rydell and Schutt came out with helmets that had an air bladder inside of them. So, you know, again, on the I'm old enough story, I had, you know, in grade school, I wore a suspension helmet in high school.

It was one of those white pad helmets in college. I thought it was like, geez, I'm in the big time now because we had an air bladder plus the white pads. It was like we almost could never get better than that.

So, you know, anyways, it just took until they had this idea in the 1890s for this pneumatic helmet. But it wasn't until the 1970s that it actually came to fruition. So I just, you know, again, it's just one of those where everything kind of had to fit together.

All the pieces had to come in place or come in, you know, come into place in order for it to work. But it did. And, you know, just one of those theory and practice kinds of things.

They had the theory; they didn't have the practice. Yeah. I'm glad you brought it up.

And because there's a lot of people that, you know, are football fans, but never played the game. Maybe you don't know, you know, you and I and our generation, we've seen a lot, like you've been saying, it's gone on the inside of a football helmet as well as the outside. The outside doesn't look like it's changed all that much, maybe some more aerodynamic, but the materials are much different.

And then, you know, the face masks are different, but the interior, like you say, the suspension or foam or air or, you know, God only knows what the foam pads that come out and you, you know, they kept falling out all the time, and you had all that going on. So, but some people don't appreciate that, the comfort that you have when you have this, you know, big plastic thing or whatever, the composite thing on your head, you know, you want to be comfortable because you have to, that's what you're using to look around and everything else, you know, your vision, everything's affected by it. So I'm glad when you bring up these things, and it shares it with everybody.

Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I've got a story that I could, well, I'm going to tell it anyway.

My kids think I'm nuts. When I was playing, I used to get the first few days of practice every year. I get these really severe headaches, which basically tells you I probably shouldn't have been playing football, but you know, it didn't matter. So, but so, I mean, it just, it was almost like disabling.

So what I would do, you know, once I got to college, I wanted, I didn't want that to happen. So I'd get the helmet before hand. And then during the last couple of weeks before practice started in the summer, I'd go in the basement before I'm going to ready to go to bed.

And I go pound my head on the floor to, you know, simulate getting this. This is starting to explain a lot about our relationship. And it's just like, I mean, I did that now for three years, but then I'd go to, I'd get a headache, and then I'd go to bed and sleep. But then, once I started practicing, it didn't bother me.

I know it's just idiotic, but it's just one of those funny things. So, part of it tells you the quality of helmets just probably wasn't that good. And then when I look at some of the helmets guys wore earlier on, I mean, you know, I mean, tackling has changed too.

And people don't hit in the same way now. I mean, people are much more forceful in some ways than they were back then. In other ways, less, cause, you know, you didn't, you're not taught to stick your helmet, you know, in a guy's chest anymore, but anyways.

Yeah. I have a whole new respect for you now, Tim. You were right up there with the guy from the Triangles movie—the Dayton Triangles movie is out—and the guy who was tackling the trees to get ready for the game.

I don't know if you saw the highlights of that. I think you were born maybe a couple of decades too late. You should have a different generation.

I actually did. I, I was a kid. You know, I didn't have a plastic, you know, everybody had those little youth plastic cups that were just, you know, they bought them at a dime store or something.

They were garbage load things. So like when we'd play like pickup games, kids would put those on. I didn't have one.

So I had my uncle's leather helmet from his high school playing days, which is sitting up there on the shelf. You can see it. Right.

But anyway, so I'd put that baby. So I needed to protect my noggins. Yeah.

I could remember. Don't feel too much of myself in this, uh, in this episode. Yeah.

I can remember the early seventies. I think all kids on Christmas day would get the shoulder pads, Jersey, and helmet from the Sears Roebuck catalog of their favorite team. Of course, I had a Terry Bradshaw and the Steelers helmet on, and we would all take them to school.

And then at recess, you'd go out in the playground and all the boys, you know, we'd have, you know, you have like 20 different teams, the representative. Still, we'd all be padded up and playing and, you know, doing stupid things that, you know, seven, eight-year-old kids are doing with football helmets on, but good, good fun, but no protection at all. You're right. It's a, just like a, I think it's a foam that was probably less dense than a sponge that we use today.

It was inside of those things. So, there is not very much protection there. But, uh, yeah, I had to order out of the Husky Boys select section of the Sears catalog.

So, I'm with you on that one. Yeah. Tim, you know, we, we appreciate you coming on and sharing, uh, like we said, some of these facets of, uh, the, the equipment and how that's changed the game because, you know, the comfort of the players are a big thing on how they perform.

And, uh, you know, it's these advancements in safety and everything, but they still have a long way to go. People were still getting hurt and getting concussions, and hopefully, you know, that'll get eliminated someday with the technology. But, uh, you have tidbits like this on different areas of football from modern times, all the way back to the beginning of football.

And yet you share on football, archeology.com and some other areas too. Maybe you could share some of those with the folks so they can join in. Yeah.

So really simple. If you're interested, um, just go to football, archeology.com. Um, you know, if you hit a site, you're offered multiple opportunities. I think maybe you're forced to, well, you're, you're offered the opportunity to subscribe.

So it's just provide your email. Then you'll get an email every night at seven o'clock Eastern, that offers a story of the day. Um, if you don't like that approach, then, um, you can just follow me on Twitter at football archeology, you know, under the name football archeology.

I'm also on threads, uh, under football archeology. So as well as on the, uh, Substack app. So whatever works for you, that's how to get, get there.

All right. Well, Tim, we appreciate you coming on and sharing us, uh, another great, uh, thought of how football was played in yesterdays and yesteryears. And, uh, we appreciate it.

And we will talk to you again next Tuesday.

Hey, we're good there. Thank you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

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The history of the jock strap , cup and other athletic supporter items are provided by our friend Timothy P Brown and Football Archaeology