Flip-Style Down Marker Innovation of Colonel Baker

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Have you ever stopped to think about the iconic flip-down markers used to signal first downs in football? Today on the podcast, we delve into the fascinating history of this sideline staple with special guest historian Timothy Brown!

Timothy Brown of FootballArchaeaology.com a renowned expert on the evolution of sports equipment, joins us to explore.

Today's episode and discussion is based on Tim's original post titled:Col. Roy C. Baker And The Flip-Style Down Marker .

We also have this available in podcast form The Flip-Style Down Marker Innovation of Colonel Baker.

So please sit down and relax and enjoy the gridiron lore!

Flip-Style Down Marker with Timothy Brown

Hello my football friends, this is Darin Hayes of pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal of positive football history, and welcome to another Tuesday where we have our friend Timothy P Brown, a footballarchaeology.com, to tell us about another aspect of football history. Maybe He's not mainstream and we don't know much about but we're gonna learn something today Tim. Welcome back to the Pigpen.

Hey, it's very good to see you, and I think this Podcast will Have people flipping out.

Well, I'm definitely flipping out about it because you put your subject matter that you're gonna talk about today as something That's near and dear to my heart being a former official something that I used quite a bit You had an article back in May called Colonel Roy Baker and the flip style downed Marker Now this is something I'm very familiar with in my early days of officiating and love to hear the history of it.

Yeah well, you know, so Depending on when the listeners came of age in terms of their football fandom You know if they're some kind of young and they might only remember the louvered down markers where you know the guy the dial-a-downs Yeah, the dial-a-downs exactly and But before that There were a whole, you know, there are a number of different Variations on you know first there were chains and then they you know created down markers that or down boxes Which initially were just boxes, you know on a stick with a one two, three or four on the four sides of the box And so but none of those were entirely satisfactory because you know Depending on which direction you had the down Marker pointing then somebody was If they were in a different position in the stadium or on the field, they they saw a different number So there was always some confusion There and this isn't a lot of times in the days before there were really effective scoreboards that would tell you the down so There's this guy Roy C Baker Who was a 1932 South Dakota grad? Who's an ROTC there? He was a cheerleader. I didn't find any information about him playing Football in high school or college, but I suspect he played in high school.

He was from a small town in South Dakota. So I'm sure they needed every athlete that they could get, you know. Seems like a fairly athletic guy, so, you know, he graduates from South Dakota in 32, and he taught for a couple of years in, You know, South Dakota High School, but then he moves to Wyoming, and he at each of those places he's you know, these are small Small community high schools. He's the football coach and the basketball coach and, you know, pretty successful in both. You know, sometimes a little tough in the first year or two that he was coaches, But you know, he had some pretty good teams, especially in basketball, actually. But you know, for whatever reason, in the late 30s, he became dissatisfied with the way that the down boxes worked in Football, and Football had tried a lot of different solutions.

They were different. You know, now we're using chips, I guess, but they, you know, They tried different things like surveying kind of tools to line it up properly, And you know, some kind of crazy things to try to get, you know, accurate accuracy but though but His solution was much more focused on the fans and the players on the field than just the visibility of the down on the down Marker, so he's the guy who came up with the flip-style down And you know, he kind of prototyped it just using sheets of paper And if you think about it And I can wrote about it. I kind of went through the sequence in the written article, But it's like okay, so the on one side of the sheet has to be Matched with a two on the other side and then a two match with three and a three-match the four and then a four-match with a one in order for the numbers to correspond so both sides are displaying either one or two or three or four and So he figured that out it's like so obvious to anybody who looks at it, you know like And it's like why didn't anybody think of that and the numbers got to be upside down to the number on the other side Because you're flipping it over. Yeah.

Yeah, so, but I mean, he Used a couple of sheets of paper to figure it out, and boom. He made it so then he had, you know, he started having them produced in metal at a local, you know, sheet metal shop and Painting them up, and then he started selling them, you know, no locally, but he also sold one to the University, Nebraska So that was maybe his breakthrough where you know people start noticing this thing and And he files for a patent in 41 he gets the patent in like April of 42 Like two weeks later, you know, I said earlier he was an ROTC in college and he he was In the Army Reserves throughout that time, you know so World War two had just started so he gets called up So now he you know, it's gives up his teaching job joins, you know heads into the army and While he was in the army during World War two others started producing His flip style down markers and then selling them through the big sporting goods companies So he gets back to the States, you know, he was in Europe during the war. He gets back to states, and You know, They're using these flip-style down markers all over the place.

So he goes to some lawyers, and they basically say, well, You know, this isn't like a high dollar value product. You're probably not gonna get much out of suing these people because he had told that he told the companies, Hey, you're violating my patent, and they had said sue me, right? So, you know, he ended up just deciding not to pursue it for whatever reason but mostly on the lawyer's advice, So he never really got anything out of it. You know, he came up with this concept, which is brilliant in its simplicity, right? And really, the only recognition that he got was in 83 when the Redskins were in We're heading into the Super Bowl. He was profiled in the Washington Post with an article, you know, basically telling the story that he had, you know about what had happened to him.

So that article is helpful to me. But what, you know, obviously I had to go figure out his background, the high schools and all that kind of stuff, but the other thing just about this story is it's one of those where a lot of times some of my favorite stories are this came about because I mean I kind of you know, I've written a bunch of stuff in the past about these various downmarket attempts and but this one came about because An in-law relative of his Reached out to me and said hey, do you know about this guy this Roy C Baker? I was like, no, never heard of him, and But then once I do, you know, once I googled or used newspapers.com to look for That Washington Post article popped up, and then it was just like, you know, Katie bar the door, you know so anyways I just I love the stories where it's connected to somebody's relative a son a daughter grandchild whatever Who's like? You know, trying to figure out what the truth is behind their Ancestor story, or they're Giving the guys some recognition for a great invention to get credited for run paid for, But you know, really, I would guess from at least the early 50s, you know from then on Until the dial-a-down came around and that was like 87 or so I think is when that first came up the flip style down Marker was the downmarket I mean, you didn't see anything else on a football field So especially when they went to plastic, I know I know when I first started officiating in the 80s We had metal ones. There were some plastic ones out there But the plastic ones were great, especially like in our area when you started officiating you would be for varsity games You would hold the chains and do the downmarkers for the varsity game watching the more senior officials do it So you get those cold days in like October November and you're I mean you're holding it a metal pole So your hand gets close you have a glove on you're trying to do it one-handed But the the plastic ones are nice because you could just shake the the pat the pole a little bit and it would flip it You know, you could if you did just write it up and you'd have to use both hands to flip the thing around So we love the plastic ones Yeah, well, but you know, I mean I think anybody who watched Football and For whatever 30 40 year period You know the flipped style downmarker was the only thing out there Yeah, I mean, I I don't even remember seeing a dial down till probably the mid 90s in our area You know, everybody still had the plastics and especially lower level games.

They still use the plastics. I think yeah because those would have been more expensive. Yeah, And it's like, do you really need to replace something that works because it still works? You know, the flip-style would still work just fine, so now going back in before the flip style when they had the Traditional boxes, you know when I've we've all seen images of them, you know, I know there are some collectors on the vintage Collector community that we're in that some guys have them Walks and like you said you did they were down done they did they should where did they show the correct down? There was it to the players on the field point. It pointed to the field of a second down to two facing the field. That's right.

Okay, and so, you know, the funny thing originally when they first were doing the down rod, initially was just a rod, and the Headlinesman actually Carried it around with him on the field, and I, you know, So I've got pictures out there. I did another tidbit on this, but with a bunch of pictures of guys running up and down the field these rods, so originally, they didn't have any kind of box or anything. It was just, you know, that it allowed them to kind of stick it into the ground, and You know, you'd think they would have left it there. But anyway, they'd pick it up.

They'd pick it up and run with it, and then they started putting the boxes on the poles, but those were still, you know, like maybe up to waist height, you know, they just weren't very tall. Then finally they put them up a top a pole that like rose above The assistant linesman's head, you know, so eventually it got turned over to the assistant linesman and you know, they would You know, so I've got in this tidbit I've got a picture of of one of the the older stuff ones that is One that's below kind of below the waist version and then another one That's about as high as a flip down Marker would have been or even the current dial it down So, you know at least that was visible to fans, you know the the short ones, you know I mean, they were really only intended for the players and the officials because Nobody else could see it All right, I guess maybe the opposing sideline could see it in the opposing fans but you know, whoever was across the field could see it, but Nobody behind that official would be able to see it you know just a little Sidebar taken going into the world of officiating a lot of people don't know this but the officials The box is important because it's more more so for the spot of the ball and we make you know We all try to make sure because the headlinesman has his back to the chains in the box most of the time So it's usually the line judge, which is on the opposite sideline who's facing him. Let's tell them, Hey, it's you know, you're showing a two, and it's third down because officials every official has a rubber-like piece of elastic it goes on your wrist and it goes over your fingers, and People do it.

You know, some guys would do it. You know your fourth if you put the rubber band on your four fingers first down; you put it on your middle finger. Second down, I did it in did a group of fingers, you know I had the rubber band around one finger first down two fingers It was second down, and that and so you're really, and that's why we're whole the officials are holding up a number Signaling to the other officials. So we're all on the same page. Hey, it's second down. Yeah, I got second down, and then you look at the box and say, okay.

Yes, you're showing second down, So that's just how the officials do it. So I'm I don't know what they did prior to having those, you know when they had that rod, I'm sure they probably maybe did something unique like that, or I heard Some older guys that I did it started in the 50s when I started officiating they used to hold pebbles in their hands I don't know what they did with the pebble, you know they switched hands or something and did I I'm not coordinated enough to hold pebbles and You know blow a lanyard whistle that they used to have around their neck Yeah, I'd be kind of too much but that's how the officials do the downs most the times with a piece of elastic on their fingers Yeah, well, you know they like in the old catalogs. There's, You know, for a long time, they sold little, you know, hand clicker things That would have down in the distance, you know, much like an umpire would use to keep track of balls and strikes But you know, for a long time, you know again before Official signals became, you know fairly standardized You know a lot of times whoever was posting stuff on the scoreboard They were kind of guessing, you know, whether there had been a first down or not because sometimes it wasn't clear You know, the officials didn't always signal things. So the way that we just assume they're going to today So there, you know, there are games where they had the wrong score on the scoreboard, you know, for a long time, and so it was, You know, Thankfully as much as I dislike sometimes hearing the referee talk during the games it's Communications is much better today than it has been in the past Yeah, and the majority of them are pretty good at talking.

Yeah, conforming things. There are some guys that say some things. You're like one, so why would you even say that? Who knows? I just want to watch the game and not have to hear the explanation. It's not really a criticism of the officials themselves, and some of them actually have a really good sense of humor, right? Tim, you know, that is a great piece. You know, to talk about, you know, some officiating equipment, something that all of us look at when we go to a game, and you know, sometimes on television, we see it come into our view. You can see the downs so it's just kind of cool to to hear the history of that and Give some some love to the guy that invented the one probably lasted the longest of all the Down markers that flip style which you know I think everybody's familiar that's watched Football at least the last 20 years or so So, you know great piece of history there and you have some little unique pieces like this a lot on your website maybe you can share with the Folks how they can tune into some of these pieces that you have sure You know, it's just easiest thing is go to footballarchaeology.com subscribe and You know, you'll get an email every time that I yes issue a new You know have a new post you'll get an email into your box with that content alternatively follow me on Twitter on Substack or on threads You can be one of about six or seven people who follows me on threads if you want to And or you know just go on out and hit the site whenever you want, you know, whatever you want to I'll also just take a moment here to some put in a plug I've got a new book coming out called a history of the Football. So, as far as I know, it is the first book to look at the history of American Football and Canadian Football. I covered their ball as well. So, you know, it takes us back to the rugby days and then all the way up until the present. How did it change shape, size, colors, and stripes? Materials etc.

So it's just kind of a fun little read. Yeah, and I'm coming soon to an Amazon site near you. Okay, that's what I was gonna ask you if you had a date set for release, but I still do that. I do not know, but we'll get some information from you when it officially comes out. We'll make sure we share that with everybody, too. But I'm looking forward to that. Do you have any place where people can pre-order anything? I think there's some technique.

I'm running into a technical issue right now. It's just related to the cover. You know, I think in order to allow pre-order, you have to have the cover ready, okay, and so All right, so the answer is no problem, we'll just keep watching, and we'll keep posting when we know things on pigskin dispatch and keep watching Tim's Social media and everything and in footballarchaeology.com, and we'll figure out what's coming real soon So real exciting book so can't wait to get my hands on it.

So Tim, we really appreciate you coming on here and sharing, you know, aspects of this, You know, flip down and the dial it down in the box and its history, and I Love to talk to you about another aspect of football history next week.

Yeah, I will be here.