Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 13

Today's Tidbit... One Foot Inbounds Or Two?

Among the most controversial rulings made by officials during football games are concern receivers catching the ball before going out of bounds. Those rulings have long been controversial and, as best as I can tell, the relevant rules were unclear for years as well.

I have printed or PDF copies of the rule books for 117 of the 148 years of college football and 35 years for the NFL rules. The birth of some rules is easy to find; others are much harder, and the rules covering legal catches along t...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... Walter Camp's Arresting Development

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss the time Walter Camp was arrested for attempted murder. The story made the news nationwide, but Camp had an excellent alibi and was released, and then the story got weird.

Watch or listen to the podcast here and/or read the original Tidbit.

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The New Mexico State-El Paso High School Battles

Football fans sometimes argue about colleges that played football in the distant past including in their all-time records victories over high schools, athletic clubs, and military teams. Some of the criticism is deserved, but much stems from misunderstanding football back in the day. In early football, college rosters often had players who had never played the game before going to college, while high schools and others might have players well-schooled in the football arts.

I came across one of th...

A Conversation with Knute Rockne III

Among my favorite aspects of writing Football Archaeology and a few books is that I sometimes hear from descendants of the people I write about. Most of the people I write about are relatively obscure today. Still, it is fun to compare the family stories to the information I found; my research sometimes reveals elements of the ancestors' lives that their descendants did not know or refutes stories they thought they knew.

Recently, I reached out to Krista Rockne after reading an article she wrote ...

Factoid Feast XIV

As discussed in Factoid Feasts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, and XIII my searches through football history sometimes lead to topics too important to ignore but too minor to Tidbit. Such nuggets are factoids, three of which are shared today.

The latest version of Factoid Feast celebrates the role of coaches and coaching in football, even baseball.

Taken For A Ride

We begin in Liberty, Missouri, in 1912, then as now the home of William Jewell College. William Jewell was scheduled ...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... Last Heisman Winner Without A Face Mask

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss the last Heisman Trophy winner who did not wear a face mask. The first Heisman winner in 1936 wore a face mask due to a broken nose in high school, but who was the last trophy winner to go maskless?

Watch or listen to the podcast here and/or read the original Tidbit.

If you enjoy Football Archaeology, consider subscribing or buying one of my books. Alternatively, contact me if you need writing and editorial services.

Subscribe now

Writing & Editin...

Marietta College's Claim to the First Forward Pass

A handful of schools claim or once claimed to have thrown the first legal forward pass in a regular season game. One of those is Marietta College in Ohio. At various times, a pass thrown by Petey Gilman to Verne Moses on Thanksgiving Day 1906 was called the first forward pass, but it never was. In fact, it is unlikely to have been among the first 1,000 forward passes since it came at the end of the 1906 season, and any number of schools attempted forward passes during the season.

Most football hi...

Swede Overesch and the 1916 Atlantic Fleet Playoffs

Many of football's earliest playoff games involved military teams. Civilian teams seldom needed playoffs. They determined league champions by win percentages, and the few postseason games were by invitation only. So, games could end as a win, loss, or tie, and tie-breaking procedures were unnecessary.

The U.S. military took a different approach, especially those Navy boys, who held tournaments to determine their district and fleet champions. Each district represented one or more major ports along...

Today's Tidbit... A History of Football Tees

My desire to write this post was spurred by buying the RPPC below, which shows Felix La Force, the captain, fullback, and kicker for Hamilton College, in 1914. It is an unremarkable image other than it clearly shows a kicker teeing up the football on a dirt mound or tee. I have other photos of kickers and dirt tees, but this is the best I've come across. Unfortunately, the RPPC appears to be lost in the mail, so I'm using the watermarked version and will replace it with a scan of my own making i...

Villanova, Bud Dudley, and the Acme Supermarkets Giveaway

Just as some colleges and universities kept their games from being broadcast by radio in the 1920s due to depressed in-stadium attendance, the same occurred in the early 1950s when televisions arrived in most American homes. The increased cost of two-platoon football’s larger rosters and coaching staffs combined with reduced game attendance due to the televising of top games led numerous schools to drop football in the early 1950s.

Villanova was still hanging on, hoping to turn things around when...