Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 14

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... Firing Kansas' Top Coach

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss Kansas and their firing of A. R. “Bert” Kennedy after the 1909 season. The Jayhawkers didn’t want to fire Kennedy, but were forced to under new conference rules. Kennedy and Kansas had thrived, and he did well coaching area schools afterwards, but it makes an interesting story.

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

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Coaches Wearing Their College Letter Sweaters

An interesting aspect of football's past was the wearing of college letter sweaters by coaches and game officials. Game officials wearing their letter sweaters acted as a credential. Players and fans knew they had played the game, but wearing a letter sweater for a school that was not playing indicated that they would be impartial in their observations and rulings.

That makes sense to me, but coaches wearing letter sweaters from their playing days rather than gear associated with the school they ...

Goal After Touchdown Images from 1887

I wrote recently about potentially using AI-generated images to illustrate elements of early football for which photographs or drawings do not exist. Then, when working on the story about Jarvis Field, I stumbled across several images owned by a friend of games played at Jarvis Field in 1887. Three images show how Harvard executed goals after touchdown, a process akin to today's extra-point kick, in games against MIT and Wesleyan.

In 1887, field goals were worth 5 points, touchdowns were 4 points...

Today's Tidbit... Harvard's Jarvis Field

One of the beauties of college football is that campus stadiums largely stay in place. They are remodeled, modernized, razed, rebuilt, or have other terrible things happen to them, but they largely remain in the same spot. Pro stadiums move from the central city to the suburbs and back again. Pro franchises even relocate to new cities, sometimes moving across the country, while college stadiums remain right where they began.

The location of Harvard's on-campus football fields has shown some insta...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... The First Nile Kinnick Stadium

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss a Tidbit concerning the first Nile Kinnick Stadium, a stadium in Tokyo built for the 1940 Olympics that were never held. It was renamed during the American occupation of Japan following WWII.

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

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Today's Tidbit... Of Jaw and Chin Straps

Nowadays, the chin straps on football helmets cover the wearer's chin, but that was not so in the past. Football chin straps didn't cover the chin until Riddell introduced them with their plastic helmets in 1940. Before then, straps that went under the jaw, resting near the neck, so why in tarnation did they call them chin straps?

As best as I can tell, we adopted the chin strap term from military caps and hats with straps that went under the jaw, though they were commonly worn on or above the ch...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... A Tricky Little Skeet

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss a Tidbit concerning Skeets Lambert of Wabash College who brought two innovations to the forward pass, both of which were subsequently outlawed. He showed these tricks against Notre Dame and they picked up on the idea and did it themselves.

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

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Today's Tidbit... Speaking Loudly and Loudspeakers

Football around 1900 involved two teams playing in close formations, often running the ball up the gut, so much of the game looked like a continuous goal-line stand. Players did not wear numbers, it was not uncommon for both teams to wear jerseys of the same color, and referee's signals did not exist, so fans often struggled to know who did what on the field. To enhance the fan experience, Arthur Irwin invented the football scoreboard, which was used in the stadium and at remote locations so fan...

Today's Tidbit... Inventing the Option/RPO in 1929

There's a first time for everything, and if you want to figure out the first time something occurred, you have to define that something before claiming to find its first instance. Once you define something and the earliest instance of it happening, you should remain open to finding an earlier example because it might just be sitting out there waiting for someone to find it.

Some think the first instance of something occurs when it first receives its name. But that approach can be problematic for ...

Factoid Feast XIII

As discussed in Factoid Feasts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, and XII, 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.

A Clean Slate

Before teams began huddling regularly in the 1920s, they named each play using a number. After one play ended, everyone quickly lined up for the next play. The quarterback yelled out a series of numbers that included codes, the numb...