Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 15

Today's Tidbit... Patently Ugly Football Fields

Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

I've written a few times about the emergence of new knits and artificial fabrics in the 1930s that allowed sporting goods manufacturers to offer pants and jerseys with piping, inserts, and miscellaneous striping that resulted in football uniforms with too many stripes. Perhaps taken from the friction strip jerseys that emerged in the late Teens, coaches or whoever designed team uniforms decided that if one uniform stripe was good, two, three, or four ...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... The First Helmet Stripes

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss a recent Tidbit concerning the origins of stripes on football helmets, the roles manufacturers played, and what motivated teams to paint their helmets or paint stripes on their helmets.

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

If you enjoy Football Archaeology, consider subscribing, buying one of my books, or hiring me to ghostwrite or edit for you.

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Football Archaeology and Generative AI

(Brown, Timothy P., Football Archaeology header, 2025, AI-generated image created using Sora)

One of the challenges or inconveniences of investigating football history is finding images that correspond to particular players and techniques, especially the further back you go. I'm always looking for such images, but there comes a point when you recognize that the chances of finding specific images are low.

In my life beyond Football Archaeology, I ghostwrite blogs, white papers, corporate policies, ...

Writing, Editing, and Consulting Services

When not researching and writing about football history, I provide ghostwriting, editing, and consulting services, often through freelance agencies. However, I’m happy to work direct if you or your organization needs writing, editing, or research consulting services.

My ghostwriting experience covers a range of B2B and B2C applications. Recent assignments include:

Writing

Business proposal and proposal library development

Internal sales playbook for a major commercial building services firm

Fractiona...

The Richmond Tigers, the Ewbanks, and A Mystery Ringer

Not every story has a happy ending, and this is one of them.

I'm always looking for items that tell a story about football. Many items I acquire are helpful for their visual appeal; others because they illustrate a formation, technique, or equipment that is part of the game's history. For items that concern a player or team that I am unfamiliar with, a little research helps determine whether a story is worth telling. Most times, there isn't, so I don't bid on the item.

I followed the second approa...

College Yearbook Football Art, Vol. VI

College yearbooks are a great source of old-school football and athletic art. I come across these beauties while searching for images of players or teams for my stories. As I find them, I set them aside for days like today.

Most of the images below are from the first page of the athletics or football sections of yearbooks. Today’s examples are ink or pencil drawings, mainly black and white. Previous posts displaying yearbook art include the following:

I | II | III | IV | V

(1897 Purdue) (1910 Misso...

Walter Camp Arrested For Attempted Murder

Yesterday's Tidbit covered Walter Camp's activities in 1883, when he dropped out of medical school, turned down a big-league managerial position, became the first football professional, and began working in the watch and clock industry, which would be his vocation for the remainder of his career.

In 1885 or 1885, Camp met and proposed to Sallie Barnes of Paterson, New Jersey. She was an orphan with a sizable fortune but did not accept Camp's proposal, so he stopped calling on her, and life went o...

Today's Tidbit... Walter Camp, Football's First Professional

Walter Camp was a busy boy in 1883 with all kinds of people offering him money for his services. For football's sake, its a good thing he turned down some of the opportunities presented to him.

Camp entered the collegiate sporting scene in 1876 when he enrolled at Yale and quickly earned a spot on the rugby / football team. He retained that spot for the next seven years, four during his undergraduate days and three while attending Yale Medical School, where he dropped out in 1883. So, what does o...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... 1950s Football Home Movies

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss a 1951 Bell & Howell brochure proving tips for home movie hobbyists filming football games. The brochure leads into other discussions, especially how the home movie hobbyist of 1951 compares to social media enthusiasts of 2025, and the challenges of watching old films without a projector.

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:

Subscrib...

Today's Tidbit... Football At The Chicago Veterinary College

It has been a long time since veterinary college teams took the field, but that time existed in football's past, just like the business college and medical, dental, and law school teams that existed before 1910.

An RPPC that turned out to show the Chicago Veterinary College football team led me down this rabbit hole, so I wanted to share my pet project findings with you.

Most professional schools were not affiliated with traditional colleges and universities at the turn of the last century. Hospit...