Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 22

Postseason Football and the 1896 Yale Consolidated Team

(XX'Yale vs. N.A.C.,' Nashville Banner, December 24, 1896.)

From the beginning, postseason football involved a combination of the joy of sports, the opportunity to travel, good sports, and the chance to make a few bucks. Some things never change.

The Yale Consolidated team of 1896 was among the first to gain nationwide publicity for their postseason play. It was the brainchild of George Foster Sanford, who played for Yale in the early 1890s, graduated from Yale Law in 1896, and coached Cornell tha...

The 1902 All Oregon-Multnomah Christmas Game

During the 2024 football season, a social media account reviewed each college conference and its members' oddest historical opponents. The list included many amusing opponents. While many names are entertaining, the lists also show that teams of different stripes intermingled in football days past. Today, football has boundaries that keep high school, college, and professional teams from playing one another. The NFL no longer plays the CFL, town teams, athletic clubs, or semi-pro teams. Few mili...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... Tackling and Other Dummies

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss the origins of tackling dummies in the 1890s and then discuss the many variations that ingenious coaches developed over the last 130 years.

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

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Why Touchdowns Are Worth Six Points

In the beginning, there were field goals, and referees said they were good, but only when they flew over the rope strung between two posts.

Rugby and football in the 1870s were pushing, shoving, and kicking games in which the ball sometimes popped out from the mass of players in the maul, allowing a back to pick it up and run with it. Teams did not receive credit for touchdowns. Instead, touchdowns had value because they led to free kicks, while goals kicked from the field (field goals) were cont...

Pop Warner's "Football For the Spectator"

Part of the fun of acquiring old football-related advertising premiums is that their booklet format forced creators to condense the information. Their summaries can be especially interesting when the creator is Pop Warner, one of football's great minds.

Warner authored Associated Oil's Football for the Spectator in 1928. Associated Oil was a West Coast brand. By 1928, Warner was in his fifth year at Stanford and had authored several books on football techniques and strategies, including Football ...

Morning Edition: Fair Catch Free Kick

I awoke this morning to news of the San Diego Chargers' Fair Catch Free Kick last night. I’m sharing a few related articles from the archives to celebrate the event. You can access each article for free (for a few days).

This article describes the various forms of kicks in early football and how some snapping and holding techniques evolved.

It’s never too late to start your holiday shopping or gift list. Give or get a gift subscription to Football Archaeology, or acquire one of my books here.

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Today's Tidbit... Ye Olde Statue of Liberty Play

The Statue of Liberty play is nearly as old as football itself. Named after the statue President Grover Cleveland dedicated in New York Harbor on October 28, 1886, it is among the oldest plays still in use today. The first documented connection between the Statue of Liberty and football came in November 1900, when Pop Warner and the Carlisle football team visited Lady Liberty the day after losing to Columbia.

1900 Carlisle football team (Wiki)

Tradition has it that Amos Alonzo Stagg ran a version ...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... The Arrival of TV Timeouts

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss the arrival of TV timeouts, a function that radio did not need. Fans and the press were upset at the time that TV timeouts might disrupt the natural flow of the game, but we have gotten used to them.

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

It’s never too early to start your holiday shopping or gift list. Give or get a gift subscription to Football Archaeology, or acquire one of my books here.

Subscribe for free for li...

1883 Michigan-Yale Game

Michigan's 1883 team was the only non-Eastern team playing football at their level. This series uses period publications to cover Michigan’s trip east to play Wesleyan, Harvard, Yale, and the Stevens Institute in nine days.

Previous posts in the series: Intro | Wesleyan ($)

Two days after playing Wesleyan in Hartford, the Wolverines faced Yale in New Haven. The game was played at Hamilton Park, which hosted horse races, baseball, and football, including serving as home to Yale football until Yale ...

The Odds of Numbered Socks

Football players were first numbered only on the scorecard, not their jerseys. Numbers on the back of jerseys arrived in 1905, and numbers on the front came in the late 1920s. That seemed good enough for most fans, but the National Photographers Association's request that sports teams add player numbers in additional locations on the uniform led to the development of TV numbers.

In 1957, the National Association of Conference Commissioners recommended that teams wear helmet numbers, which led to ...