Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 24

Michigan’s 1883 East Coast Football Trip

Michigan was the only non-Eastern team playing football in 1883. This series uses period publications to cover their nine-day trip to play Wesleyan, Harvard, Yale, and the Stevens Institute.

Some readers may tire of hearing about Harvard, Yale, and Princeton in discussions of football history, but it is hard to avoid them since they dominated the early game on the field, in the game's governance and rule-making, and in the media. You can't help but bump into them when researching old-time footbal...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... Standardized Player Numbering

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss a factoid about a 1940 article by Bob Balfe of the Palm Beach Post. Bob suggested that football players wear numbers corresponding to their positions using a 1 to 11 system. Football did not adopt his suggestion, but the NCAA mandated standardized numbering in 1941 using a system football largely follows today. Of course, an anecdote or two about football numbering gets tossed into the conversation.

Watch or listen to the podcast here and/or re...

Today's Tidbit... Triple Laterals and the Dead Ball Era

Yesterday's Sunday Night Football game saw the Buffalo Bills dismantle the San Francisco 49ers 35-10 on a snowy field, with one touchdown coming on a spur-of-the-moment lateral by wide receiver Amari Cooper to quarterback Josh Allen. After taking the snap at the 7-yard line, Allen completed a pass to Cooper short of the goal line. As the 49ers' defenders pushed Cooper backward, he threw caution to the snow and lateraled to Josh Allen, who ran to Cooper's left before diving and extending the ball...

C. W. Savage, Michigan, and Ohio State

Ohio State-Michigan is among the top rivalries in college football, but little ol' Oberlin College claims to have beaten both, and C. W. Savage played an indirect role in one of those wins and a direct role in the other.

Savage played halfback for Oberlin in 1891 and 1892, the latter being John Heisman's first year as a head coach.

1891 football team (1892 Oberlin yearbook) Oberlin’s 1892 football team. Heisman seated far left. (1893 Oberlin yearbook)

A November 1892 game at Ann Arbor, during which...

Factoid Feast X

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

Holes In The Wall

In 1883, boys and men in New York City were excited about the Yale-Princeton game at the Polo Grounds, except that tickets cost 50 cents. Those with little money walked to the Polo Grounds to avoid paying the fee demanded by the railroad op...

The Huddled Masses #3

Football history generally focuses on the stars, the winners, and the championship teams from prominent programs. However, most who played football over the years did so in obscurity. Yet, some left a record of their football days in the form of Real Photo Postcards (RPPCs). Despite most images showing those who played before teams huddled regularly, we refer to them as The Huddled Masses.

Previous Huddled Masses: 1905 | #2

Many football RPPCs display posed team shots, game-action images, or crowd...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... Agony of The Cleat

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss a factoid about the U.S. Navy's finding that it had 500,000 surplus football cleats in storage in Iowa. Fun ensues.

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

Football Archaeology is reader-supported. Consider becoming a paid subscriber or buying one of my books here.

Subscribe for free for limited content or gain full access with a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

Follow on Bluesky

Today's Tidbit... Poorly Coached Teams of Old

There isn't an insult that hits harder in football than to say a team is poorly coached. I don't know what defines a team as being poorly coached, but you know it when you see it. At least, that's what people who throw around the term seem to think.

Indeed, some teams are more organized, snappier, and give 110%, while others incur pre-snap penalties, fail to execute the "basic fundamentals," and mostly lose games or fail to live up to expectations.

Like everything else in football, there is a hist...

A History of Helmet and Face Mask Requirements

About two years ago, I wrote a story about the battle between plastic and leather helmets, mainly how that played out in the 1955 Spalding catalog, which offered four plastic helmet models and three in leather. Why would a manufacturer offer both versions when plastic helmets better-protected players' heads? The answer lies in the NFL and NCAA rules and football practitioners' beliefs about protecting the helmet wearer versus others on the playing field.

Our British cousins defined 59 rules when ...

Today's Tidbit... Remembering and Ignoring the Flying Tackle

The final chapter of my book, How Football Became Football, identified the eleven most important rules and other changes in the history of football. Whether or not I identified the top 11 correctly, among the changes I had on the bubble were the revisions to rugby's tackling rules. Like rugby, football initially allowed tackling only above the waist before allowing tackles above the knees in 1888. The change in regulations led to more effective tackling in general and by defensive ends in partic...