Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 29

Stadium Size, Football Droppers, and Deemphasizers: Boston U

This series reviews the program history and stadiums of colleges that dropped or deemphasized football. Click here for the series introduction. The schools included in the review are listed below.

The previous story on football droppers and deemphasizers focused on NYU. One challenge NYU faced when it had a football program was land constraints, which forced students at its Greenwich Village campus to take the subway 11 miles north to the practice field.

Like other urban schools, Boston University...

Today's Tidbit: Follow The Damn Rules

I've been enjoying a fun Saturday of college football.

Nevertheless, I remember the days when football followed its rules—at least, I remember it that way. So, the continued sight of short pants above the knee bothers me. I was triggered to write about this by Tom Lockney's recent comment on an article I wrote three years ago about The Long History of Football's Short Pants.

Tom's opinion has value, at least on matters of rules and precision. He professed law at the University of North Dakota, and...

Today's Tidbit... Going Deep In The End Zone

From 1906 to 1911, forward passes crossing the goal line on the fly or a bounce resulted in a turnover. Looking to encourage forward passing, the 1912 rule-makers removed that restriction but had to make another change. Until 1912, football fields did not have end zones. The area behind the goal line, called "in touch," did not have a deep boundary, but the rule makers wanted to limit how far behind the goal line passes could be legally caught, so they added the end line ten yards behind the goa...

Today's Tidbit... Managing the White Space

One of my favorite management concepts concerns managing the white space. The idea refers to corporate charts that place functions and people in boxes with white space in between. The challenge in most organizations is not managing the boxes; the bigger challenge is managing the interactions between boxes, whether that means getting peers, functions, or geographies to play well together. Differences in logic, assumptions, and expertise across the boxes cause communication and other problems.

A si...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... Stealing Football Signs and Signals

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I cover the days long ago when some football teams not named Michigan stole their opponents’ signs—or, more correctly, the opposing team’s signals. Other stories of spying and the like also come up in the conversation.

Alternatively, you can read the original Tidbit linked below.

The History of the Football covers everything you need to know about the football’s evolution. Available now on Amazon ($18.99 print, $9.99 Kindle or audiobook, and $0.00 for Kin...

Stadium Size, Football Droppers, and Deemphasizers: NYU

This series reviews the program history and stadiums of colleges that dropped or deemphasized football. Click here for the series introduction. The schools included in the review are listed below.

NYU began playing football in 1873, before football was football, since American football's rugby-derived rules did not arrive until 1876. During its early football playing days, NYU's sole campus was in the Washington Square area of Greenwich Village, on the lower west side of Manhattan. Overcrowding l...

Stadium Size, Football Droppers, and Deemphasizers: Xavier

This series reviews the program history and stadiums of colleges that dropped or deemphasized football. Click here for the series introduction. The schools included in the review are listed below.

Xavier University of Cincinnati -St. Xavier College until 1930- started playing football in 1900, winning 57.3% of its games during the program's history. Other than the one-year coach who restarted the program after WWII, every Xavier coach had a winning record other than their last three, who had losi...

Today's Tidbit... Football Can Be So Upsetting

The desire for and celebration of upsets is why March Madness is often magical, and the same happens occasionally in football. The 2024 season has already witnessed an upset or two, with Northern Illinois' takedown of Notre Dame being the most celebrated. Still, upsets occur at all levels. Every year, we see FCS teams beat FBS squads, DIII schools knock off DII, and so on.

The same scenarios occurred in the days when all colleges were created equal, when the NCAA had not yet stratified into divis...

Today's Tidbit... Radio Headsets of 1956

College quarterbacks and defensive signal callers in 2024 are allowed to wear helmets with headsets connected to coaches on the sideline, tools the NFL okayed in 1994. Many football fans know that Paul Brown, then the Cleveland Browns coach, implemented radio headsets in 1956 for his team's last two preseason and first three regular season games. Less well-known is that five or six other NFL teams used or invested in similar systems before Commissioner Bert Bell stopped the practice.

This technol...

Stadium Size, Football Droppers, and Deemphasizers: Marquette $

This series reviews the program history and stadium sizes of colleges that dropped or deemphasized football. Click here for the series introduction. The schools included in the review are listed below.

Marquette football began in 1892. It fielded teams through all the war years before succumbing to the budget concerns caused, in their view, by televised college and pro football. Fans who once might have jumped on the trolley to see a football game opted to stay home rather than watch the local te...