Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 3

Pop Warner and the Bizarro World of Early Forward Passing

Dickinson College is not a place you’d think of as a source of information on football history. Yet, its library and archives are a treasure trove of information about the Carlisle Indian School and its football team. Dickinson sits in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and its library’s Archives and Special Collections houses the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center, among other materials.

The library staff makes periodic trips to the National Archives to digitize Carlisle-related materials, rece...

Today’s Tidbit... Football’s First Chains Revisited

A 10-yard chain gang at Marietta in 1908. (RPPC, Personal collection)

When I started publishing Football Archaeology, most articles were only a few paragraphs long. Over time, they grew longer, and eventually, I stopped publishing daily Tidbits. Recent research regarding the Crescent Athletic Club of Brooklyn led me to take another look at an early Tidbit concerning Crescent AC’s role in the invention or use of football chains by the officiating crew.

The 1883 rules called for two impartial offici...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... Auburn's First Team, In Pictures

Pigskin Dispatch’s Darin Hayes and I discuss the Auburn’s first football team, the first Iron Bowl, and related images that reveal elements of how football was played in 1892 and 1893.

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

Football Archaeology is reader-supported. Click here to donate a couple of bucks, buy one of my books, or otherwise support the site.

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Today’s Tidbit... The Once Great Spalding J5-V

It’s funny how things work out. Albert Spalding, a professional baseball player, founded his sporting goods company in 1876 to manufacture baseballs. They moved on to bats, bicycles, and nearly every other sporting good under the sun, some they manufactured and others produced by others.

American football initially used rugby balls of whatever brand and size were available. Inflated balls of the time (soccer, rugby, and American balls) came in sizes ranging from 33 to 19-inch circumferences, with...

Today’s Tidbit... Pfizer’s Medical All-American Football Team

Brown, Timothy P., Medical All-American team, 2025, AI-generated image created using Sora)

A reader, Christopher Haack, alerted me to a unique All-American football team named by the editors of Pfizer’s Spectrum, a journal targeted at physicians. Announced in December 1955, the team included 25 former All-American football players (or nearly so) who went on to earn their medical degrees. Dubbed the Medical All-Americans, the group included three Olympians (two medalists) and a basketball Hall of ...

Today’s Tidbit... Coaches Sitting On Their High Horses

Football coaches are a complicated lot, and the good ones inspire their players by demonstrating that their commitment to the team equals or exceeds that of the players. Just as they ask team members to play when hurt, they continue coaching when they are injured or in poor health, though sometimes against medical advice.

An ailing coach today would likely ride an elevator up to the press box, spending their time in the confines of a warm booth, but old-school coaches found other ways to roam or ...

Today's Tidbit... Red Grange’s Forgotten Big Day

If you asked most football fans to identify the game Red Grange rushed for the highest number of yards in his college football career, most would say it came in 1924 when he gained 402 all-purpose yards against Michigan. That day began when he returned the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown. As was common then, Michigan chose to kick off rather than receive after each Illinois touchdown, which allowed Grange to produce touchdown runs of 67, 56, and 44 yards in the game’s first 12 minutes. ...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... A Cloud of Dust and Four Yards

Pigskin Dispatch’s Darin Hayes and I the origins of the phrase, “three yards and a cloud of dust,’ which began in reverse order with a different number of yards. But everything evolves, and the phrase was no different. Perhaps it is still moving along it evolutionary path.

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

Football Archaeology is reader-supported. Click here to donate a couple of bucks, buy one of my books, or otherwise support the site.

Subscribe now

Who wouldn’t ...

Factoid Feast XVII

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

The latest version of Factoid Feast celebrates the dishonest and honest behavior of coaches.

A Will and Shins of Iron

Wylie G. Woodruff played football for Penn from 1893 to 1896 while earning a medical degree. Upon graduating,...

Bibb Graves, Founding Member of Alabama and Texas Football

Football is a game in which individuals and teams have achieved many feats, some of which are more challenging or rare than others. Among all the feats accomplished in football history, Bibb Graves stands with the giants of obscure featdom for having been a member of the first football team at two storied college programs.

I had not heard of Bibb Graves until I published the story, The First Iron Bowl and 1892-1893 Auburn Football Images. Jonathan Wells, who writes Journey Through Texas (and) Lon...