Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 30

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...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... A History of the Football

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discussed my new book, A History of Football. We had a good time discussing why the book was needed and a few of my favorite discoveries from researching and writing the story of the oblate spheriod.

Alternatively, you can listen to the podcast version of the conversation.

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 Kindle U...

Stadium Size, Football Droppers, and Deemphasizers: California State University, Fullerton$

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.

California State University, Fullerton An architect’s model of the CSU, Fullerton’s athletic complex, when the construction bids were announced in 1990. (‘Taylor Woodrow Submits Lowest Bid For Fullerton’s Stadium,’ Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1990.)

A number of the schools profiled in this series sta...

Stadium Size, Football Droppers, and Deemphasizers: California State University, Fullerton

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.

California State University, Fullerton An architect’s model of the CSU, Fullerton’s athletic complex, when the construction bids were announced in 1990. (‘Taylor Woodrow Submits Lowest Bid For Fullerton’s Stadium,’ Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1990.)

A number of the schools profiled in this series sta...

Stadium Size, Football Droppers, and Deemphasizers: Catholic U.

An earlier Tidbit profiled some colleges that dropped football, and others told stories about individual schools that later dropped or deemphasized football. Schools that dropped or deemphasized football tended to be private, urban, independent schools, though we have had droppers among state schools in California.

Based on the Concorde Fallacy, one would expect schools that significantly invested in their football program to have more difficulty dropping the sport. The Concorde Fallacy operates ...

Book Report: George H. Brooke's The Story of a Football Season (1907)

At the end of July, I submitted a book report concerning James Church's University Football, published in 1893. Church's nonfiction book documented the state of Eastern collegiate football. Today, we look at a work of football fiction by reviewing George H. Brooke's The Story of a Football Season, published in 1907, which you can download for free from the Library of Congress. There was a genre of football books targeted at the youth market back then. Those books still take up space in used book...

Today's Tidbit... "Wild Animal" Mascots

(The Texas Collection at Baylor University)

I've written before about the arrival of mascots among football teams. Mascots started as team member pets, children, or neighborhood kids, and they became known as mascots after the popular 1880s opera La Mascotte.

However, one of my brothers considers live mascots interesting, so I thought I'd look into "live mascots" before 1920 to see what I would find. However, I narrowed the scope to wild animals used as live mascots.

I do not consider dogs, ducks, ...

Today's Tidbit... When Dad is the Father of Football

Growing up in the shadow of a rich and famous father can be difficult, so I've made damn sure my kids don’t have to deal with that. Still, imagine the expectations placed on a kid whose Dad was known as the Father of American Football five years before the lad was born. That was the case for Walter Camp, Jr.

Walter Camp (Senior) ran the New Haven Clock company and did lots of Yale and general football stuff as Junior grew up, so he was well acquainted with the game and Yale football before becomi...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... Tanning with the Horweens

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss the family background and playing careers of the Horween brothers. They later went their own ways, with the Arnold and the family business having an important role in quarterbacks developing a feel for the game - or, at least, the football.

Listen to the podcast, watch the YouTube video, or read the story:

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Today's Tidbit... More Grandstanding In Early Football

Yesterday’s Tidbit covered grandstands, specifically single-level stadiums that covered fans’ heads during the days when many players exposed their heads to the sun, rain, and significant pounding. I am limited in the number of images I can post per article, so I asked readers to suggest stadiums missing from the first story.

Carter Claiborne offered a favorite, and several others showed baseball fields with covers.

The grandstands in Chattanooga appear to be stuck in the corner. (1911 Chattanooga...