Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 65

Today's Tidbit... A Short History of Onside Kicks

The original flying wedge debuted in 1892. A previous article described the play and its demise when an 1894 rule required the kickoff to travel 10 yards before the kicking team could recover the ball. That rule led most kicking teams to boot the ball as far downfield as possible, hoping to tackle the return man inside the 30-yard line.

In turn, most receiving teams positioned one player 10 or 15 yards from the kicker and spread his ten teammates further back to receive the kick or form a wedge i...

The Carlinville-Taylorville Scandal Of 1921

Under ordinary circumstances, America would not pay attention to a football game played the Sunday after Thanksgiving between Carlinville and Taylorville, Illinois, but the 1921 Carlinville-Taylorville game was extraordinary. Sitting forty-four miles apart, each town had fewer than 6,000 residents, and their semi-pro football teams had become rivals, with Carlinville winning at home 10-7 in 1920.

The teams were scheduled to battle again in 1921, and like the prognostications in regional newspaper...

Pigskin Dispatch... Press Boxes and Sideline Communication

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discussed a recent TidBit about the evolution of press boxes, their use by media personnel, and eventually by assistant coaches acting as spotters. We also cover how press boxes were connected to people on the sideline as early as the 1890s and the later connection of coaches with their counterparts on the sideline.

Click here to listen to what happened, or subscribe to Pigskin Dispatch wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s the original Tidbit:

Subscrib...

Today's Tidbit... John B. Foster And The 112-Yard Field

John B. Foster was best known for his involvement in baseball as an executive with the New York Giants and later as editor of Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide. Still, he wrote extensively on football, with many columns entering syndication and publishing nationwide. As a syndicated columnist, he had the time and budget to have his articles accompanied by illustrations.

Foster ran a series covering the many 1912 rule changes, and several columns included illustrations to convey the changes. One...

Today's Tidbit... Football's Early Executioner's Masks

Broken noses were primarily relegated to football's past in the 1960s due to the widespread use of face masks. Before that, broken noses were common, so players, trainers, and equipment manufacturers developed methods to protect the proboscis or, at least, to keep them from further harm once injured. Noses went unprotected until 1892 when Harvard captain Arthur Cumnock developed a hard rubber device to protect a teammate's broken nose. Cumnock soon sold the rights to his invention to John Morril...

Pylons And Irwin Shopbell, Football's Most Inventive Official

Those complaining about football officials and their mistakes never met Irwin "Bud" Shopbell since he took it upon himself to solve two officiating problems. Shopbell was an automotive engineer from Canton, Ohio, who officiated high school, Mid-American Conference, and Missouri Valley Conference games before moving to the Big Ten in 1963.

Shopbell handled both referee and head linesman duties, and the latter line of work sparked his inventive side. As happens in football, plays approaching the si...

Today's Tidbit... 1876 IFA Rule #44: Free Kick Location

This is #44 in a series covering football's original 61 rules adopted by the Intercollegiate Football Association in 1876. We review one rule each Friday.

The location from which football's free kick follows a fair catch has changed only once in the game's history. Still, it had a significant effect back when punting was considered part of a team's offensive strategy rather than a tactic of last resort.

Rule 44: After a fair catch has been made, the opposite side may come up to the catcher's mark,...

Today's Tidbit... 1876 IFA Rule #43: Free Kick Location

This is #44 in a series covering football's original 61 rules adopted by the Intercollegiate Football Association in 1876. We review one rule each Friday.

The location from which football's free kick follows a fair catch has changed only once in the game's history. Still, it had a significant effect back when punting was considered part of a team's offensive strategy rather than a tactic of last resort.

Rule 44: After a fair catch has been made, the opposite side may come up to the catcher's mark,...

Today's Tidbit... The Way It Was With Oklahoma Football Broadcasts

While researching yesterday's Tidbit about Bennie Owen, the longtime Oklahoma football, basketball, and baseball coach, I stumbled across a 1937 image identifying Oklahoma football's first radio play-by-play announcer.

Our radio man grew up in Kansas City and Houston. The editor of his high school newspaper, he enrolled at Texas as a less-than-enthusiastic student, lasting a year or two while working at the student newspaper and the Houston Post, eventually leaving school to do radio work. That t...

Today's Tidbit... Oklahoma's Inspirational Coach, Bennie Owen

We all have gaps in our knowledge, even in fields we think we know well. One of my gaps has been a limited knowledge and appreciation for Bennie Owen, the father of Oklahoma's athletic program.

Born in Chicago in 1875, his family moved around the Midwest and West Virginia before settling in Arkansas City, Kansas, four miles north of the Oklahoma border.

Owen enrolled at the University of Kansas hoping to play baseball but did not make the team, so he joined the football team and became their 130-p...