Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 66

Today's Tidbit... Frank Hinkey Gets His Bell Rung

Frank Hinkey played end for Yale from 1891 to 1894, earning All-American status all four years. Slight of build, Hinkey was a ferocious competitor and hitter, becoming the game's premier shutdown end nearly one century before shutdown corners came into vogue.

(Camp, Walter. Spalding’s 1893 Official Foot Ball Guide. American Sports Publishing: New York. 1893.)

His play in the 1893 Princeton-Yale game epitomizes his toughness, the dangers of football in the era, and their handling of injured players...

Pigskin Dispatch... Multi-Colored Jersey Numbers

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discussed a recent TidBit about the Cal Tech football uniforms of the 1935 to 1937 era. As seen below, Tech had a large horizontal stripe on their jerseys, resulting in their using tow-toned numbers on their jersey backs.

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

Here’s the original Tidbit:

Subscribe for free and never miss a story. Support this site with a paid subscription, buy me a coffee ...

Today's Tidbit... The Automated T-Formation Snapper

Some of my favorite football history stories involve inventions and innovations people dream up to solve problems. Some inventions solve problems and gain popularity, while others fail to move the needle. Today's Tidbit falls more along the lines of the latter.

This story centers on Felton "Pooch" Wright, who was born and raised in central Texas before attending Howard Payne College in 1919. Although he had not played previously played football, he started in the line during his freshmen year. As...

Today's Tidbit... Football On A Shoestring Play

A recent Tidbit reviewed the history of the hidden ball trick, often credited to Pop Warner but conceived by John Heisman. Warner is also commonly credited with inventing the "shoestring play," though that story is also unlikely.

The shoestring play has several variations or imitators. One take saw use in the days before hash marks when, for example, a player swept to the right and was tackled toward the right sideline. While the players on both teams lined up near the ball on the right side of t...

Today's Tidbit... Colleges Formerly Known As...

Hordes of actors and artists of different persuasions have used stage names rather than their birth names, but name changes have been less frequent among athletes. There have been high-profile name cases, such as Lew Alcindor becoming Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Cassius Clay opting for Mohammed Ali, but the well of athlete name changes runs dry quickly.

On the other hand, changes in school names have been more frequent, even if many changes are only known to people who scan old newspaper sports pages...

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

This is #43 in a series covering football's original 61 rules adopted by the Intercollegiate Football Association in 1876. We review one rule each Friday.

The situations in which the fair catch could occur were defined by Rule 28, and Rule 29 told us how the fair catch applied during a puntout, but we've had to wait for Rule 43 to learn the three options available to teams following a fair catch.

Rule 43: A player who has made and claimed a fair catch shall therefore either take a drop kick or a p...

Today's Tidbit... Dirty Play And A Ring Of Truth

Back in the day, there was an element of chivalry in football. Despite many stories of dirty play, there were other tales of teams tackling opposing players high due to the awareness that an opposing player had a leg injury. For example, an earlier Tidbit mentioned the story of Clemson's Don King earning a 1953 sportsmanship award for telling his team to avoid hitting the Wake Forest quarterback's injured knee.

A similar event occurred when Davis & Elkins played Army in 1925. Army entered the gam...

Today's Tidbit... The First Black College Football Coach At A Non-HBCU

I and others have previously identified Matthew Bullock as the first Black coach at a predominantly White college. Last year, I wrote a story about Bullock's younger brother, William, who appeared in images of Exeter playing Tufts in 1903. That story included the following passage about Matthew Bullock:

After graduating from Dartmouth, Matthew Bullock went to Harvard Law and coached a high school team and the Massachusetts Agriculture College (now the University of Massachusetts Amherst). As coac...

Today's Tidbit: Eastern Coaches Of 1903

Through football's first 50 or more years, Eastern teams dominated the sport and Eastern players dominated the game's coaching ranks. Eastern schools would not have considered hiring as a coach someone who had been trained outside the East, and schools further west and south hired Easterners as well. Many or most of the top coaches responsible for the rise of Western (aka Midwestern) and Southern football, such as Stagg, Williams, and Heisman, played at Eastern schools. The next generation of t...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast: Visitors and Guests

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discussed a recent TidBit about the term found on scoreboards that identifies the non-home team. We now use Visitors and Guests, but it was not always so, and It ties into a story of Lehigh fans not treating their Lafayette rivals as guests.

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

Here’s the original Tidbit:

Subscribe for free and never miss a story. Support this site with a paid subscriptio...