Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 68

Today's Tidbit... The Washington Huskies' Mid-1930s Helmet Logo

We've been on a helmet logo theme lately since ideas for logo-themed research keep surfacing. There are a few more in the pipeline, but today's focus is on the Washington Huskies and their being the second identified team to paint a logo on their helmets.

Earlier this week, we looked at the timing of logo adoption by Rose Bowl teams, and before that, we looked at logos appearing on the front and back of helmets rather than the sides. The latter article showed the first team known to paint a symbo...

Today's Tidbit... 1876 IFA Rule #41: Kickout

In 1876, neither football nor rugby differentiated touchbacks from safeties. In fact, neither term was mentioned in the IFA’s 1876 rules since the game(s) only had the kickout:

Rule 41: Kick-out is a drop kick by one of the players of the side which has had to touch the ball down in their own goal, or into whose touch in goal the ball has gone (Rule 21), and is the mode of bringing the ball again into play, and cannot count as a goal.

So, if a player touched the ball down behind his own goal line ...

Today's Tidbit... Digging Into A Mystery Image

I did not have a Today's Tidbit written while browsing Twitter and saw that Paul Lukas at Uni Watch had asked whether anyone could identify the teams playing in the picture below. Since I solved the mystery earlier today, I thought it would be fun to document the path I took to get there. The story shows that first impressions count -for good and bad- and that the truth is often revealed only by looking at the complete picture and not getting caught up in specific details.

The mystery image was p...

Today's Tidbit… The 1933 Rules Committee And The Future of Football

Regular readers of this site and other intelligent people know that American football has often faced conflicts over the game's direction. Today, the primary disputes in college football are player safety and money. Some see targeting and other rules intended to eliminate dangerous hits as at odds with the aggressive play they consider central to football. Likewise, college football’s transfer portal and NIL move the game into territory many do not like. Regardless of where you stand on either t...

Today's Tidbit: Adopting Helmet Logos By Rose Bowl Teams

Following on yesterday’s theme concerning helmet logos, I wanted to look at the time between the 1948 Los Angeles Rams busting out their horns and college teams adding helmet logos. To really determine the adoption curve, I’d have to find images for hundreds of college teams over a few decades, but even I wouldn’t do that, so I took a far narrower path, looking only at the Rose Bowl teams starting in 1949.

By then, the Rose Bowl was the annual matchup between the West Coast trendsetters and the ...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast: Football Jerseys with Emblems

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discussed a recent TidBit about teams wearing emblems on their jerseys.

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

Here’s the original Tidbit:

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Today's Tidbit... Front and Back Helmet Logos

Logos on the side of helmets have been the norm since Fred Gehrke painted horns on the Los Angeles Rams' helmets in 1948, but logos on the front and back of helmets preceded the Rams' horns. The University of Chicago had their Wishbone C on the back of their helmets in 1921 and 1922. Logos on the back never became popular, though we'll see below that two other Big Ten teams had them about forty years later.

(1922 Chicago yearbook)

Besides Chicago, the earliest logos were small letters carved in th...

Today's Tidbit... Charley Trippi and the 1947 Sugar Bowl

Although the modern national championship process is great in many respects, the messiness, uncertainty, and ongoing arguments about who deserved various national championships had its magic. An example season in which multiple teams staked claim to the championship game in 1946, which was among the most talent-laden in college football history as returning servicemen filled rosters nationwide. The regular season ended with Army and Notre Dame ranked #1 and #2 after playing a scoreless November ...

Today's Tidbit... Football's Biggest Cover Up

The following are words I never thought I'd write: this story concerns the early days of tarpaulins covering football fields. Like many stories you read here, I came across it while reviewing an article about another topic (coaching clinics in the 1920s) when I spotted a neighboring article with an interesting headline, in this case:

(Green Bay Press-Gazette, April 26, 1926)

I initially assumed the article concerned the sideline gear worn on rainy or cold days, but a quick scan revealed the rainco...

Today's Tidbit... 1876 IFA Rule #40: Loser Kicks

Previously, we covered several aspects of the kickoff as a part of Rule 36. Specifically, the kickoff occurs from midfield, and the opposing team must stand at least ten yards back from the spot of the kick. We did not address who does the kicking. Rule 39 tells us the teams tossed up to determine who kicked to start the game, while Rule 40 tells us the team scored on kicked off.

Rule 40: Whenever a goal has been obtained the side which lost the goal shall then kick off. 

Some of you may recall th...