Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 69
July 20, 2023
Today's Tidbit... Football's First Coaching Schools and Clinics
I recently came across a claim that the first football coaching clinic came in 1924 under the direction of Ira "Irl" Tubbs, then the football and basketball coach at Wisconsin's Superior Normal School. Tubbs played football at William Jewell before coaching at Superior High School, where his top player was Ernie Nevers. Tubbs' 1920 team was widely considered the best team in the state. Their only competition for the mythical state title came from East Green Bay High, coached by a young Curly Lam...
July 19, 2023
Today's Tidbit... The Origins Of Player Numbers
Sometimes when you round the corner at a location you have visited many times before, you see something new. A similar feeling occurs when encountering a story that sheds new light on an old topic you’ve researched times and again.
The other day, however, I found an article about Carlisle's hidden ball trick, when Pop Warner had football-shaped brown patches sewn on the front of Carlisle's uniforms for their 1902 game at Harvard. When Harvard kicked off, Carlisle retrieved the ball before the tea...
July 18, 2023
Today's Tidbit... That Thing On His Head
The image below came to my attention a few days ago. The version I saw on Helmet Archaelogy’s Twitter feed did not include the caption, but it only took a few minutes to determine that the guy with the thing on his head was Jacky Lee, who played for the Denver Broncos in 1964 and 1965.
(1965 Denver Broncos game program)I don't recall seeing the image before, but I have since learned it has floated around since being mentioned by UniWatch in 2008. Of course, I could not ignore this image, so I beg...
Pigskin Dispatch Podcast: The 1925 Iowa-Wisconsin Snow Game's 33 Fumbles
Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discussed a recent TidBit about an Iowa-Wisconsin football game played in a blizzard, resulting in 33 fumbles.
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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July 17, 2023
Today's Tidbit... St. Louis U's Ill-Fated Trip West
The 1906 St. Louis University team was the first to throw a legal forward pass in a regular-season game and threw the ball better and more often than any other team that season, leading to an 11-0 season. Most striking about the 1907 team was that they never had more than 16 players on the team -often only 13- so they could not scrimmage in practice.
It was a veteran squad, with most of the team returning from the 1906 team. Nine of the eleven starters and several substitutes were medical student...
July 16, 2023
Today's Tidbit... Instructions For The 1909 Harvard-Yale Game
Percy Haughton became the coach at his alma mater, Harvard, in 1908, leading the Crimson to a 9-0-1 record, finishing with a 4-0 win over Yale.
The 1909 season began similarly, winning at West Point and in the first eight home games, allowing only six points in those nine games. Those who managed to obtain tickets to the game at Harvard Stadium received instructions with diagrams. Among other information, it told ticket holders that the gates opened at 12:30 PM for the 2:00 PM game, which was exp...
July 15, 2023
Today's Tidbit... When Rubber Footballs Were All The Rage
Early folk football games occurred post-harvest using the inflated bladders of recently-slaughtered pigs. Eventually, they covered the pig bladders with cowhide, and the bladders transitioned to rubber, yet the combination continued to be called pigskins.
Internal valves allowed the ball to remain inflated longer, and the arrival of external valves in the 1920s meant they no longer had to be unlaced and relaced when reinflating them, so footballs approached perfection. However, the challenges of ...
July 14, 2023
Today's Tidbit... 1876 IFA Rule #39: Toss Up
The toss up was a crucial element of early football games and warranted its own rule.
Rule 39: The captains of the respective sides will toss up before the commencement of the match; the winner of the toss shall have the option of the choice of goals or of the kick-off.
The toss up was the 19th-century British term for the coin toss, which is why we call two events of equal likelihood a toss up. Originally, the captains handled the toss up without the aid of the referee. Then, like other elements ...
July 13, 2023
Today's Tidbit... NFLers Avoid Campus Women
I don't know whether NFL players and prospects still receive a list of dos and don'ts upon arrival at training camp, but they did when the Chicago Cardinals arrived at Lake Forest College to prepare for the 1956 season.
1956 Chicago Cardinals (eBay) The Cardinals went 7-5 that year, good for second place in the league's Eastern Conference, but they failed to attract much attention among Chicagoans, who trickled into Comiskey Park for Cardinals' home games. Even after starting the season 4-0, only...
July 12, 2023
Today's Tidbit... From Goat to Good
Teams did not kick field goals in the 1950s with the same frequency as today. College teams often did not attempt field goals in situations we would consider nearly automatic today because straight-ahead kickers were less accurate, did not kick as far as the sidewinders that soon became popular, and the limited substitution rules of the time meant the player doing the kicking was generally among the team's eleven starters. The kicker was often the best all-around athlete on the team, which is wh...
