Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 7

1955 East Los Angeles JC Schedule and Weingart Stadium

Based on the title, you might think this is going to be another one of those stories about some obscure team with an interesting wrinkle or two, but it's not. This story is far bigger and far better than that. It is not only a story about a longstanding junior college football program and stadium in Los Angeles, it is also about the stadium that hosted ol' #44 when he returned a kickoff for a Crimson Tide touchdown.

East Los Angeles Junior College originated after WWII, when people flocked to LA,...

1904 Chicago North Division High's Stars

The 1904 Chicago North football team was a special bunch. Like several Chicago-area high schools, they played a good brand of football and regularly sent their alumni to prominent college programs. The 1903 squad traveled to Brooklyn to face Boys High in a postseason match of championship teams, making the Brooklynites fell dodgy by clobbering da' bums 75-0. That team sent Leo De Tray to Chicago and Walter Graham to Michigan, where both starred.

('North Division High School's Undefeated Basketbal...

Brothers Collide In The 1909 Carlisle-St. Louis Game

League Park, home of the St. Louis Cardinals until 1920, was the scene of brother-on-brother violence on Thanksgiving Day 1909. There were no punches thrown, the brothers had even been toasted together the day before by the Cornell Club of St. Louis, but the team from St. Louis University, coached by Bill Warner, was no match for the Carlisle Indians, led by Bill's older brother, Glenn "Pop" Warner.

Glenn “Pop” and Bill Warner (Wiki, Wiki)

It was the second and last time the brothers manned opposi...

Brothers Collide In the 1909 Carlisle-St. Louis Game

League Park, home of the St. Louis Cardinals until 1920, was the scene of brother-on-brother violence on Thanksgiving Day 1909. There were no punches thrown, the brothers had even been toasted together the day before by the Cornell Club of St. Louis, but the team from St. Louis University, coached by Bill Warner, was no match for the Carlisle Indians, led by Bill's older brother, Glenn "Pop" Warner.

Glenn “Pop” and Bill Warner (Wiki, Wiki)

It was the second and last time the brothers manned opposi...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... The Heisman Trophy and Canadian Football

Pigskin Dispatch’s Darin Hayes and I cover Billy Vessels’ story and those of other Heisman Trophy winners who played in Canada. Vessels in usual for having signed with Edmonton directly out of Oklahoma, skipping the NFL before joining the southern league several years later.

Watch or listen to the podcast here and/or read the original Tidbit.

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The Rise and Fall of Hip and Kidney Pads

The various forms of football equipment have always combined function and fashion, with hip and kidney pads exemplifying both when they peaked in the 1920s.

Like shoulder pads that originated as stuffed leather pads of cushions sewn on the exterior of football jerseys, hip pads arrived in the 1890s. However, they were typically sewn on the inside of the pants, making them less visible than shoulder pads. At the time, fashionable women commonly wore hip pads below their corsets, presumably to enha...

Factoid Feast XVI

As discussed in Factoid Feasts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, and XV, my searches through football history sometimes lead to topics too important to ignore but too minor to Tidbit. Such nuggets are factoids, three of which are shared today.

The latest version of Factoid Feast celebrates the boys who played in the line in the 1910s.

The Joy of Kicking

William P. Joy had a more than solid game when Holy Cross beat Tufts 14-0 on a November day in 1910. Joy was the captain...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... When The Bench Enters Play

Pigskin Dispatch’s Darin Hayes and I cover multiple stories in which players on the bench enter the game illegally - during play - to make touchdown saving tackles. We toss in a story about a fan doing the same for good measure.

Watch or listen to the podcast here and/or read the original Tidbit.

Football Archaeology is reader-supported. Click here to donate a couple of bucks, buy one of my books, or otherwise support the site.

Subscribe now

1960 NFL Enterprises Catalogue: Booze and Butts

This is the third and last in a series about the 1960 NFL Enterprises Catalogue. The first story covering Roy Rogers' role and Youth Apparel is here, while the story of Adult Apparel is here.

Booze, including beer, and butts, particularly cigars and cigarettes, have been associated with football from the early days, mainly because men tended to enjoy all three categories. Tobacco and alcohol advertising feature prominently in old game programs and other formats, including advertising premiums. He...

1960 NFL Enterprises Catalogue: Adult Apparel

This is the second in a series about the 1960 NFL Enterprises Catalogue. The first story covering Roy Rogers' role and Youth Apparel is here.

If you attend a football game today from the youth level to the NFL, the expectation is that many fans will arrive at the game wearing team gear. That was not the case in 1960, when NFL Enterprises published its first catalogue of licensed NFL and team products, the bulk of which were youth or adult clothing items. (The youth items were covered yesterday.)

I...