Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 76

Today's Tidbit... The Battle Of The Bulldogs: Yale vs. Georgia

Yale's reputation as a football power and the shared gate receipts from the massive Yale Bowl allowed the boys in blue to host most of their football games before WWII. Playing at home gave Yale many advantages while robbing its players of the consistent experience of venturing into enemy territory, hoping to emerge victorious.

Pre-WWII, Yale generally played one away game per year, playing at Princeton one year and Harvard the next. As a result, most gentlemen had to come calling. Their home gam...

Today's Tidbit... HECO Envelope and the 1919 Rose Bowl

As regular readers know, I collect old composite football schedules. Since most of the schedules are pocket-sized, they often include essential information in condensed lists and articles on recent seasons, offering frozen-in-time insight into perceptions of the game at the time.

The pursuit of these schedules recently brought me a 1928 schedule published by the HECO Envelope Company of Chicago. As an early example, it displays a few quotes and the season schedules for 36 teams. It does not incl...

Hut! Hut! Hike! Pro Bowl

The Hut! Hut! Hike! series examines the origins of football terminology and how the game’s evolution drove changes in its vocabulary. Over 400 football terms are defined in my newest book (published in November 2022). This article is #3 in a follow-up series to the book.

Yale opened the 68,000-seat Yale Bowl in 1914. As the first enclosed stadium in the country, it earned the "bowl" description shortly after its design became public. Playing in the Yale Bowl was sometimes described as a "bowl gam...

Today's Tidbit… IFA Rule #31 Into Touch

This is #31 in a series covering football's original 61 rules adopted by the Intercollegiate Football Association in 1876. We review one rule each Friday.

Rule #31 is straightforward but prepares us for Rule #31, which is among the longest and most complicated of the 61 IFA rules.

Rule 31: Touch. If a ball goes into touch, the first player on his side who touches it down must bring it to the spot where it crossed the touch-line; or if a player when running with the ball cross or put any part of ei...

Today's Tidbit... Yard Lines and Lime Burns

'Lime Burns Ruin Tiger's First Sqaud,' Atlanta Constitution, September 30, 1926. and 'Lime Burns Have Many Aggies on 'Ailing' List,' Tulsa World, November 9, 1923

I was not there to witness it, but I've heard the Egyptians began building their pyramids 5,000 years ago. Somehow, they found the means to cut massive stone blocks, move them from the quarry to the building site, and lift them into alignment where they remain today. Yet, despite humans possessing those skills for ages, Americans in the...

Today's Tidbit... Football Before Statehood

The history of college football at the University of Hawaii is fascinating, given the challenges they faced finding opponents other than service teams. For decades, one or another college team spent their holidays in Honolulu to enjoy the sun and play a spirited game or two.

I'll cover that topic in more depth in an upcoming story, but today's focus is on state flagship universities that played their first football game before achieving statehood. How many state universities fit that criterion?

Be...

Today's Tidbit... The Year of Living Seniorlessly

Discussions of the football crisis of 1905-1906 tend to focus on the rule changes covering play on the field to make the game safer. However, the same general movement also brought concerns about the overemphasis on football, including the game's commercialization, recruiting practices, and eligibility standards.

The predecessor of the NCAA was formed in 1905 to look at the playing rules, but it had no role in player eligibility. Instead, that power rested with the conferences or the individual s...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast: When Balls Fumbled Out of Bounds Remained Live

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discussed a recent TidBit about football’s old days when the ball remained live after going out of bounds. We also talk a bit about the calamities that ensued with players running over obstacles to get to the ball.

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

If you want to read the Tidbit itself, here it is:

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

Today’s Tidbit… The Sidesaddle Quarterback and Tennessee Formation

Football’s early quarterbacks aligned directly behind the center or slightly offset to receive the snap as the ball rolled or bounced back after the center snapped the ball with his foot. Since the player receiving the snap -typically the quarterback- could not run with the ball, he quickly tossed or handed it to a teammate.

When the rules changed early last century, allowing the player receiving the snap to run with the ball, some thought another deep back might replace the quarterback position....

Today's Tidbit... Football Jerseys with Emblems

Early football teams often had the school letter or letters on their jerseys, and the first numbers on football uniforms arrived in 1905. But it was not until 1937 that the NCAA required teams to wear numbers on the front and back of their jerseys. Some conferences required numbers earlier than that, but failing to specify the types of numbers, coaches pulled a few tricks by using four-digit numbers or Roman numerals on their team jerseys. In addition, there were many patterns of friction strips...