Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 79

Today's Tidbit... The Highs and Lows of Denver University Football

University of Denver football season ticket mailer for the 1955 season. (Personal collection)

For most people nowadays, the words "Denver" and "football" mean one thing, the Broncos. The gold and brown-clad Broncos were charter members of the American Football League's, suiting up in those hues for another year before switching to the now familiar orange and blue.

Before the Broncos arrived, however, the city's gridiron fans followed the Denver Pioneer University football team when they played in ...

Today's Tidbit... The 1925 Iowa-Wisconsin Snow Game's 33 Fumbles

I published a story about a week ago regarding WSUI, the University of Iowa's radio station, and its coverage of football games in the 1920s. I noted that WSUI only broadcast the first four games of the 1925 season, which led a reader, Bill Claypool, to suggest they might have missed the Wisconsin game due to the game being played in a blizzard.

Whether the snow and wind had anything to do with the radio station missing the game is unknown, but it was among the more bizarre games in Big Ten histo...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast: Tie Games and the 1932 NFL Championship

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discussed a recent TidBit about the NFL’s how ties were not included in the NFL’s calculation of team’s win percentages for most of the league’s history. That created the potential for undeserving championship winners, including in 1932.

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

Football ArchaeologyToday's Tidbit... Tie Games And The 1932 NFL ChampionshipFollowing Sunday's post, which included an image from ...

Today's Tidbit... Player Transfers: What's Old Is New Again

We think of mass transfers and players following their coaches to new destinations as a condition of the 2020s, brought on by the portal and the one-time transfer provision. But college football witnessed mass transfers after both WWI and WWII. Thankfully, we did not need a world war to encourage a flood of transfers this time around, but it's worth looking back on how transfers benefited a first-time college head coach, Lt. Cmdr. Paul "Bear" Bryant, in 1945.

Bryant, of course, played end at Alab...

Today's Tidbit... Having Your Prayers Answered, And Other Regrets

I lived in Missouri in 1990 when Colorado benefited from a fifth down play to win at Missouri. Unfortunately, the Buffaloes inappropriately benefited from the call to win the game. Despite a Week 1 tie with Tennessee, a Week 3 loss to Illinois, and a fifth-down win, some buffoons awarded the Buffaloes a shared national championship.

Something similar, but more honorable, occurred in 1940 when Cornell, who had not lost in their last 18 games, traveled to Hanover, New Hampshire, to meet a 3-4 Dartm...

Today's Tidbit... Missing The Point, As Normal

I acquired this RPPC because I loved the circular SPN logo on their jerseys and didn't have anything similar in my collection. The seller did not identify the pictured team, but with the '06' on the ball and a distinctive logo, I thought I could identify the school with a little or a lot of detective work.

The obvious question is, which school might use an SPN logo? Initially, I thought the school might be named after a saint. Then, thinking the players appeared to be college-age, I shifted my fo...

Today's Tidbit… IFA Rule #27 Knocking On

This is #27 in a series covering football's original 61 rules adopted by the Intercollegiate Football Association in 1876. We review one rule each Friday.

We kept last week’s review of Rule 26 short to avoid stepping on Rule 27’s toes. As you will recall, Rule 26 told us it was legal to toss the ball backward, including passing it to a teammate. Conversely, Rule 27 says knocking on or throwing a ball forward is illegal.

Rule 27: Knocking on, i.e., deliberately hitting the ball with the hand, and t...

Today's Tidbit... As The Quakers Go Rolling Along

I wrote a few days ago about the 1902 Rose Bowl and how it was viewed for nearly forty years as a one-off game, unconnected to the Rose Bowl contests that began in 1916. Before and after 1916, football teams from northern climes periodically traveled to fair-weather locations for a game or three over the holidays. These games began when Chicago visited the West Coast in 1894, continued with a Yale Consolidated team going South in 1896, and through to the San Diego Christmas Classic in 1921 and 1...

Today's Tidbit... Pushing Back On The Hooker Tack-L-Matic

One of the problems with the early tackling dummies was that they are inanimate, so coaches hung them from frameworks and manipulated ropes or chains to swing them about. Try as they might, coaches could not reliably simulate an opponent coming at a player with force.

Verne Hooker heard that problem expressed by the Ulrichsville (OH) high school coach in 1956 and set to work solving that problem, though a bit slowly. It took ten years of development, but his Tack-L-Matic finally hit the market. P...

Blog-Used Items: 1920+

I collected old football-related items in the past but now buy only for use in stories. In some cases, I buy cheap and sell high because my research identified the object, its story, and its value. If interested, check out the items below and on the other pages.

All sales occur on eBay, but paid subscribers can contact me about these and other items.

CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGES

1920 RPPC Harvard Rose Bowl Football Team - Tournament of Roses, Pasadena, The End of an Era: Harvard’s 1920 Rose Bowl Win, eB...