Timothy P. Brown's Blog, page 82

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast: The Other Warner Brother

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss a recent TidBit about Bill Warner, Pops’ younger brother, who had an interesting career as a football coach and lawyer. Like Pop, he spent parts of his career coaching at institutions for Native Americans, then known as Indian schools.

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

Football ArchaeologyToday's Tidbit... The Other Warner Brother and Chemawa Indian SchoolWith the Kelce brothers opposing one a...

Today's Tidbit... Iowa's First Black H.S. Football Coach

A reader, Scott Johnson, provided information about Joe Wyatt, Iowa's first Black high school football coach, suggesting he might be the basis for a story. Scott also asked whether Wyatt might have been the first Black coach nationally at the high school or college level.

This Tidbit will primarily tell Joe Wyatt's story and will also note that Wyatt was not the first Black high school coach. George Jewett, the first Black player at Michigan and Northwestern, coached predominantly-white Howell Hi...

Today's Tidbit... The Original Fighting Irish

College football has many Wildcats, Tigers, and Bulldogs in its menagerie, so those nicknames are not uniquely tied to specific teams. However, a mention of the Horned Frogs, Ducks, or Badgers leaves everyone clear about who is who. Leaving the animal kingdom behind and focusing on nicknames based on humans, only one school comes to mind when hearing Midshipmen or Deacon Deacons. Still, based on their long-term success and unique nickname, Notre Dame's "Fighting Irish" may be college football's ...

Today's Tidbit... Football and Etaoin Shrdlu

Ideas for Tidbits come from many sources, with a good number arising by chance; many originate by stumbling upon articles, images, or illustrations while researching another topic. Still, most stumbled-upon articles are found in old newspaper sports sections, not other sources.

Today's Tidbit is of a different, though somewhat related, sort. It came while watching two documentaries about the Linotype machines used to typeset newspapers and other printed materials from the 1880s to the 1980s when ...

Today's Tidbit... Harvard's 1936 Rose Bowl Invitation

Harvard played Oregon in the 1920 Rose Bowl and was not expecting an invitation to play in the 1936 game. After all, the Crimson had won three and lost six that season, beating only Springfield, Brown, and New Hampshire. They played Yale close but failed to score on Holy Cross, Army, and Princeton, so an invitation to spend the holidays in Pasadena came as a surprise.

In those days, the Tournament of Roses chose a West Coast team to play in the Rose Bowl game, and that team selected and invited t...

Today's Tidbit… IFA Rule #24 Return to Onside

This is #24 in a series covering football's original 61 rules adopted by the Intercollegiate Football Association in 1876. Normally, we review one rule each Friday but are reviewing this week’s rule on Thursday to allow another Tidbit to be published tomorrow.

Some elements of the original onside and offside rules remain in football today, but they eliminated the last vestige of Rule 24 from football more than one century ago. Nevertheless, the rule played a part in the early game, so it merits e...

Today's Tidbit... Mowing Early Football Fields

Artificial turf is increasingly popular at football venues across the country. The systems drain well and eliminate muddy games commonly seen on heavily-used grass fields that exhibit dirt patches as seasons progress. Another justification for artificial fields is the reduced cost of maintenance. No watering, no mowing, and no chalking despite their intensive use.

Football was nearly 100 years old before artificial turf came along, so I thought it would be fun to look back on how fields were kept...

Today's Tidbit... The 1922 Florida Gators vs. Tampa's American Legion Post

Back in the day, major college football teams scheduled games against high schools, athletic clubs, nearby Army bases, and battleships in port. Another type of opponent shared the field in nineteen hundred and twenty-two when the Florida Gators played an away game against the American Legion post of Tampa.

Founded after WWI, the American Legion mainly had young members and fielded football teams across the country, mostly playing other Legion posts or various local teams. Tampa's American Legion ...

Pigskin Dispatch Podcast: Early Big Fellas

Pigskin Dispatch podcaster Darin Hayes and I discuss a recent TidBit about some of the larger men who played football before WWI, particularly a 412-pound high schooler from New Hampshire.

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

Football ArchaeologyToday's Tidbit... Football's Heaviest Player Pre-WWIDuring the first eighty or ninety years of football, the linemen were often the same size as the backs, though there were occasional guards like Pudge Hef...

Today's Tidbit... When Coaches Wrote Newspaper Columns

Nowadays, we often see top football coaches playing television studio commentators following their teams' elimination from the playoffs. Their technical knowledge and perspective as the person in charge can offer unique insights into a game's events.

However, while their teams are still playing, coaches stick to their knitting, stay out of the studios, and certainly do not write newspaper columns predicting who will win upcoming games. Others in the football business do the same. Coaches coach, o...