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...