The central theme of this discourse revolves around an exploration of the evolution of the football snap, particularly the technique of snapping the ball between the quarterback's legs. As we delve into this fascinating aspect of football history with the esteemed football archaeologist Timothy P. Brown, we uncover the nuanced changes in rules and strategies that have shaped the game over the decades. Our discussion will illuminate how this seemingly simple act has undergone significant transformations since its inception, influenced by tactical innovations and regulatory adaptations. We will reflect on the historical context of the snap, tracing its journey from rudimentary practices to the sophisticated maneuvers seen on the field today. Join us as we traverse through time, examining the interplay of creativity and legality in the sport we cherish.

This discussion comes from his original Tidbit titled: A Look Back At Snapping Between The Quarterback's Legs

Timothy Brown's FootballArchaeology.com is a website dedicated to preserving pigskin history. Digs into gridiron history to examine how football’s evolution shapes today's game.

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It's a great time to be a football fan, as we are all deep in the heart of it, as all of our favorite teams at all levels have probably played a game now that the NFL season is well underway and college and high school right behind it.

But as we take this little bit of break on Tuesday, let's catch our breath and take a look back in football history with the football archaeologist Timothy P. Brown.

As we talk about how every scrimmage play starts and the history is within that element of the game, Tim's up in just a moment to tell us all about it.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch.

A podcast that covers the anniversaries of.

American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal deposit of football history.

And.

And welcome to another evening of talking with Timothy p. Brown of footballarchaeology.com about one of his recent tidbits.

Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey, Darren, good to talk to you.

Good to see you again.

And this topic we're going to talk about should be a snap or could be tricky as well.

Could be, could be tricky.

Could be, yes.

That's some tough navigating of words here to get into that segue.

But we have a.

A great topic tonight based on your recent tidbit.

It's titled A Look Back at Snapping between the Quarterback's Legs.

So this has got some interesting merit to the title.

Why don't you tell us about it?

Sure.

You know, this is one of those things where I was, I kind of started the story with, and I probably need to develop this in a whole separate tidbit.

But it's just kind of, you know, when you think about football, its rules change constantly and the game has evolved so much, you know, despite the dead ball era in baseball and this and that.

I mean, fundamentally, baseball is still baseball.

You know, they just haven't changed the rules that much.

Football is, you know, different years.

The, the rules change so much and you know, the nature of the players and everything.

So, and I think, you know, part of that is just, you know, it's the nature of, you've got structured plays and episodic plays.

You know, you stop and start and there's a structured process.

And then you got 22 guys or 24 if you're in Canada.

You got all these guys on the field, and so then coaches end up tweaking and coming up with new tactics.

And so.

And then the rules have to adapt to those tactics because either, like them or they don't.

They're fa.

Safe or they're not, you know, they're.

They make the offense too effective or the defense too effective.

So they got to, you know, there's.

They're always trying to strike this balance, so they're constantly juggling the rules.

And so one example of that juggling is, you know, comes down to the issues of how do you snap the ball?

What is a legal snap?

And so, you know, back in the old day, you, you know, you could.

They'd snap the ball.

You know, first they snapped it with their feet, and then they snapped it with their hands.

And they'd snap it to the quarterback who didn't have his hands directly under center.

You know, he didn't have his hands up against the center's butt.

He just use a foot or two back or to the side, and he kind of snapped it back and you'd catch it and then go, you know, the quarterback could do what quarterbacks do.

So it wasn't really until.

So then at that point it became, okay, maybe we could trick some of these guys, you know, by snapping instead of giving it to the quarterback.

We give.

We snap, still do a direct snap to a back, further back, you know, you know, five yards back or four yards back.

But by then the, the, you know, they.

They did this, but the quarterback had to be, well, you.

It.

To be considered a back, you had to be at least one yard behind the line of scrimmage because they didn't want confusion about who's eligible and who's not, right?

And, you know, both for the.

The officials and for.

For the.

The opposing team.

So then they eventually moved to, I think about the time that the.

The T formation came in.

Then they also instituted a rule that said if you put your.

If the quarterback puts his hands under center, then he has to get the snap.

You can't snap it to anybody else.

And so despite the fact that the rule existed, there were a few teams that would snap it between his legs and try to get away with it and see if the, you know, if the officials could catch it or not.

But, you know, word got around about what was going on and so everybody became aware of it.

And then in 46, Dana Bible that the Texas coach who was on the rules committee said, let's, let's just let them do this, you know, because it's like it adds a level of creativity to the game.

And so then it became a thing.

And so it's actually kind of cool really.

And it, I kind of broke it down as there were like three things that teams did when they snapped between the quarterback's legs.

You know, all of them were, you know, based.

It's trickeration, you know, in one form or another.

But so one of the things they did was just to.

It was to either punt the ball or so they, they'd snap it.

Like if you put, if you put the quarterback under center, then he could either make a call or you know, they could have predetermined it.

But based on how the defense is aligned, he might say, let's do a quarterback sneak and you know, gain the attitude that he needs.

Or if that's not looking good, he makes the call and they snap it back to a back who punts it.

Right.

So it's kind of this choice, you know, quarterback sneak or punt choice.

It's a, it's, it's a run punt option.

That's a good one.

Yeah, there you go.

Rpo.

So then, so that was one.

The RPO again, I'm writing that down.

Rpo.

And then, then the other one would be, you know, so a lot of teams were, you know, still doing direct snap in, direct snap to single wing or you know, some kind of a, that those kinds of offense offenses.

So some teams would snap to a back who would do some kind of spinner, half spin, spin and a half spinner.

And just it.

So it was all this trickeration.

Not only did you snap between the quarterback's legs, but then it's like, okay, who's got the ball?

You know, all the confusion that comes with spinning.

That was number two.

And then the third one was snapping to a single back.

So like say a double wing formation, you got the full back back there and you got two wings off to the sides.

And then it snap it to the fullback who would either run it up the gut, take it around the end, you know, in a sweep or pass it, right.

And then, so, you know, that's kind of just kind of a cool thing.

That happened kind of a moment in time, and then they.

That all that stuff kind of disappeared after the 50s.

Like Barry Switzer, you know, would tell the story that, you know, he was a center on the 55 Arkansas team, and they had one of the best punters in the country.

So he would do the snap between the quarterback's legs to the punter, who is also the fullback.

And so they use that, you know, quite frequently.

But like, around that time, it all kind of disappeared.

Other than, like, high schools, you know, there's every.

Always.

Every state has a bunch of high schools that are in all this trickery type, you know, oddball offenses to make it hard to prepare for and, you know, nothing wrong with that.

It's just, you know, but nobody does that really at the college level.

And so.

But now in the past four or five years, you know, when people start doing Wildcats, you know, maybe now, 10 years ago or however long it's been, people started doing Wildcats, and there's just.

People are just being more inventive and doing kind of crazy things.

And so now all of a sudden we're seeing, you know, it's legal again.

You know, we're still.

So we're seeing more teams snapping between the quarterback slugs.

And so the.

The tidbit itself actually has, you know, little films, you know, youtubes of, you know, Texas doing it and like.

Like Texas Tech or, you know, whatever, you know, different teams.

And it's just kind of fun to watch.

Even the Detroit Lions, there's a, you know, a little clip of the Lions doing it.

So it's just kind of fun.

It's just a goofy little play.

You know, guys have fun with it.

And at least the ones that are on film, they were successful, you know, so, yeah, you know, there's probably others where they're not successful, and so we don't show those.

But it's just kind of a goofy, you know, it's a goofy thing.

Just strange little rule that, you know, I mean, so many.

So many football rules are to prevent some coach from taking advantage of some crazy situation.

But this is one where they.

They said, no, let's let them do it.

You know, let's let them have some fun.

And so, you know, it sat and did nothing for a long time, and now all of a sudden, it's kind of popular again.

So, yeah, kind of fun.

Yeah, it definitely is.

It's.

And it's.

It's really fun to watch these videos that you just mentioned.

And folks, if you're.

You're want to enjoy some of those.

We have the links in the show notes of both the podcast and the YouTube channel.

You can jump right into Tim's page in his tidbit and enjoy, you know, not only the images but these videos that he has on on this one too.

So I think you'll enjoy that.

But you, Tim, you take some of these concepts that, you know, most of us in the modern football fan as a matter of football fan don't really appreciate or don't really think about and you make us think about it and enjoy it and appreciate that.

And you do this in your tidbits.

Maybe you could share with folks where they could catch some of your tidbits and be a part of this.

Sure.

You know, my site is footballarchaeology.com so it's a substack site.

You can go on there and, and subscribe, in which case you'll get an email every time I submit a new story.

Otherwise, just go out there whenever you want.

You can also, you know, have via this substack app.

You know, if you don't want emails, then the, the app is a great way to, to, to get it and just follow or subscribe and you know, then you just read it whenever you want to off the app.

And of course, you know, have multiple books out there too.

So if anybody is into the stuff, just go out to Amazon and find me and purchase volumes upon volumes of books.

There you go.

Well, Tim, we love having volumes and volumes of your stories here on these Tuesdays and hope to continue that on next week with you.

Very good.

Looking forward to it.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

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