Timothy P. Brown of footballarchaeology.com joins host Darin Hayes to reveal groundbreaking historical research that may change the narrative of American football's history. Brown uncovers the story of Anthony Harris, the first known black college football coach at a non-HBCU institution, Colby College, in 1903 and 1904, predating the previously credited Matthew Bullock. This fascinating revelation challenges the commonly accepted timeline and highlights Harris's pioneering role in the sport. The episode delves into the challenges of uncovering African American contributions to football history due to the lack of coverage in mainstream newspapers at the time. Darin and Tim celebrate the importance of recognizing these overlooked figures and preserving their legacy for future generations.

This information comes from Tim's original post titled: The First Black College Football Coach At A Non-HBCU

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No matter what there is in football, there's always got to be somebody that does it first. And sometimes we get that wrong. Got a special episode tonight. Timothy P.

Brown of footballarchaeology.com has found some research that's going to change history. Tim's here to share it with us in just a moment.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of american football events throughout history on a day to day basis. Your host, Darren Hayes, is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridironization at a time.

So as we come out of the tunnel of the sports history Network, let's take the field and go. No huddle through the portal of positive gridiron history with pigskindispatch.com.

This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear of your favorite sport. You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com hello, my football friends.

This is Darin Hayes of pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to the pigpen, your portal of positive football history. And welcome to another edition of Tuesdays.

And we get to talk to our friend Timothy Brown of footballarchaeology.com dot. Tim, welcome back to the Pigpen.

Hey, Darin, great to chat with you. Looking forward to talking a little bit about a first timer.

First timer, yeah, this is a really interesting story. Tim wrote an article titled the first black college football coach at a non HBCU institution. I don't know if you ended up with institution or not.

I sort of cut my word off on my notes, but I think people get the gist on there. So, Tim, won't you tell us who this is and a little bit about them.

Yeah.

So, you know, one of the things I just, I really enjoy is finding earlier examples of something than what kind of had been the standard, the presumed standard, you know? So not too long ago, I wrote about an earlier forward pass, that it had occurred in a regular season college game, then had been assumed.

It happened a week before. What everybody has traditionally assumed was the first one.

And my undergraduate college was one of the schools playing in the former first one, you know, and yet, hey, the truth is the truth. And so it is what it is, right?

So did they pull your diploma or anything?

They haven't yet. They're even aware of this article that I wrote, so. And I barely deserve the first anyways, so.

Okay, so this is an instance where there was a guy who played at Dartmouth, Matthew Bullock, who was, you know, heck of a player. Became famous in part because he'd gotten beat up by Princeton, who had a bunch of southern guys who didn't like to play against black players.

This is like early, you know, 1st, 1st few years of the 19 hundreds.

Well, you know, if you look at the picture, if you looked at that picture and it's, you know, it's in one of the tidbits that I wrote back at the time, you know, you look at the picture and it's like, white guy, white guy, white guy, white guy. And then I.

But one of the people, you know, who's pictured is, just has different features and it looks a little darker than all the other white guys. So then, you know, I kind of, it was like, okay, I better look into him.

So, you know, if listeners aren't that familiar with Colby, it's, you know, it's one of those, you know, there's like a whole league of New England, you know, kind of high end academic liberal arts schools, Williams and Amherst. And, you know, those kinds of schools Colby dates, you know, whatever. So it's one of those, right? And so those teams back then often played the iv's.

They might play one or two games a year. They put, you know, they played, you know, what are now the Ivys anyways. And then they mostly played among themselves. So.

But, you know, he was coaching against, in fact, he had wins that year against Maine and New Hampshire. And, you know, so he was coaching at a reasonable level, right? And then they had a pretty darn good team.

So, you know, he was a two year coach at a, you know, predominantly white college. And, you know, I just think it's just one of those. It's kind of just a cool story, you know, that here's this guy who, you know, just.

Just the nature of the times. You know, it wasn't easy to be a black guy leading, you know, a bunch of white kids at some, you know, hoity toity school.

And yet, I mean, it certainly appears like that, you know, that they accepted him. He was embraced. They took. Brought him back for a second year because he did a fine job. And, you know, da da da.

And then, you know, kind of from a football standpoint, after he coached those two seasons, he kind of wasn't really heard from again, as far as I can tell. You know, I think he just ended up kind of getting a job and entered the workforce and, you know, you know, maybe did some.

Some things in the community, but probably.

Making some real money instead of coaching.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so, you know, it's kind of like, let's give him a hand, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. That's outstanding, Tim.

When you go and you find some of these things and sort of, you know, change history as we know it a little bit, you know, because, you know, Mister Bullock getting a lot of credit by a lot of experts, and you finding this, you know, almost accidentally, it sounds.

But.

But again, that's how much research is done. Maybe you're looking at something else and something else catches your eye and bingo, it's something very important, like this is.

So I'm glad that we could give the recognition through your story here and telling it both on your tidbit and here on pigskin dispatch. So thank you for that.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and it's one of those things where, you know, I certainly wasn't looking for this guy, you know? You know, I've done.

I've done a lot of research on those guys. And so I just know how difficult it is to do research on black or african american players, because you're pretty much going to find the information.

Unless these West Point guys played a lot of local town teams, so they were covered reasonably well, but otherwise, it's all in the black press. The black teams just weren't covered by the mainstream newspapers much. They certainly were at times.

And actually, sometimes surprisingly, some of the southern newspapers covered them pretty well, but just so much lower coverage, so the historical record just isn't there, you know, and then kind of on top of that, I think the.

A lot of the black newspapers, we just don't have copies of those newspapers for chunks of years, whereas, like, the New York Times or the Boston Globe or something like that. Well, yeah, okay, we've got that. So it's been digitized, and so everybody's got access to it.

But the niche press, which is what it was at the time, you know, they're just. It's not there as often. You know, we've got certain newspapers, certain coverage.

Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, some of those towns, there's pretty good coverage, but other places, not much.

Yeah. Just did a story.

It was the anniversary on September 25 of Charles Fallis being the first known black professional football player for the Shelby Blues. And I was trying to do some research on it. Same thing.

But they never said if he was paid or, you know, there's just sort of. Oh, yeah, and. And Charles Faulis played, too, but, you know, very famous player, but you can't get anything on him.

You know, Fritz Pollard's another one who played a few years after these. These guys that we're talking about. He's hard to get information on, and, you know, he was pretty famous.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's. Yeah. I mean, it's just. It's the conditions of the time, and.

So, yeah, it's a real, real shame.

But I'm glad that, you know, folks like you and other historians are grabbing some information that we do have and preserving it for future generations and to recognize these, these guys that were part of football history. So that's, that's awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a cool story. So hopefully, you know, over time, he gets, you know, an opportunity to be recognized as well.

And, you know, this is one of these where I always hope that somebody who's one of his descendants, you know, stumbles, you know, they're doing genealogical research and stumbles across a story like this. And it's just like, hey, this guy, you know, right? I'm descending from this guy, you know.

Yeah, that would be really cool. He has some, some family, you know, they're still around and, you know, some descendants and, you know, hey, look what great grandpa did.

You know, that'd be pretty cool. You know, it'd be a real treasure for family, I'm sure. Now you have treasures like this all the time.

You're uncovering, maybe not to the extent of the historical significance of this, but you do have sometimes like that. But these tidbits are pulling out information from past times of most of us have forgotten or didn't even realize existed in your tidbits.

So why don't you share with folks where they can enjoy your tidbits?

Sure. You know, the best thing is just go to my site, footballarchaeology.com, subscribe and then you'll get an email.

Every time I release a story, you'll get an email that, with, with the story in it. Alternatively, you can follow me on Substack, which is where my platform is.

I also tweet and I also whatever threads, it's called whatever I do on threads, but I post every story on, on Twitter and on threads. So, you know, but, you know, the way the algorithms work, you probably won't see them that way. So if you want to see it, subscribe.

All right, excellent. Tim Brown, we thank you again for joining us today and digging in that history and pulling out these facts that we can enjoy for future generations.

Very good, sir.

Peeking up at the clock, the time's running down. We're going to go into victory formation, take a knee and let this baby run out. Thanks for joining us. Us. We'll see you back tomorrow.

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