The focal point of our discourse revolves around the rather astonishing decision made by the University of Kansas to terminate the employment of its most successful head football coach in history, Dr. A.R. Kennedy. In this episode, we engage with Timothy B. Brown from FootballArchaeology.com, who elucidates the intricate details surrounding this controversial dismissal. Dr. Kennedy, whose tenure yielded a remarkable win-loss record, found himself at the intersection of historical rule changes that mandated coaches to be full-time faculty members, a requirement that ultimately led to his departure.

This subject comes from Tim's recent tidbit titled: When Kansas Fired Its Top Coach

We delve into the implications of this decision, exploring the paradox of a distinguished coach being excluded from the university's football hall of fame despite his unparalleled achievements. Join us as we reflect on this poignant narrative that highlights the complexities of collegiate sports and the often unforeseen consequences of institutional policies.

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Can you imagine a college football program having the best head coach ever in a program's history and the college letting him go?

Well, that's our topic for tonight as FootballArchaeology.com's Timothy B.

Brown joins us to talk about Kansas top coach that gets fired.

Tim's up in just a moment to tell us all the details about this exciting story.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darrin Hayes, is podcast broadcasting 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 to puzzle football history.

And welcome to Tuesday.

And Timothy B.

Brown of FootballArchaeology.com stops in and visits us to tell us a story or two.

And Tim is with us tonight.

Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate you having me.

And I'm not going to be very talkative this time.

It's going to be like pulling teeth to get me to tell the story.

Can be like pulling teeth.

Okay.

All right.

There's.

There's some, some roots to this story, to this segue, but it'll be very filling.

It'll be very filling.

Okay.

The title is not going to give away the segue, folks.

You're going to have to listen to, to the end of Tim talking here.

But his title, from just a recent tidbit he had, is When Kansas fired its top coach.

Tim, what can you tell us about this story?

Well, so I don't want somebody who only wanted to listen to the first 15 seconds to have to stay till the end.

So to find out the deal.

But the coach was a dentist.

See, that's kind of the funny, the really funny part.

I could hear podcasts clicking off around the world right now.

Yeah, yeah, your.

Your little readout that tells you how long.

No, stay till the end.

It gets better.

Gets better, everybody.

Yeah, so.

So I would just say that Kansas is not known as a football power.

Basketball, yes.

Probably track, at least in, you know, many eras.

Yeah, football, no, you know, I mean, they've had some good teams here and there, but very scattered.

But the best teams they had in the consistent teams that they had came under the direction of Dr.

A.R.

or Bert Kennedy.

So Kennedy played at.

He ended up having 52 wins at Kansas.

And that's in a time when, you know, teams often played eight, nine games A year.

You know, so now they're not playing 15, 16 games like people do today.

You know, they played half as many games per year as a championship caliber team would play today.

So, so he played, he grew up in Lawrence, you know, where University of Kansas is.

And he played there, played his first three years at Lawrence or at, at Kansas.

And then you know, somewhere along the line, I don't know if he graduated or he just decided he's, he wanted to go to dental school.

And the first game he played in was same first game that John Outland of the Outland Trophy.

He played for Kansas in the same game in his first game.

And then Outland kind of followed a similar, similar path.

So they both ended up at Penn and played their last college game together playing for Penn.

And it's not like these schools are across the street from each other.

They're pretty much at that point in time across the country from each other.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And but you know, Penn was, you know, kind of actually part of the battles they had with like the Yales and Harvard's and Princeton's is because they had so many professional schools, you know, so Dennis and med school, et cetera.

And so they wanted both students to be able to play intercollegiate, you know, athletics and the other guys didn't.

So anyways, you know, he ends up after he graduates from Penn with his dental degree, he goes to Lawrence to set up practice and you know, within, within the year, maybe his first year he was back.

He ended up coaching at Washburn.

Now it's University of May and college at the time, but Washburn, which is in like Topeka, like 25 miles to the west of, of Lawrence, you know, Eastern Kansas.

And you know, he ends up, he, he does well there.

But you know, nobody who coached there for a while even comes close to him.

Almost Everybody else is below.500.

Then they increased it to like six or seven.

So there was this movement to, you know, remove the professionalization of football and sports generally.

And so they were in the Missouri Valley Conference at the time.

So one of the things they said is they wanted to, they eliminated all Thanksgiving Day games because those attracted big crowds.

There was a lot of gambling, there was, you know, carousing, etc.

We don't want big crowds at the football games.

Well, you know, I mean, there were a lot of places that had this attitude, you got to play on campus.

And like when Missouri and Kansas would play the, what they called the Civil War, they play at a stadium in Kansas City, you know, wherever some, you know, minor league baseball team played.

So, and it was just a big deal, but they wanted to get away from that.

They banned training table.

They, they limited athletes to two sports per academic year.

They made freshmen ineligible.

And the big thing was that they said the only people who can coach athletic teams are if you coach an athletic team, you have to be a full time faculty member and full time for the full year.

And so here's, here's Kennedy.

Now part of the reason they did that is because they, they didn't want to spend all this money that they did every year, bringing in some coach from the east coast or whatever, paying him a couple thousand bucks to coach for like three months and then boom, he's gone.

So.

But Kennedy was like that.

He, he and his assistant, but the combination of those two made less money than a lot of teams were paying to import a coach each time.

But again, Kennedy was, was a dentist, so he wasn't a faculty member.

And he, there's no way he was going to become one.

So they had to fire him.

You know, so it wasn't really their choice, but, you know, they agreed to the rules.

And so, you know, that was the net effect of it.

So then he ends up, you know, he kind of goes back to practicing.

Oh, the whole time he was practicing, he was a practicing dentist.

You know, Fog Allen at the time was the basketball coach in the ad.

He was a, a physician early, I think he was osteopathic.

But anyways, you know, he was, he was a doctor, you know, so it was, this wasn't an unusual thing, you know, at the time.

And then, so Kennedy coaches like four years at Haskell, the, You know, it was kind of the second best Indian school in terms of football and then became the primary one once.

Once Carlisle closed.

And then he.

He coached two more years at Washburn as well.

And then that was kind of.

That was kind of it.

So at the end of the day, you got this guy who was their.

The most successful football coach they've ever had, top winning percentage based on, you know, somebody who's been there at least two years or three years, most wins, and he's not in their football hall of Fame.

And there are incredible part eight other coaches.

You know, it's like Mangino and, you know, whatever.

All these guys that, you know, I mean, some of them had good little.

You know, they would come in and they suck for the first two years, and then they get better and then they'd leave because somebody else offered them a better situation.

You know, they're in the hall of Fame, but, you know, Burt Kennedy is not.

So it's just like, what are you guys thinking over there?

You know, it just makes no sense.

Yeah.

And, you know, I couldn't find anything that said, like, he was a bad citizen or, you know, nothing along those lines.

He's a dentist.

How much trouble can you get into your dentist, like an accountant, you know?

Well, I tried to drill into the Drill into the situation and couldn't.

Couldn't make it.

Just found yourself deep in a cavity you couldn't get out of.

Yeah, I just kind of.

I just kind of gummed up the whole.

This whole podcast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I guess another amusing thing is, you know, the name Washburn College.

You know what.

What, did the founder, like, get too aggressive with the loofah in a shower?

Where does Washburn come from?

You know, two words that you would never think get put together.

I assume it's just, you know, somebody's name.

I mean, they had some.

They had some pretty darn good teams back in the day.

I'm blinking on the guy's name, but he coached him in, like the teens, and then he ended up like he was coach like Oregon or Oregon State for a few years.

Begins with an H, I think.

But he was pretty innovative guy, you know, he was.

He claims to be the first guy that huddled up, you know, that he had teams huddled before Zuppke, you know, at Illinois.

So, you know that there's always this kind of battle who did what first, but I'm blinking as it's like Hartle or something.

But it wasn't.

Okay.

And I love.

I love the whole connection with him and Outland going, you know, together, being two different schools and both, you know, of course, Outland, you know, really had great success at football and is remembered a lot more than Mr.

Kennedy.

Except for.

Yeah, what you're.

You're telling us here, but you're just interesting.

But didn't Fielding Yost and he have.

Didn't he coach there when Outlin was there?

Was he.

Well, yeah, so he would have been so Yost.

I think he was.

I think Yost was at Nebraska in 98 and Kansas in 99 or the other way around.

Yeah, it was both those, like after West Virginia or something, I think.

Well, he was Michigan.

Yeah, he was at Ohio Northern for a while, and then I think that's when he went to Nebraska.

The bug eaters back then.

Yeah, yeah, the bug eaters.

So, yeah.

And actually, you know, I'm.

I'm, you know, I'm writing this book about the early forward pass.

And so Yost was one of those guys who somehow along the line there were people who kind of stumbled upon the overhand spot over.

Overhand spiral.

And he was one of them.

He somehow found it and he claimed he used to use.

Because he was a bad punter.

So he like teaches punters to punt with kick a spiral punt.

He'd show him how to do it somehow using by throwing the overhand spiral.

But anyways, so he even used it some games like as a long lateral, you know, like leave a lonesome end shoestring player, you know, guys tying his shoes over there and so nobody pays attention to him.

And then boom.

You know, you throw them.

Throw them the ball across the field and they take off there.

But the funny thing is.

So he knew about that.

He puts it.

But then once the forward pass is legalized, he doesn't use it.

So he didn't make the connection between the overhand spiral and the forward pass like a bunch of other people did.

Well, I mean, only a couple did.

But then, you know, once word got around, then.

Then it started, you know, it would have slowed.

Slowed down his momentum of his offense.

You know, he wasn't called Hurry up yours for nothing.

You know, you don't want that forward pass getting downfield.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's.

But it is.

It's one of those things where it just kind of tells you how like it's a point that I make in the book that, you know, how we have these mind blocks, you know, where he had piece A, he had piece B, but he didn't know how to fit the two of them together.

Right.

Until somebody else showed him how to do that.

So and then, you know, then he became, you know, he used to throw out of the punt formation, he had Benny Friedman and you know, all those kinds of guys.

So I mean, he was a.

He wasn't afraid to use it once he figured it out, you know.

But early on he was not a fan.

And possibly, I mean, I, we had Dr.

John Behe on a few years ago who's a biographer of Yost and that's where I'm getting these connection from remembering, reading his work.

But I know he, Yost had something to do with the training table.

Maybe.

Could he possibly.

I'm not sure if he found it originated the training table, but I know he made it famous at Michigan.

Could you mentioned the training table earlier.

Was that Kansas?

Could he have brought it there maybe.

Yeah, it was.

They initially, I think they had it for like crew first.

You know, the boatmen at the eastern colleges were more popular than football players for a while there.

And so training table, I mean, I don't know that anybody knows where it first started, but it, it was around well before Yost.

Okay, so he was.

Doesn't mean he didn't get credited for it.

Just like, you know, Stag gets credited for everything he's done.

He did a lot, but not everything he gets credited before.

Right, right.

Interesting.

All right, well, Tim, you, you have some great stories like this one with, you know, with Coach Kennedy and you just bringing back the memories and the nostalgia of football, these forgotten people and preserving the history.

And you do it in these short little stories you call tidbits.

Now maybe you could tell the listeners where they can take in some of your tidbits.

Yeah.

So I would also just say if any listeners are University of Kansas alums, send the story over to the athletic department, ask them why the hall of, why Kennedy's not in the hall of Fame, and then let us know.

Yeah.

So, you know, my.

All the stories are, I publish them on my site, footballarchaeology.com it's a substack site or newsletter.

So if you go there and subscribe, that means you're going to get the email that contains the story anytime I, you know, post a new story which is, you know, typically several times a week.

And then but if, if you don't want the email and you just want to control it at your own pace, you can follow me on Substack with the Substack app or just bookmark it, come out there and look anytime you want.

Or you can follow me on On Blue sky because, you know, I post it on On Blue sky every time that I put out a new story.

All right, well, folks, he's Timothy p.

Brown of footballarchaeology.com and we get to enjoy his stories and sharing the history of the game that we love so much every Tuesday.

And Tim, we'd love to talk to you again next Tuesday.

Very good.

Thank you.

See you next week.

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

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