The Wacky World of Football Jersey Numbers: From Anonymous to Iconic

Have you ever stopped to think about the numbers plastered on a football jersey? We take them for granted today—the quarterback is in the teens, the lineman in the 60s or 70s, the defensive backs in the 20s. But believe it or not, there was a time when football was played without jersey numbers! The journey from anonymous athletes to the precisely numbered, position-specific system we use today is a fascinating dive into the sport's history, filled with resistance, oddities, and accidental innovation.

Historian and author Timothy Brown has written some great books on the history of football, including Fields of Friendly Strife and How Football Became Football: 150 Years of the Game's Evolution. Tim also supplements his books with posts on his website FieldsofFriendlyStrife.com, and one in particular caught my eye a little over a month ago. The subject was with the sometimes wacky numbers of the gridiron, but what it really did was shed light on the genesis and evolution of the player numbering system we use today.

This edition of the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, historian and author Timothy P. Brown of Fields of Friendly Strife joined us to unearth the weird, wonderful, and wacky evolution of the football jersey number.

From Obscurity to Identification: The Birth of Numbering

The concept of numbering players didn't originate on the American gridiron; it was first seen on rugby players in New Zealand and Australia around 1897. In the U.S., the idea was initially championed by the legendary coach Amos Alonzo Stagg.

The main reason for introducing numbers wasn't for the players or the coaches—it was for the fans and the press. As football grew in popularity and stadiums increased in size (like Harvard Stadium in 1903), it became impossible for spectators to identify players, especially with the introduction of helmets. Stagg saw numbers as a way for fans to follow the action and for the media to report accurately.

However, the idea faced significant pushback. Two main reasons for the resistance stand out:

Anti-Individualism: Many felt that numbers undermined the team aspect of football by identifying players as individuals.

Competitive Disadvantage: Coaches argued that numbering their players would help opposing scouts and defenses easily identify their best players and track their movements during formations and shifts.

An Accidental Innovation

The first recorded instance of American football players wearing numbers occurred in 1905, thanks to a simple misunderstanding.

Harvard, trying to help fans, had numbers displayed on a scoreboard corresponding to players listed on a scorecard—but the players themselves were unnumbered. The athletic director at Drake University in Iowa, preparing for a Thanksgiving Day game against Iowa State, mistakenly thought the Harvard players actually wore the numbers. He convinced both teams to wear temporary numbers painted on canvas and sewn to the backs of their jerseys.

Drake wore numbers 1 through 25.

Iowa State wore numbers 26 through 50.

This simple, accidental decision marked the first time American football players wore numbers.

Wacky Numbers and Loopholes

For years, the use of numbers remained isolated or was negotiated between opposing schools. When numbers did appear, they were often temporary, changing from game to game. And critically, they were only worn on the backs of the jerseys—likely because the fronts were reserved for school emblems or friction strips (sticky stripes to aid ball handling) until the 1920s.

Coaches, still wary of giving away secrets, found clever ways to skirt new league requirements.

Minnesota's Four-Digit Numbers (1921): When the Big Ten required numbers, Minnesota's coach, H.L. Williams, protested by putting players out in four-digit numbers (e.g., 4022) to obscure player identity.

Furman's Roman Numerals: Coach Dad Amos at Furman, just to "tug on people's chains," put his team out wearing Roman numerals instead of Arabic ones. Both teams technically met the "number" requirement while violating the spirit of the rule.

Alphanumeric Systems: Some coaches, like Bear Bryant at Kentucky, employed letters. He had identical twins, the Jones brothers, wear 1A and 1B so he could tell them apart. Even more logically, some teams (like LSU in 1952) used positional alphanumeric systems: E1 for the first-string end, T1 for the first-string tackle, etc.

The Modern System Takes Hold

The current system, where numbering is based on position, really solidified after the NCAA recommended a standardized system in 1941, although it took time for the specifics to be adopted. The NFL, with its smaller rosters, was slower to adopt the full range of numbers, not utilizing the 90s for a long period of time.

The history of the jersey number is a fantastic reminder that even the most commonplace elements of our favorite sport went through decades of trial, error, and plain old stubborn resistance before settling into the system we know and love. The next time you see a player wearing their iconic number, remember that less than 120 years ago, that player would have been completely anonymous!

We are very thankful, honored, and humbled to be placed in the top spot of American Football History Podcasts by Feedspot.com! it is you the listeners and our fantastic expert guests that take us to these heights. Thank you!

Do you want more football history? Grab a copy of our latest book, "Marooned" on the 1925 Pottsville Maroons NFL franchise saga

We also feature great music by Mike and Gene Monroe along with Jason Neff & great graphics from time to time from the folks at Gridiron-Uniform Database.

Want more Sports History delivered to your ears, come see this podcast and many more at the Sports History Network - The Headquarters of Sports' Yesteryear!

We want to thank the National Football Foundation, Pro Football Hall of Fame, On this day.com and Pro Football Reference Websites for the information shared with you today.

We are so used to having numbers on jerseys of football players.

It's very commonplace.

But there was a time where there were no numbers and the history and the evolution of the numbers has changed throughout time.

Timothy Brown, author and historian, is on to tell us about the history of the jersey number.

Coming up in 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 gridiron one day 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.

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Hello my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of Pixicindispatch.com and the all New Jersey dispatch.com welcome to the Pikmin.

We have a great episode tonight.

We're going to be covering basically both of our websites.

You know, we said Jersey dispatch.com something new.

We're going to be looking at the history of sports through the jerseys, the uniforms and sweaters that the players wore and also pigskindispatch.com you know, we are all about football history and we cover both tonight because we have historian and author Timothy P. Brown who wrote the great books like How Football Became Football and the Fields of Friendly Strife.

And his website feels a friendly strife.

Tim Brown, welcome to the Pig Pen.

Hey, thanks Darren, Appreciate it.

Looking forward to chatting again.

We talked a couple months ago and so that was fun and so let's do it again.

Well, I guess before we get to the topic of the football jersey numbers history, you have some, some great articles you're posting.

Looks like three to four every month on your, your website fieldsofriendlystrife.com and really have some interesting ones that have popped up lately.

I don't know if maybe you wanted to highlight some of those and maybe some that you have coming up that we can look forward to.

Yeah, you know, so what happens with me is I'm so in some cases I'm writing articles that are kind of expanding on things that I wrote about the book, but I just couldn't go as deep because of the nature of the book.

It was more of a survey of, you know, football history so the site allows me to get into kind of oddball stories and just things that, you know, typically you just can't even imagine happened or that were part of football at one point.

But.

So that's.

That tends to be a lot of.

A lot of what I look for in these, in the blog articles.

Just kind of strange things, you know, I just, I enjoy the oddities, but oftentimes the oddities tell you something about the nature of football at the time.

You know, they had us, they served a purpose, and they seem weird to us now.

And I think the jersey numbering is one of the best examples of that.

It took, you know, football took some twists and turns to get to this numbering system we have today.

But, you know, where we ended up isn't where we had to be.

We could have gone in other directions.

Yeah, most definitely.

But just to give a little tease to the listeners so they can go and check out these great articles from Self, here's a couple of the headlines that Tim has for.

For some November headlines or articles that he has.

The first one's very seasonal, appropriate.

The Celebrating 150 Years of Thanksgiving Day football.

Very interesting article.

That's very intriguing sounding.

And you know, you have one about the football.

West Point's football helmets since the first Southern team to play in the North.

So all great articles just from your November editions.

And there's plenty more than that.

You have a couple years worth, I think, in there.

So very intriguing and very unique articles indeed.

Thanks.

And so there was a lot of concern that players and fans wouldn't know where the goal line was anymore because the goal posts had always been on the goal line.

And so they knew where the goal line was, right.

But now you shift it to the end line, it's like, well, where's the end of the field?

And so, you know, a lot of things that we take, you know, take for granted today like field numbering and decorated end zones and now pylons, but originally flags in the corners of the end zones, those all, you know, if they didn't just come about in 27, they became, you know, had much greater use in 27 to help players and fans distinguish the field of play from the end zone.

So just one of those odd things, but it happened.

Yeah, it's something that somebody maybe 100 years ago can appreciate, but us in the modern times, you know, we were so used to the having the goal lines on the end line, we don't recognize it.

But yeah, it's.

I was the marker of the goal line here.

You're absolutely right.

That's.

I'm glad you point that.

The one article that we want to focus in on tonight that really caught my eye back in September you wrote, and it was titled Football's Wacky Uniform Numbers.

And you really get into some very interesting elements of the numbering system on players jerseys in football.

And I thought maybe it'd be a great time to look at the history of the football numbers on the jerseys of players.

You know, again, this is one of these things where we're very used to having players wear numbers in every sport.

But that wasn't the case in the past.

And you know, it's likely that Americans started hearing about that probably through Britain or whatever.

But eventually, you know, no one wore numbers in football anyways and, or baseball or basketball for that matter.

And so Amos Lonzo Stagg was the first one, you know, as far as I can tell, to really tout wearing numbers.

And he did it primarily because it was for the fans.

You know, it was, wasn't anything for the players.

It was because as stadium, you know, as football became popular, stadiums grew in size, fans and players were increasingly wearing helmets.

Fans could not tell who was who on the field.

And so numbers were a way to, you know, to get, to allow fans and frankly the press especially to figure out who is who on the field.

But there was a lot of opposition to it as well.

There were a lot of reasons why people did not want players wearing numbers.

You know, again, an oddity from our vantage point, but it made sense at the time.

Yeah, it's kind of an interesting element that's introduced because, you know, football I believe, you know, we definitely know it as probably the ultimate team sport nowadays.

And I think it's sort of always been that way.

And you think maybe there was some resistance to putting numbers on because it gave individualism to players and uniqueness to players instead of rather presenting them as a team.

Yeah, so that was, that was a commonly cited reason.

You know, the football was supposed to be a team sport and so Just, you know, exactly to your point, numbering players would help identify them as individuals and would take away from that team element.

But the other, even the bigger factor in terms of the reason it was resisted was that coaches opposed numbering their players because it would help scouts and opposing coaches and players on the defense figure out who the best players were and more easily identify them as they shifted or changed positions in the course of the game.

And so, you know, there are a lot of, you know, there were people who hung on for, you know, 20, 25 years to not, to not worry.

You know, they, until it was required by league rules or the ncaa, they didn't number their players or they found ways to trick, to pull a little trick trickery on, on the opponents.

Well, I'm sure quarterbacks of the modern era are sure glad there's numbers on them because that's the one way they can identify the mike linebacker all the time.

You always hear them calling out that number who the mic is.

But it'd be hard without a number, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

And.

Well, you know, think about it.

You know, the, you know, there's, well, we'll get to some of these, you know, later on.

But, you know, so not only were there not numbers, but when numbers were introduced, you know, initially they were just, they were temporary.

You know, it wasn't like, you know, Red Grange was the first athlete to have his player, his number retired, his, you know, number 77.

But prior to that, numbers were mostly a temporary thing.

They changed from game to game, stadium to stadium.

You know, people weren't tied to, you know, Jim Brown's 32 or, you know, whatever it may have been.

Let's talk about that.

Okay.

Now, so Amos Alonzo Stagg, he had the idea in your article, but he never didn't really put it into practice right away.

He sort of put it away for reasons that you said.

He didn't want opposing coaches to identify his players and formations and where people were in certain instances, which is very understandable for the competitive aspect of it.

But you bring us to a, another college game where the first recorded numbers were used.

And maybe if you could talk about that a little bit.

Yeah.

So I'm just going to back up a little bit before that just to say that.

So what happened?

It opened, you know, towards the end of the season and one of their innovations because of the desire to, for fans, I mean, so this was the biggest stadium that had been built since the Greeks or The Romans, right?

And so fans were far away from the field.

And to help fans know who was who on the field, what Harvard did was they had these guys on the field that would kind of signal to the guys, to the scoreboard operators, and the scoreboard operators would, like, the fans received a scorecard when they entered the stadium.

And it would have all the Harvard Stadium.

Harvard players listed 1 to 25, and the Princeton players 26 to 50, or whatever it may have been.

And the players didn't have numbers on their jerseys, but the guy who ran with the ball or tackled the ball carrier had their numbers posted on scoreboard so that people could kind of follow along to know who was who.

And he was aware of what Harvard did, but he misunderstood it.

He thought the players actually wore numbers.

So he got Iowa State to agree to have their two teams wear numbers.

They were temporary numbers painted on canvas, and they were sewn onto the backs of their jerseys.

And so that's the first.

That's the first game where American football players wore numbers on their jerseys.

And there's a photograph available of that.

So we know it happened.

It wasn't.

There's no contention about the fact that that occurred.

And like you said, you had, I believe it was.

Drake was wearing the numbers 1 through 25, and in Iowa State was 26 through 50.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

So no repetitive numbers on the field.

Yeah.

And, you know, if you think about it, you know, this is the first time they're.

They're wearing numbers.

They're just trying to figure out a system that would make sense.

And so, you know, back then, a lot of times, you know, teams would wear similar colors and everything, you know, similar colored jerseys.

I mean, that wasn't the case.

You know, Drake, I think, is blue and white.

Iowa State is, you know, maroon, gold.

But nevertheless, I mean, it's.

It was just a way to keep.

Keep the two teams separate and you'd know who was who.

Very, very interesting.

Just the thoughts on how that numbering got started.

I would have never imagined that, but that's very interesting indeed.

Now, okay, so numbers.

Now, how did the evolution of numbers go from there?

So Stagg was one who continued advocating it, for advocating for it, but he didn't.

You know, he was still like, hey, I'm not going to put myself at a Competitive disadvantage.

And so I think the next school that really kind of picked things up was Pitt.

And, you know, they.

They still claim that they were the first to wear numbers, but, you know, we know otherwise, but nevertheless.

So, you know, there were schools like Carlisle with Pop Warner.

They were playing Pitt and Penn State.

It was kind of a number.

The Pennsylvania schools would basically agree with one another that we'll wear numbers when we play one another.

And so it was kind of a negotiated thing.

If the opponent would agree, then you'd agree.

And in other cases, like when Pitt was playing like a St. Louis who wasn't at the same level as Pitt, they'd wear them anyways because they were going to stuff St. Louis in the game, so they didn't really have to worry about it anyways.

So.

So it kind of was still fairly isolated in the.

In the aughts.

The Big Ten recommended, you know, that schools start, you know, having numbers on their jerseys.

And so it was just one of those things that kind of slowly took on or took off, but at the same time, it was all just numbers on the backs.

And what.

What was.

Do you think was the reason for that?

That they just wear them on the backs?

Just so the press box would see, like, a downed player or.

Yeah, you know, the only.

You know, I don't know that I've ever, you know, seen anything, period documentation on why.

I think that the two main reasons were that there was a period where schools wore, like, a school emblem on the front of their jersey.

So that was one reason why you wouldn't want the number and the school emblem on there.

There's a couple names for them, but friction strips, I think the most common name.

So those are the stripes that you see on the fronts of jerseys.

And like a lot of the Red Grange pictures, you see those, and those were.

Those help players.

They'd wear them on their arms, too.

They helped.

They were kind of like nonstick surfaces or they were sticky surfaces.

And so it helped people, you know, keep them from fumbling.

And so schools had all kinds of bizarre decorated fronts of their jerseys.

And I think that that kept the numbers off the front for quite some time.

Eventually you'd see some, like, early 30s, you'd see some with those stripes and the numbers, but that didn't last too long.

Wow.

Pretty much.

You know, people started converting over very.

I didn't, I didn't even think about the strips and the emblems.

I mean, that's a good point.

So very good reason why they would have them just on the backs.

You don't fumble too much on your back, do you?

Yeah, unless you're doing the butt fumble or something, you know, which we'll get later, later episode of that.

But okay, so the, they're wearing them on their backs now.

What was the.

We don't know what the initial numbering scheme was.

It was just to have unique numbers for the players, one through 50, each team, you know, 25 apiece.

But what were some of the other numbers?

Like you're saying the Big Ten bringing them in some of the other conferences.

Was there any methodology of the numbering system that would, we could relate to today?

Well, you know, early on it was just, you know, you'd split them between the teams.

But beyond that there was just, there was never, you know, early on there just was no rhyme or reason to it.

You know, most of the time teams had numbers.

Early on they'd have between like, you know, 1 and 25 because they only had 20 some guys on a roster anyways.

But then, you know, I think probably just people started saying, I want number 77 or whatever it may have been.

And so players at any, any position would wear any kind of number.

There was really no, there's no kind of systemization to it.

And eventually, you know, some of the conferences required numbers.

So like the, the Big Ten required teams to wear numbers.

And so Minnesota and their coach, H.L.

williams, who was, you know, an old school guy who was big on the Minnesota shift, he wanted to protect, keep opponents from recognizing who was shifting where.

And so he kept numbers off his jerseys.

But once it was required, the first game, his team went out there, they went out there with four digit numbers.

So, you know, I've got a picture of their quarterback laying in the end zone and his number is like, you know, 40 or 30, 24, 22 or something like that.

You know, just, it just looks bizarre.

Almost like a prison jersey type number.

And there was another guy in the later, in the 20s, a guy named dad Amos, who was the coach at Furman.

And you know, he just wanted to pull people's leg a little bit.

And they were playing a game against Turks and, and so he, he put the team, he put his team out there wearing Roman numerals instead of Arabic.

Again, just, just tugging on people's chains.

He met the requirement, right?

Yeah.

Because, well, you know, it's classic stuff where coaches follow the letter of the law.

You know, when, when they think it's going to help them in some way, they'll follow the letter of the law or violate it in many cases.

But, you know, that's why the NCAA regulations get so long.

People are going to find loopholes.

That's definitely for sure.

Now I can, I can tell you, like I said, I officiated for 27 years at the high school level.

So I know probably the most important thing in our modern game that numbers do, besides identifying a player.

If there's multiple personal fouls or something, you have some problems with them.

But it's the numbering requirements because so you know who the eligibles are by number and like, you know, 50 through 79, you know, in high school football those are ineligible all the time.

You can't have a, have an ineligible number and go downfield.

In high school level, we know you can in the pros, I think there might, might be able to in the collegiate level.

But so that's really important to us.

Now they were trying to do some things in early football with the early stages of numbering to try to do some of that, to have position specific numbers.

I believe you talked to.

And there's some interesting derivatives of that.

Maybe we could discuss a little bit.

Yeah, so.

Well, this is just, you know, as, as an, an official, you'll appreciate this even though it's basketball.

But, you know, one of the issues that came up with wanting to have numbers on the front of the jerseys, some of that started arising in basketball before football because referee would call a foul on a player and you know, basketball tracks and fouls by player.

Right.

So the referees would have to have the player turn around so they could see their number.

Right.

Because they just wore them on the back too.

But so anyways, in the position issue, it had to be really confusing early on because it wasn't until, I want to say, the late 20s, maybe it was the early 30s before, you know, back then offensive linemen could be downfield on any pass.

There wasn't, you know, the, I mean, now we know offensive line, they have to be behind the line of scrimmage until, unless it's, you know, passed through and behind the line.

But that wasn't the case then.

You know, they could be 20 yards, 30 yards downfield.

So it had to be really hard to figure out who was eligible or not without numbers on the front of their jerseys.

So you know, I think that was one of the things pushing towards, you know, numbers on the front.

The main push was just to have, just to help identify for fans and everybody to identify who's who.

So that would be numbering based on your position, but they didn't say what that would be.

You know, so what would be the standard?

So there were folks who argued that the, that all the ends should have numbers, ended in ones, and the tackle should have numbers ending in two, etc.

And we know that we base the positioning or we align positions and numbers with the first digit rather than the second.

But, you know, that wasn't obvious initially.

So people had alternative systems.

So the first string left end would be E1, the first string left tack would be T1, the right string right and would be E2, an even number.

And first string right tackle would be T2, you know, and so, and backups would be T3 and 4 and all that kind of stuff.

So, you know, there were some that tried that out.

In fact, actually Lehigh, Lehigh used that in like 29, 30, 31.

And there's lots of images of them applying that system.

A couple of teams tried it.

And so, you know, you look at the photos, you go to their, their yearbook and it just looks bizarre, you know, but it made sense.

Yeah, it's probably the most logical system, even more so than today's numbers because it makes perfect sense.

You know what they're, what they're doing in that and.

Yeah, well, you know that, that system made sense in single platoon football.

Okay.

But once you start and players wore numbers based on their offensive position, not their defensive position.

And when, when teams switched from six man to seven man, eight man defensive lines, the numbering got messed up, you know, so.

And then once we went to single platoon or two platoon football, then, you know, Katie bar the door.

Right?

Yeah, it would have been real, been real mess.

Yeah, yeah, he'd have all capital letters, I'm sure Though, with the size that man was.

So, yeah, that.

I mean, that was some.

Some interesting things that they had there.

Now, you also had.

So that was alphanumerical with the.

The alpha coming before the numerical.

But you also have a story of where the numeral came before the Alphabet letter in one instance, and maybe that's an interest to hear, too.

Yeah, so that.

Bear Bryant was the coach there, and he had some.

A set of identical twins, the Jones twins, one of whom was the starting quarterback, you know, at various times, but, you know, significant player.

The other one was more of a substitute, but still played a lot, and he couldn't tell the two apart, so he had them wear 1A and 1B, you know, so everybody else on the team had, you know, normal numbers, but they were 1A and 1B.

They were.

They were those numbers throughout their career, you know, and, you know, you see team pictures of them, and They've got the 1A and 1 1B sitting right in the middle of the team, you know, so it's very clear that they're the oddballs, but they were good players, so, you know, it didn't matter.

Yeah.

I want to point out all most of these descriptions of numbers that Tim's talking about.

Some great, great photographs that you dug up, and they're extremely interesting and worth the looking, too.

So.

Yeah, well.

Yeah.

Thank you.

It's fun.

You know, I spend, you know, a lot of times when I'm just kind of halfway watching a football game, I'm.

I'm flipping through digital copies of old college yearbooks, and so I just spot oddities, you know, and I'm purposely looking for them, trying to find things that say, what's going on here?

So that's where I find half of that stuff, but, you know, another one that along the same lines.

So, like, we know.

So our numbering system is our normal numbering system.

It's, you know, half backs, we're supposed to start with twos, and fullbacks with fours and, you know, et cetera.

But the AAFC, which was a competitor to the NFL post World War II, they used a different numbering system.

So for them, tackle centers wore 20s, guards wore 30s, tackles were 40s, etc.

So quarterbacks were 60s.

And so if you see, you know, old pictures of, like, Norm Van Brocklin and some of those kinds of Guys or Marion Motley, you know, running backs wore 70s, you know, they've got these bizarre numbers, but they were systematic numbers in the afc and the NFL allowed those guys to keep their numbers when the AFC folded and three teams, you know, entered the NFL.

And so a couple of those guys, you know, would keep their old numbers for the first couple of years.

And then, then they said, no, we're all going to go standard.

And so some of those guys switched numbers partway through their careers.

Yeah, that was extremely.

Had to be probably tough for some of those guys, you know, like Motley.

And I think Otto Graham had to change his number.

Van Brock, like you said, you know, you're used to wearing that number.

It's sort of, you know, like today you can't imagine, you know, Aaron Rodgers wearing any other number than 12 or, you know, Tom Brady wearing the other number 12.

Can imagine if they had a.

The NFL was merged into some other league and they said, hey, you got to change your number.

Quarterbacks can't wear 12.

And, you know, that'd be probably hard for the fans and the player themselves to lose some of their identity by losing that number.

Yeah, which again, it's one of those things that, you know, I'm certainly in my mind growing up, Jerry Kramer of the packers was the guy who made the big block in the Ice Bowl.

You know, he was my favorite football player.

And so he.

64.

That was the number.

You know, but, you know, 20 years before that, numbers really didn't make.

Make that much, you know, didn't mean that much to individuals.

Yeah, that's.

That's fascinating.

Now, we had some have had some recent numbering system.

As we were going through our study of the NFL numbers going through one number of times, best players, each number that we noticed started noticing in the 90s that there was less and less hall of Famers where they were more modern players that were.

And that's because the NFL for a long period of time didn't allow players to wear number 90.

They did early on.

And, you know, back in the.

The player for the Cardinals, it just let 99 go to JJ what?

Gold.

The Goldberg?

Yeah, Marshall Goldberg.

Marshall Goldberg.

He, you know, that back in that era they did.

But there was like, probably 30 or 40 years to like the 90s where they started letting like, linebackers start wearing 90s.

Well, you know, the NFL always had smaller rosters than college teams.

So college teams, you know, tended to use more numbers, you know, for, for, you know, post.

Yeah.

From probably the 60s on, you know, when you, when you truly went back to 2 platoon football and you know, some of the teams like the Nebraska's and those folks had 140, 150 kids on the team.

You know, NFL always had fairly small rosters.

Now they're, you know, much bigger.

But so that's part of the reason, you know, why, you know, they just, they didn't need to use the 90s.

Yeah.

And I guess college was it last year.

Just allowed zeros to come back on as a, as a legal number too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

And so Braylon Allen of the Wisconsin Badgers is.

He's 0.

Zeroing out for all of us.

Yeah, that's still, that's still so odd to see that.

You haven't seen that since, you know, maybe the early 70s in the NFL with having players with number zero.

You know, you think of like Otto Grant or not autogram, but Jim Otto.

Double double zeros, you know, but I haven't seen that in decades.

And now you're starting to see some of these collegiate players wearing it.

So very interesting.

Well, you know, I mean, to me it's, it's fun.

You know, I think guys get off on and you know, there's certain teams where a certain number is meaningful.

You know, 32 at Syracuse.

There's, you know, numbers like that that are just.

It's fun and it's meaningful within certain teams to have to wear particular numbers.

And I think that's a great tradition too.

Yeah, it certainly is.

Is there anything else maybe that numbers wise that we have missed over the history of numbers just to cover these.

Wrap this up.

You know, I can't.

I think we've pretty well, you know, covered it.

Yeah, I mean, it's.

Well, the only other thing I think is just that, you know, if, if, if your listeners are, you know, looking at, you know, this is something that we've all seen, but maybe we don't have words for them sometimes.

But in, in the mid-50s, there was a, the, it was like the American Photographers association, some entity like that, as teams were, as games were increasingly being televised.

And then, you know, they're taking pictures and they're trying to identify who's at the bottom of the pile and things like that.

You know, for newspapers, they Wanted more numbers on the uniforms.

The photographers did, and the TV people.

So what, in like, 55, you started seeing teams start putting numbers on the sides of their helmets.

So those were originally called spotter numbers for the spotters up in the booths.

And then a number of conferences required that you wear.

If you look at, like, yearbooks from 58, 59, 60, that era, everybody's got numbers on the sides of their helmets.

Not everybody, but almost everyone.

I think we just saw that.

I think the Cleveland Browns in the last couple weeks just wore one of their throwback uniforms.

They had their numbers back.

You know, I think back when Jim Brown's era, they had numbers on the sides of the helmets for the Browns.

Yeah.

And then the other thing was TV numbers.

So those tended.

Originally, Georgia Tech in 55 was first one to wear TV numbers, which were numbers on the.

On their shoulder pads or numbers on their shoulders.

And then those became popular.

Some teams wore them on their sleeves.

Right.

But again, that's one of those things we just take for granted.

We see numbers on various locations on jerseys, but, you know, that had a beginning, too.

So.

But that.

That was really more about, again, helping people watching on tv on the small televisions of the time and spotters up in the box and press people, helping them identify who is who on the field.

Yeah, it probably would be helpful now, most.

Because how many times you see, like, a player go down and.

And they're down in the field and some attendance are hovering over them, covering up their numbers, and the announcers are lost.

They don't know who it is.

They know which team it is, but they don't know which player it is for a few moments.

But probably those TV numbers, if we had them today, might be helpful in that respect.

Yeah, I mean, you know, you know, Alabama still has the spotter numbers on their helmet.

A lot of teams have TV numbers somewhere, you know, on their.

On their jerseys.

But even then, you know, like you say, you know, some lineman's laying on the ground and, you know, it's hard to figure out who he is.

Right.

And they're all gigantic human beings, so it's hard to identify him.

You know, if you have, you know, Tyree Kill on the ground, you probably can recognize it who might be on the ground if you can't see his number.

But some of the, you know, you have the big jumbo guys in the middle.

Boy, they're sure are big guys.

So it's hard to tell.

But, Tim, I really appreciate you coming on here and sharing this great history that you dug up on these fascinating variations of the number history of the jerseys on football.

It's extremely fascinating and you always have some great topics on there on your fields of friendly strife dot com.

Do you have anything coming up in the near future that we can look forward to that you're going to have coming out?

It didn't really exist but you know, basically it's focused on Northwestern University in particular.

But as, as, as servicemen were leaving the service in World war following World War I, they had an opportunity to go to various universities and just so happened a bunch of them went to Northwestern.

And so I'm trying to writing an article about that right now.

You know, I've got some other things coming up, you know, related to the Rose bowl before there was a Rose bowl, the building, you know, the stadium.

So you know, just trying to find a couple of, you know, kind of seasonal topics, you know, if you will.

Well, sounds like some great stuff.

I can't wait to read them and I'm sure the listeners can either.

Again, if you want to give us maybe your website address again and any social media like to share with us before we let you go, we'd appreciate it.

Yeah, so I'm my website is just, you know, fieldsofriendlystrife.com you know, that's the name of my first book and I just have kind of left the left the website with the same name.

I am, I've got, I'm on Twitter and every time I post a new, I post all my new articles on Twitter.

So there I'm just at fofs.

But if you, you know, if you search for my name, Timothy P. Brown or Fields of Friendly Strife, you're probably going to find me.

I've got a Facebook page dedicated as well.

And again mostly all I do on on Facebook in particular is just I post post my new article.

So whichever way that you find to follow you can also follow me from my website itself.

But you know it's, it's available and just you know, welcome everybody to, to come on in and take a look at the articles, comment, tell me what's you know, if there's things you'd like to hear about or read about.

You know, I'm open to, open to ideas.

Not saying I'm going to follow all but you know, certainly open to it.

And you know, I've been collaborating with some other people, you know of late as well.

So that's fun.

You know, somebody else has a great idea and we kind of put our heads together and read put an article together.

It's like the one about the first Southern team to play in the North.

You know, I collaborated with guy named James Gilbert, a UNC fan and I think put together a fun and really interesting article.

So yeah, that's great, great stuff.

And listeners we will have we have a link on the show notes of this episode that take you to Tim's site, the field of Friendly Strife.com so you can follow that way and get to his social from there as he said.

So make sure you can use that link too if it's available to you.

So Tim, I really appreciate you coming on or spending the time with us.

We always enjoy having you on.

Hope to have you on again real soon and take care and have a great holiday season.

Yep, you've got my number and so anytime.

More than happy to more than happy to talk but and you know, obviously you and your listeners have a wonderful holiday and enjoy it all.

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

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