Here are some of the headlines we hit on in this episode: the 1973 NFL rules revisions to number and the clock as well as a great defensive back in the College HOF who celebrates a birthday on April 5.

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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 would like 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.

It's all coming up in just a moment.

This is the Pixkin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history on a day to day basis.

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

So with Mike and Gene Monroe as well as Jason Neff supplying us with their tunes, let's go.

No huddle through today's football history headline.

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 Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com and welcome to your football history headlines on the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch podcast for this April 5th edition.

And we're going to talk about a great hall of Fame birthday of a Michigan State Spartan that you may remember.

He was a pretty good one.

But before we do that, I want to talk about change.

I remember as a football official, as a young football official, I got put onto a crew with four other gentlemen that we would do varsity games almost every single Friday night and sometimes Saturdays during the football season.

We spent a lot of time together doing, you know, scrimmages in the preseason and then you're doing 10 to 12 varsity football games together as well and sometimes getting some playoff games and sharing that experience too.

We spent a lot of time together.

One of the rituals before the games is our referee and our umpire would sort of have a banter between the two of them.

And the umpire had some cardiac problems in his past, so he was on some nitroglycerin pills.

So.

So he would always make sure sort of their stand up routine.

He would tell the referee who was his buddy, hey, if I go down, make sure you go in my left pocket, grab my nitro pills and put one under the tongue.

And the referee would always look at him and say, how's that going to help you if I put one of those nitro pills under my tongue?

And it was just a great way to break the ice.

There's a sign that we should all settle down.

And we were going to go over some pre game rules, interpretations and go over some positioning and things like that to get our minds focused on the game.

It was sort of that last little chuckle before we got the serious business and went out and did our jobs on the football field.

But as those two disembarked from our crew, we lost some of that comedic humor and we had to change and get into some other routines that sort of put us in that same mold.

And we found some of those things and had some fun with those.

We'll probably talk about those on some future podcast episodes, some other stories.

In defensive linemen and offensive linemen other than centers would be numbers 60 through 79, wide receivers 80 to 89, and the number 0 and double 0 and 90 through 99 were no longer allowed to be issues, even though these numbers were rarely used.

Anyways.

But we had about nine years where you had nobody zero, double zero or 90 through 99.

Kind of an interesting numbering system.

And the purpose of the numbering system basically is you want to have, you know, basically 50 through 79.

Those numbers are ineligible to catch passes on the offensive side of the ball.

So it makes it a little bit easier for officials to keep track of them.

You know, of course, they can be illegal by position, as you often see, you know, ineligible downfield.

Some, some calls like that will make it illegal touching downfield.

You know, the 50 through 79 numbers had to be only by linemen, offensive linemen, and anybody else anywhere on the field could wear whatever number they wanted to.

We talked about that a few days ago to get those linemen under control because there were some, you know, players like on the Cleveland Browns that were number 30 and, you know, playing offensive line just didn't make a lot of sense and it was hard to keep track of.

So that's why they, they did that in 52.

But 73 was the big numbering change that straightened out some of the numbers that we see today.

I mean, other rule revisions.

On that same day of April 5th, the NFL where defensive players could not jump on a teammate while trying to block a kick.

You know, they couldn't use a teammate as sort of a ladder to climb that ladder and block the kick, get a little taller in the air.

So they made that illegal.

And the clock was to start at the snap following a change of position.

This was big because previously the clock would start on the change of possession when the ball was spotted by the referee.

You know, the umpire puts the ball down, the referee goes back to his hits.

The ready for play.

A clock would start even if it was a punt out of bounds or you know, turnover on downs.

And the games really flew by.

There was a lot of seconds ticked off the clock of valuable football plays and times that would be lost by having that rule.

So this rule, you know, clock didn't start until the snap after a change of possession.

Good rule that's been adopted by I think all levels of football now.

So that's, that's a real good rule.

Another rule that came up on that day is if there's a foul by the offensive team, it's followed by a change of possession.

The period can be extended by one play other than by the team that committed the foul.

This if the receiving team commits a foul after the ball's kick, the possession presumed would have changed and the receiving team keeps the ball.

So there's some other good changes that came about.

Now let's shift gears a little bit.

Let's go to your hall of Famer that has a birthday day.

I'm gonna mispronounce this, so please excuse me if you folks from Michigan.

Owasso, Michigan.

Maybe I did say it right.

The Michigan State Spartans hard hitting safety Brad Van Pelt was born.

And he also became the first defensive back to ever gain the attention as the nation's best player by winning the Maxwell Award.

Van Pelt was given the Columbus Touchdown Club's Defensive Player of the Year honor as well as being named to the Chevrolet Defensive Player of the Year honor as well.

And what a career he had, posting 14 interceptions and taking two of them all the way to the house.

Brad went on to become a five time Pro Bowler as he played in the NFL for 14 seasons with the New York Giants, Cleveland Browns and the Oakland Raiders.

I mean those are some great numbers from a defensive back and to win that Maxwell Award, be the first defensive back to win the the Maxwell were the nation's best player.

You know, we know the Heisman is what we really look at for the top player in NFL or in college football.

I mean but the Maxwell Award is really that who is the best player and it's quite a prestigious award as well as the Heisman Trophy winner.

But a defensive back winning it, that's really something special and really something that Brad Van Pelt is famous for and a great NFL career too.

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And until tomorrow, everybody have a great gridiron day.

Peeking up at the clock, the time's running down.

We're gonna go into victory formation.

Take a knee and let this baby run out.

Thanks for joining us.

We'll see you back tomorrow for the next podcast.

We invite you to check out our website pickskindispatch.com not only to see the daily football history, but to experience positive football with our many articles, the Good People of the Game, as well as our own football comic strip, clete marks comics.

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Special thanks to the talents of Mike and Gene Monroe as well as Jason Neff for letting us use their music during our podcast.

This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear of your favorite sport.

You can learn more at Sports History Network network.

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