This podcast episode delves into the rich tapestry of football history while simultaneously illuminating the forthcoming rule changes for the 2025 NFL season. We engage in a thorough examination of the anticipated adjustments, particularly the efforts to reinstate the excitement of kickoff returns, a facet long yearned for by avid fans. Furthermore, we traverse the annals of football lore, uncovering the intriguing etymology behind the nickname of the Kansas Jayhawks, offering insights into the historical context that birthed this moniker. As we navigate through the juxtaposition of past and present, we also reflect upon the evolving landscape of player numbering, a topic that has garnered considerable attention in recent seasons. Join us as we explore these themes, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of both the legacy of the sport and its future trajectory.

Join us at the Pigskin Dispatch website and the Sports Jersey Dispatch to see even more Positive football news! Sign up to get daily football history headlines in your email inbox @ Email-subscriber

Don't forget to check out and subscribe to the Pigskin Dispatch YouTube channel for additional content and the regular Football History Minute Shorts.

Miss our football by the day of the year podcasts, well don't, because they can still be found at the Pigskin Dispatch website.

Hold on to your hats and put on your earpieces because we have a great show for you tonight.

Always here to entertain, always here to be your portal to football history.

We're ready and ready to go here in just a moment right after this message.

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

Your host, Darrin Hayes, his PODC 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 positive football history.

As we get ready for the National Football League season, it's about to commence.

We have a lot of things to talk about, both old and new.

And then we're going to go back into time a little bit and, and talk a little bit of some old NFL and talk about another origin story of a famous college team's nickname, one that I think you'll really enjoy.

Really have some interesting ones that the NFL is trying to bring the kickoff return back to the game.

Something that fans have been clamoring for for years, ever since they've had.

So, you know, the kickers boot the ball all the way in the end zone when they move the kick line up.

And you know, the kickoff return is such an exciting play and can really change the whole dynamic of a game.

So really happy to do that.

So here's what they did.

They left the dynamic kick rule pretty much the same.

The offensive and defensive lines of kicking and return teams, I should say, are, you know, five yards apart downfield.

They cannot move until the ball is touched downfield.

They still have that, that 20 yard bucket from the the goal line to the 20 yard line where the kicker who stands all the way down at his 30 yard line by himself has to kick the ball, make it land in there if it goes in the end zone.

One rule changes now.

Last year it went to the 30 yard line for the return team.

Now it goes to the 35.

So a little bit more incentive to try to Drop that kick into the bucket.

Don't let it go into the end zone for the touchback.

Get the 35, make them earn that yardage by running it out.

So we're going to see a lot of interesting things happening from that, including more kickoff returns as the NFL's hope.

And a few of the the preseason games I've watched so far were very early into the preseason when this was being recorded.

Of course, there's only been about three games played, but there has been more kick return in my observation.

Don't have the official stats on that, but I think it's a higher percentage kick returns and people are starting to figure that out and make them return the ball.

So that's kind of an interesting thing.

But something I also noticed watching the games tonight or last night was some of the numbering exceptions.

You know, you.

I think it was the Baltimore Ravens game.

The Baltimore commentators were saying, you know, hey, if you fell asleep for a couple years and woke up into an NFL game in the modern times, you might be confused by the numbers that, you know, they're absolutely right.

You know, we have linebackers with single digit numbers now.

There's players out there with the number zero, which the NFL allowed a few years ago to come back, if you remember that rule change.

But one interesting thing that I saw tonight was the kicker for the Baltimore Ravens, at least in this preseason game, was wearing number 33.

Now this takes you back to maybe the All America Football Conference show when the Cleveland Browns were first starting up in the 49ers, when they had all kinds of crazy numbers, had no numbering exceptions at all.

And you know, some backs were wearing, you know, 77 and crazy numbers like that, and linemen were wearing 13 and all kinds of fun like that.

It's really kind of a while west of the the jersey numbers.

I'm not sure if I like it or if I don't like it.

It was kind of nice to know that you had your numbers for limited and you know, number 10 and 12 was probably going to be a quarterback or a kicker and not, you know, a defensive end or things like that.

But it also brings a little bit of fun to the game.

It probably really helps the jersey sales too.

Some of those stale numbers that you wouldn't think would be all that great.

Well, now they're good.

But one place where the numbering restrictions have not loosened up at all and that is in the offensive line.

The tackle, guard and centers still have that, you know, 59 through 79 or I'm sorry, 50 through 79 numbers.

The, you know, for obvious reasons, for make sure you don't have ineligibles downfield, you can identify your interior alignment a little bit easier for the umpires and you know, the center central judges there.

So that makes it a little bit easier to manage the game from an officiating standpoint, which I get because I've been there before, I understand that and I think that's kind of a.

A good idea and a cool way to do it.

And you know, I guess maybe we'll start end this first segment with kind of an interesting story that I, I picked up from a book is really classic that the Pro Football Chronicles, which were written by a couple of gentlemen, Dan Daly and Bob O', Donnell, who were journalists back in the 80s and early 90s.

And they said, hey, you know, there's a lot of interesting things that happen in football history.

Let's put them down.

You know, they'.

Some.

Some things back then and put them together.

Things that we, we're sort of taking for granted now.

But it's really a neat little book to, to get.

If you happen to get your hands on one of them.

It's a kind of a cool book.

But they have one story we've talked about C.C.

And this guy was sort of, you know, he was a great businessman.

He did everything for his client, he.

But he was also a showman at heart and he had a trick that he would do and he actually, according to the book, sought the help of Jim Thorpe, another famous player of that same era, just a little bit before his time, maybe the 19 before the World War I was probably his best athletic prowess.

But he played in the NFL, was the first president NFL.

But CC Pyle would use Thorpe to take.

They take two identically marked quarters and he'd give one to Thorpe, give Thorpe an orange, and Thorpe would embed the quarter into the orange.

So C.C.

pyle would use this parlor trick where he'd bring out his.

The quarter and show everybody, look at this marking on a quarter, quarter.

And he'd flip around his hand, slide a hand, pull it out of somebody's ear, you know, who knows what he's.

Whatever you do with a quarter to make it look fancy.

And then he'd, you know, point across the room to the orange that Thorpe had.

Thorpe would throw the orange to some suspecting, you know, person that was in the audience.

They would open up the orange and voila, the quarter would be inside it.

Well, Thorpe decided to be a smart Alec one day and Pyle was going through his parlor trick and, and doing a whole thing.

And the orange was opened and two times and a nickel fell out of the the orange.

And boy, CC Pyle was red hot.

Man was not known to have a bad temper, to get angry, but he was kind of peeved at, at Mr. Thorpe for pulling that fast one on him.

And I'm sure everybody got a good chuckle out of that, except for C.C.

pyle.

Just an interesting story from the other side of the game of football and some of the things that people did in their pastime, using some of their fame and fortune to have an audience and be a showman.

Yeah.

After all, it's entertainment.

And speaking of entertainment, we're going to take a break from this history entertainment podcast and we'll be right back after this message.

In this exciting show, if you have.

Ever seen a sports story on TV or online or maybe in a newspaper, chances are once upon a time, you have seen it before.

Hello, I'm Dana Augusta, former sportswriter and now podcaster, and I host a show called Historically Speaking Sports, where we place a historical spin on a current sports headline or take the topic that most people are talking about and compare and contrast it through the lens of sports history.

In this show, we talk to researchers, authors and other sports history connoisseurs about what fans and analysts are talking about.

Yet in the terms of sports history, we also do a weekly top five countdown highlighting moments that pertain to the subject of the show or are the five greatest moments in the history of sports that took place that week.

And to complete the show, we send a shout out to a famous sports figure or a moment in sports history that both pertains to that episode or someone who had a dramatic role in sports history or an event in history that fans just need to be reminded of.

The show Historically Speaking Sports, where we put a historical spin on sports headlines.

That's Historically Speaking Sports right here on the Sports History Network.

This is Greg Tranter, co author of the Buffalo Bills an illustrated timeline of a storied team book.

And you are listening to the Pigskin Dispatch podcast.

You know, we look at some of these college Football teams and you look at some of their names and the last time we talked about the Cornhuskers and how Nebraska got that name.

Well, another name from the Midwest, that sort of an odd name that you don't hear in too many places except in college football, at least for my aspect is the Kansas jayhawks.

What the heck exactly is a jayhawk?

Is it a bird?

Is it a, you know, mythical creature?

Is it, you know, a person?

I have no idea what a jayhawk is.

I had to look this up.

It's really kind of an interesting tale and it's really specific to the state of Missouri and Kansas, the Missouri Valley, I'm sorry, but Kansas, that Missouri River Valley and some of the things that happen there.

Now, there is no such animal or creature as a jayhawk.

There is all.

But there are blue jays, which if we have them up in the north and I'm sure they're the same in, in Kansas.

But you know, jayhawks are noisy birds when you're out in the woods and you know, they're almost like the, the sound alarm, the fire alarm in the forest.

Because if you're out trying to hunt and be quiet or just out there trying to bird watch or anything, those blue jays will squawk and do their call to make sure everybody around, all the other animals in the forest are aware that hey, somebody's violating their space, this human being is in there and they do that for everybody.

And they a very noisy bird, kind of an annoyance and but very beautiful bird, you know, very colorful.

You know, they're God given colors of, are very vibrant blue if you've ever seen a blue jay.

And there's also the sparrow hawk which goes in and kills small animals, mice and rats and small chipmunks and things like that, you know.

The blue jays are also known to be rob other birds of their nests and you know, home wrecker type of thing and kill the young and eggs and everything else.

So these two are almost predatory birds to other fowl, I guess, into small rodents and smaller animals.

And they're not very big themselves.

But that is not where the jayhawks get their name from.

But the, the blue jay and the sparrow hawk gave the name because of their feistiness and fight to people that lived in the Kansas area.

It happened on more than one occasion.

You know, the anytime that people would band together in the lawless ages before Kansas was a state, when it was just a territory and there really was no lawmen or share local sheriff or anything, these were just, you know, it Was a wild west really.

And anytime that people would band together to fend off evildoers or some threat, they were known to band together and be Jayhawks in this area because of the feistiness of these birds and banding together.

So it happened multiple times.

It happened, you know, post Civil War as people that were against slavery would fight off the, I guess Confederate forces or guerrilla forces of the Confederacy who were trying to move in and take up area to may have it become a slave state to help.

That's cause of Dixie back then.

It also happened when, you know, there were some bad guys in town and they would get together a posse and they were called Jayhawkers.

So really happened multiple times anytime people would gather together.

And it seemed like when the Kansas football team got together and got a little momentum and started getting organized a little bit, they said, you know, we've always had it when people grouped together.

They were fiery and feisty and put up a fight.

They would be called Jayhawks.

And that was the appropriate name for their football team at the University of Kansas, the Kansas Jayhawks.

And that's how they became them.

And that's why that moniker is theirs alone and kind of interesting and unique way to have that nickname and that mascot.

So I learned a little bit something there.

Hopefully you did too on that.

Now this was the first really organized professional football team in the west, the west coast in LA area anyway.

So think about this is like, you know, a few years before World War II.

And they would do all kinds of crazy things.

And one of the things that they would do is they had the befuddled huddle where all 11 players would get up on the line after coming out of the huddle and then when the ball snapped, they all like would crunch down like they had possession of the ball and they're diving down and so people can't see it.

You know, there have their arms on their stomachs and tucked in there.

So it was hard for the defense to tell who had the ball.

And you know, I'm sure the defense probably just figured out, say, okay, we have 11 guys, they have 11 guys, everybody just tackle somebody and we'll tackle the ball carrier eventually with that.

So that was just one of the interesting things they did.

But they would were the first team to spread their ends out wide.

One reporter said that the ends were so wide that they, some of them climbed up into the first row of the bleachers of the stadium watching them.

So just some wide open stuff, throwing passes, double passes, you know, laterals, double laterals, all kinds of crazy things by the LA Bulldogs.

And that made them a very entertaining piece for those who watched it and put a little bit of fun into the game of football.

And you know, some things that we see today that when you see razzle dazzle teams, it's kind of fun to watch, but nothing like a team that's running the fundamentals and, and doing it well.

And they're usually the ones that have success though.

So we hope you enjoyed it, I hope you had a great week.

And until next time, everybody have a great gridiron day.

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

Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

We invite you to check out our website, pigskindispatch.com not only to see the daily football history, but to experience positive football with our many articles on the good people of the game as well as our own football comic strip cleat marks comics pigskindispatch.com it's also on social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and don't forget the Pigskin Dispatch YouTube channel to get all of your positive football news and history.

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@sportshistorynetwork.com.