The episode elucidates the intriguing origins of end zone decoration and the evolution of the spiral snap, pivotal elements in the annals of American football. Our esteemed guest, football historian Timothy P. Brown, provides an in-depth exploration of how the relocation of goalposts in 1927 instigated a design renaissance on the gridiron, giving rise to some of the most distinctive field markings that we recognize today. We delve into the contributions of A.W. Briggs, who devised a novel method of marking the field, and his brother H.R. Briggs, who significantly advanced the technique of the spiral snap. This discussion not only highlights the innovative spirit of the Briggs brothers but also places their achievements within the broader context of football history, enriching our understanding of the game's development. Join us as we uncover these fascinating narratives that have shaped the sport we cherish.

Football Archaeology's Timothy Brown joins us to tell the tale of the Brigs brothers and their contributions to the modern game of American football.

Timothy Brown's FootballArchaeology.com is a website dedicated to preserving pigskin history. Digs into gridiron history to examine how football’s evolution shapes today's game.

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Have you ever wondered why end zones are decorated or how the spiral snap actually began?

Joining us today is the football historian Timothy P. Brown to reveal the fascinating story of A.W.

Briggs, grid markings and how his brother, H.R.

Briggs, changed the game forever by perfecting the spiral snap against the legends like Jim Thorpe.

Let's dig into the archaeology of the game with footballarchaeology.com's Timothy Brown.

Hey there.

Looking forward to chatting once again and just want to remind you of what they used to say.

It's fun to play at the YMCA training school in Springfield, Mass.

I. I don't remember that verse from the Village People.

Yeah, it's the beginning of it.

You just, you know, it's.

It's one of the cutout, you know, EP kind of versions.

Yeah.

We have smaller radio stations here in Erie, so maybe they just condense the song a little bit.

Yeah.

I grew up in a big city of Milwaukee, so, you know, we were.

We were on top of things there.

Yeah, I guess so.

Well, we are poorly trying to allude into one of Tim's recent tidbits that he wrote.

And this is a lot of words here.

So, A.W.

Briggs, H.R.

Briggs, the YMCA and Jim Thorpe.

Now, that is quite an array of words there, Tim.

And a lot of three different people, an institution that everybody in America is familiar with.

How do these all connect in your story?

Well, you know, I kind of alluded to this a lot in last week's episode, but so some tidbits, and some.

Some of my favorite ones are things where, like, the storyline is one where it's.

It's kind of like a good Seinfeld episode where these seemingly unrelated topics and actions, you're going, where.

Where is he going with this?

And then at the end, the golf balls and the wheels, you were starting.

To make me nervous when you started talking about Seinfeld and your arms were moving.

I thought you're gonna start dancing like Elaine.

And we.

No, no, we can't have that on this program.

So anyways, this is one of those where it's kind of like, it's, you know.

So I wrote a tidbit quite some time ago about.

Everyone was concerned about how are people going to know where the goal line is?

Because everybody's so used to the goal posts designating the Goal line.

That it was like, are people going to realize that you can score 10 yards in front of the goal posts?

And I mean, it was like in all the papers, everybody is, you know, stewing about this that whole summer.

And so, you know, a lot of schools develop solutions to try to figure out how do we distinguish the goal line now that the goal posts are 10 yards further back.

And so one of the things that they did was there were a couple schools that put these little paper pieces of paper on, like, it's like on popsicle sticks or something that all along the goal line, you know, they put these little paper markers to designate this is the goal line.

Right.

More commonly, people put tackling dummies at the corner of the sideline in the goal line.

They put flags there, you know, pennants on long sticks, you know, different designators like that, which today, you know, that's where the pylon comes from.

Right.

I mean, that's our pylon is a descendant of that kind of thinking.

But probably the most common thing they did was to decorate the end zone.

You know, they started doing diagonal stripes in the end zone or, you know, down south, a couple different schools did the, the checkerboards, you know, which are common today.

I think Tennessee still does that and there's probably a couple of others.

So.

You know, something you don't even.

It, it doesn't make any sense to us now, but it made total sense to them, to them at the time.

So anyways, fairly recently I came across a story about A.W.

Briggs, who was the coach at Southwestern Normal, which then became Southwest Missouri State and is now Missouri State.

And so he, like everybody else, is trying to figure out, how are we going to designate, you know, where the goal line is.

And his idea, which he implemented was he created, I think it was seven or eight.

But anyways, he set up, he painted stripes running perpendicular to the goal line and the five between the goal line and the five yard line.

He had a bunch of lines running perpendicular to, to the yard stripes and the goal line.

And you know, he had been around back, you know, when the.

We had the checkerboard field.

So, you know, that probably, you know, that made sense to him.

So he did that at both ends of the field and to my knowledge, no one else did, but that, that was his solution.

So this Was in the field of play between the five yard.

That's right on the field of play.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so.

So that's what he did.

And so I'm like, okay, well, as I'm researching A.W.

Briggs, I'm trying to figure out, you know, who is this guy?

Where does he come from?

And it turns out that, you know, I learned that he played, you know, attended and played for what's now Springfield College.

But at the time, it was the YMCA training school.

So it was the school where, you know, if you wanted to be an athletic director type of person at YMCAs around the country, you went there.

And then a lot of them went into coaching and teaching, you know, physical education and stuff.

But so he.

And so he went there.

So then this is.

This is the same school where Amos alonzo Stagg and Dr. James Naismith invented basketball.

And.

Okay, yeah.

And they were one of the.

One of the early forward passing innovator, innovator schools.

They had a guy named McCurdy was their coach, and, you know, he was, you know, throwing.

Throwing the pass against Harvard, you know, doing some, you know, crazy stuff.

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So, okay, so when I had read that, I was aware that there was a guy named Briggs who had played at ymca, who was the guy who, best as I can tell, invented this, the spiral snap from center.

So he played center for them, and he actually arrived there having developed that in high school in Salem, Massachusetts.

So I'm like, okay, is there a relationship between A.W.

Briggs, the guy at.

In Missouri, and H.R.

Briggs, the guy of the spiral snap?

And so, you know, I end up checking census records and whatnot and find out that AW is the older brother of HR you know, so.

And that makes sense, right?

I mean.

Yeah.

To go there.

So it's just kind of a neat connection.

And so anyways, so then as.

It's actually in the early forward passes, kind of a famous game YMCA plays Carlisle.

And they.

They ran.

YMC ran passes from a spread formation.

And, you know, they were throwing the pee all over the.

All over the field.

But anyways, I found a picture of H.R.

Briggs chasing down Jim Thorpe while.

When they were playing one another.

And so that's.

That's.

That's the only connection of Jim Thorpe to the rest of the story.

So that's kind of it.

But, you know, yeah, the.

You know, he passed.

Jim Thorpe passed through where AWS lines would have been had the field been lined in with his things.

Carlisle won the game.

But.

But it was.

It was.

I think it was reasonably close.

But anyways, just one of those bizarre things.

But.

So that's the Seinfeld element to it.

Yeah.

Thorpe was everywhere, that's for sure.

In all sports, he was quite the guy.

Wow.

I mean, that's an amazing connection that, you know, people probably, you.

You might be the only one in the last, you know, century that would even probably remember that or know there was a connection there.

And I'm glad that you took the wherewithal to research it and then to share it with the world, you know, not only on your tidbit with us here in this episode tonight, because we would never appreciate what these guys did.

You know, the spiral snap.

We take it for granted.

You know, lines down near the end zone.

We take it for granted.

You know, you wouldn't have Tennessee's probably checkerboard if it wasn't for some of the innovation or, you know, some of the other famous things that.

The commercial where the.

The guy misspells chiefs in, the Snickers commercial as a chef, just, you know, just some things we take for granted.

But.

Part of it was I had.

It wasn't too long ago that I published a book about the early forward pass.

And so, you know, I spent a lot of time researching the YMCA school because they were pretty early innovators.

And actually, the first book I found on, dedicated to the forward pass, is written by the guy who followed this McCurdy as the coach, guy named Elmer Barry.

But anyways, you know, I was able to get a copy of that book, and so.

But, you know, I. I was aware of Briggs before that even, you know, hr but it's just kind of cool that these two guys end up being brothers and.

Yeah, man, that's awesome.

Well, as long as you.

You brought it up, why don't you tell us a little bit about your book where, you know, where people can get it a little bit more.

More about what it's about and give us some props.

Yes.

Yeah.

So, you know, I, you know, I wrote How Football Became Football, and then.

Then I decided to kind of pursue, like, more targeted.

That was kind of a broad survey of the game.

I decided to pursue more targeted topics and just kind of dig into selected things.

And so the most recent one is when football came to pass.

And it's basically the first decade of forward pass, you know, so it covers a little bit of the beforehand, how it came about, but it really concentrates on, you know, the challenge of.

Of formulating how to throw the ball.

I mean, they had no idea how to throw a forward pass, how to design plays to do something that had never been done before in football.

So there's just a lot of technique and conceptual challenges to making that happen.

And then the rules were just, you know, there were a lot of bizarre rules early on that we can't.

We can't even imagine, you know, them being in place.

And we'll talk about those in some future episodes.

But anyways, you know, it's one of those things where it's a, it was really a fun book to, to learn more about the early forward pass.

It's a fun book to read and to learn about it, too.

So.

Well, hopefully the reader, you know, I know the writer enjoyed it, you know, you know, it's up to the reader to tell me whether they enjoyed it or not.

But.

Yeah.

So how do people get their hands on.

Yeah.

So, you know, all my books are available on, on Amazon and I know there's some people out there who don't like Amazon.

So if you don't like Amazon, contact me directly and we can work it out and I can send you copy.

All right.

Well, Tim, we really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and your resources and your research and explaining, you know, the antiquity of football and how it became the modern game that we love so much.

And we love to talk to you again next week.

Well, I enjoy the.

And appreciate the opportunity to talk about it here.

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 Big Skin Dispatch YouTube channel to get all of your positive football news and history.

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