This episode introduces an innovative application that enhances one's football knowledge through a daily trivia game focused on historical NFL events. We chat with Morgan Kenyon, the creator of GridironGuru.app, who explains the app's mechanics: it challenges users to arrange facts on a timeline, thereby deepening their understanding of the sport. Kenyon's motivation stems from a desire to create a casual yet engaging platform for fans to connect over football trivia, fostering conversations and camaraderie among users. The discourse further explores the app's potential for future features, including competitive elements that could enhance user engagement. As we navigate the conversation, it becomes evident that the intersection of technology and sports history offers an enriching experience for game enthusiasts.

A compelling conversation unfolds as we engage with Morgan Kenyon, the visionary behind the Gridiron Guru app, which transforms the way fans interact with football history through daily trivia challenges. The episode delves into the motivations that inspired Kenyon to create a platform that not only entertains but also educates football enthusiasts. By presenting users with a series of events to sequence on a timeline, the app offers a unique opportunity for fans to test their knowledge of NFL history in an engaging way, making it a perfect fit for those who wish to showcase their expertise in a brief yet impactful way. Throughout our discussion, we explore the app's features and the rationale behind its design. Kenyon articulates how the trivia format encourages casual interaction among friends, allowing users to connect over their shared love for football. He underscores the app's accessibility, making it possible for anyone to participate without dedicating extensive amounts of time. This emphasis on brevity and engagement is crucial in a world where fans often have limited opportunities to indulge in their passion for the sport. As the conversation progresses, we examine the role of trivia in fostering a sense of community among fans, as individuals can share their scores and challenge one another, thus enhancing their collective experience of football culture. The episode also offers reflections on the historical context of the NFL, with both hosts reminiscing about their own journeys as fans. Kenyon discusses the significance of specific eras, particularly the Super Bowl era, in shaping his understanding and appreciation of football. The dialogue emphasizes how shared knowledge and historical narratives serve to connect fans across generations, reinforcing the idea that football is more than just a game; it is a vital part of personal and communal identity. This episode not only showcases the innovative aspects of the Gridiron Guru app but also highlights the enduring power of football to bring people together, fostering connections that transcend time and space.

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Sports History Theme Song

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You ever have those times during a day where you want to show off your football fandom and knowledge but just don't know how to do it?

And you only have a few minutes?

Well, we have a gentleman joining us today that talks about an app he created that may just fill that void.

That story is coming up in just a moment.

Check it out.

Pigskin dispatch video.

Yeah.

Woohoo.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And boy, do we have an entertaining show for you tonight.

We have a gentleman that made a trivia game, a website about the game of football, what we talk about every single day.

His name is Morgan Kenyon, and he's here joining us tonight.

Morgan, welcome to the Pig Pen.

Thank you, Darren.

I'm happy to be here.

Yeah.

So, Morgan, why don't you.

Let's get right to the topic.

Tell us a little bit about your site, what it's called, called where people can find it and what it's all about.

Yeah, so I made a daily trivia game for just historical NFL events.

Facts, players, you know, miscellaneous events.

You can access it at gridironguru app.

Yeah.

Basically every day you get eight facts, and you need to sort them on a timeline so you know which events happen first, which events happen after that or later.

You get an event one at a time.

So you know, you have one event, then you get another event, and you know, before or after, then you have two events and you get a third event.

And so as you get more events on the timeline, it gets harder and harder to know, like, where each slot goes.

And so I wanted something like, easy, something daily, something that wouldn't take me, you know, 30 minutes.

But it's, you know, pretty casual.

Um, this is something I feel like, you know, you could, you know, text friends about, like, hey, I scored A, you know, 28 out of 28 is perfect score.

And so it's, you know, you take a minute, play through it, send it to your friends, you can talk about it.

So.

So every day it's a different round of questions.

Yeah, every day it's a different round of questions.

Yeah, there is.

There's a lot of football facts, NFL.

I don't know if you've heard, like, NFL prints out a book every year.

It's called NFL Fact and Records.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, you know, those are.

I guess I think they only do ebooks now, but for a while they were 500 pages.

As a matter of fact.

That's really where I gained my interest.

You know, I'm, I'm a little bit older than you, so my, my dad, when I was probably about 11 or 12, brought home a little paperback.

And I just, I mean, I, I think I looked at that thing for 10 years.

Of course, I'm from Western Pennsylvania.

The Steelers were at their dynasty at that point, so everything was, you know, centered around that.

But yeah, I love that book.

That was, that was awesome.

So that's, that's where you get a lot of your information from.

I, I have two right now.

I'm buying more, but, you know, I use Wikipedia and then pro football stats.

Is that that website?

Pro Football Reference?

Yeah, probably that, yeah.

Pro Football Reference, yeah.

And my, I have an 8 year old, a 4 year old, and my 8 year old loves looking at football books.

And I think it was last year he went through a season of like, he just knew facts.

You give him a year and he could be like, oh, that's when the Cowboys won their first Super Bowl.

Now is this, does your site, Is it just the super bowl era?

Does it go the entire NFL, the whole 106 years now or hundreds?

It's mainly super bowl era.

Um, this, I'm pretty early into this.

You know, I created this like in December, so we're recording this late January, so it's been a month.

Oh, okay.

And so I, I'm definitely, you know, building this kind of off of my personal knowledge.

You know, I grew up, I watched football, followed it, and you know, kind of 90s till now, I have a pretty good reference for things and then, you know, some 80s, some 70s, because, you know, I'd hear about that growing up.

And so a lot of the facts right now, you know that that's the time era that they're from.

Yeah, I, I have, I, I've interviewed hundreds of football historians and authors and players and former coaches and people that do unique items like you do, and collectors and, you know, all of them and myself included, we always relate to when we fell in love with football.

That's the era we fall in love.

Like mine's the 70s.

That's when I fell in love with it.

Yours, the 90s.

You know, it's great.

It's really neat how people relate to those things, but football is a connecting game.

It's a, you know, it's an entertainment device that connects people and connects you to memories.

And it's a, it's really cool when you can put Trivia to it, too.

Yeah.

And that's.

That's one of the things.

Yeah.

Is I think football is, like, just a topic that bonds a lot of guys together.

I helped coach my son's flag football team this past fall.

And, you know, I was at a league.

I didn't know anybody, but all the guys could talk about football.

And so that.

That's a topic that not all, but, you know, a lot of guys, that's something they can bond around.

They have knowledge about, they have context.

Yeah.

And so I personally, I need to deepen my understanding of football from the earlier days because, you know, you now, I hear coaches that are fired.

I'm like, oh, yeah, I know that guy.

He coached there or whatever.

But, you know, I go back 50 years and the Saints hired some coach, and I'm like, I. I have no idea who that is.

And so, you know, I want to kind of move it towards, like the whole air football or NFL era, but it's not there yet, but, you know, slowly but surely.

Yeah.

So.

Because if you're looking at the super bowl, how do you connect a modern fan, somebody in the, you know, the.

The modern generation that only knows the Patrick Mahomes and things like that?

How do you connect them to somebody from, like, the late 60s, like Bart Starr or Johnny Unitis or something?

How do you.

In your.

Your app, you know, in your questioning, how do you make them relate to that?

Yeah, I mean, some of it is, you know, just small things.

You know, you.

You familiarize yourself with names.

You know, names will come.

If you don't know, then, like, you can kind of Google it.

But, you know, I don't necessarily think my app will, like, teach people a lot of.

A lot of history because, you know, you know, it's like a.

You could spend one minute a day on it.

And so it's not like, learn all about the history, but, you know, there are little snippets of you going through, like, yeah, I have no idea when that person played.

I, like, I've never heard that name before.

And so it's kind of not death by a thousand paper cuts.

Maybe it's education by, you know, a thousand facts.

It's just like, slowly, over time, you just gain a little bit better understanding of these facts, events, players, people that you kind of just hear again and again.

Yeah.

What do you have, like, any examples of, like, questions that you could throw out there to the audience and, you know, just to just get us into this a little bit, you know.

Yeah, I'll just Pull up today's.

Actually, I already completed it.

Let me add.

Even if you wanted to share your screen, you could put it up on your screen if you wanted to.

You have the capability to do that?

Oh, yeah, let's do that.

So let me.

So, folks, while he's doing that, we're talking to Morgan Kenyon of Gridironguru app trivia game on the NFL, mainly in the super bowl era.

And he's bringing up an example for us here of his page.

Yeah.

So this is like today's little timeline.

So, yeah, in the middle you have a timeline, you have a fact and then a year attached to it.

So you know, Paul Allen buys a Seahawks.

And then you have two dots.

And then you have.

Down below you have another factor event.

You know, Saints play away from home after Katina Katrina.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

So, yeah, Hurricane Katrina devastates New Orleans, forcing the planes to play it on the locations.

And so the user would have to choose, like, did that happen before or after Paul Allen buying the Seahawks?

Do you remember when or what would you say?

Oh, I, I think that definitely the Katrina happened after Paul Allen bought the Seahawks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, you know, click that button.

Got that right.

It put.

It put that fact on the timeline and now you've got.

Got a new one.

Do you remember when the Cardinals.

Yeah, Cardinals would be before Paul Allen.

Yeah.

And then do you remember when Steve Young won his first NFL mvp?

Oh, boy, that's.

So can you.

Can't.

Can you put them in between?

Yeah, so like, any, Any.

Any one of these dots.

Potential.

Yeah, it would be before the.

Between the Paul Allen and the Cardinals move.

Okay.

Yeah, right here.

Yep.

Okay.

Yeah.

And Falcons draft Brett Favre.

Oh, let's see.

I'm.

I'm gonna say that is.

I probably embarrass myself here.

I think that happens after Steve Young wins.

Okay.

Okay.

So, yeah, that.

That wasn't.

I got one wrong.

So it was before that, huh?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

And then Boston Red.

Boston Redskins moved to Washington.

Oh, so you do go way back in the NFL.

I, I have some of like, you know, the team is founded.

Yes, That's.

So it's definitely before 88.

So yeah.

And then Detroit Lions go winless.

That's pretty recent.

I think that would be after the Saints play away from home.

And then rams moved to St. Louis.

That was.

That's in the 90s.

Let's put that in between Steve Young Wins and Paul Allen.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, yeah, we played through a game.

You've got all the facts on the board.

Yeah, we score every.

Every fact you presented and have to play somewhere.

You get a score for it.

So.

Yeah, you scored 27 out of 28.

It has to be Brett Favre too, of all things.

Something I should have known.

No, I mean, yeah, I mean, year was 91, 92, 94.

And so definitely when you get.

I mean, sometimes their ears are spread out a little bit easier.

Sometimes they're kind of more packed like this.

And so you kind of.

You have to choose and it makes.

Yeah, yeah.

And so it can be a little tricky.

Yeah, that's.

That's pretty cool.

So can you.

Can somebody that views it, like, if I go on here and say, boy, I want to do this every day, can you have like a notification center, have it sent to my email or.

I currently don't.

I would love to do that long term, but just not in a place where, you know, that's something that I have enabled.

Yeah.

Okay.

So some future plans for it then, huh?

Yeah.

Okay.

That's neat.

That's very neat.

Yeah.

And so, you know, you know, you can copy your score and send it and it'll send your score and also send like a link to, like, you know, play at Gridiron Guru.

And so me and some, Some of my friends, like, you know, you know, this is what we do.

Like, I get a text from them, they get a text from me.

It's not as.

Since I make this, make these facts.

I score perfectly almost every time.

Yeah.

Imagine I'm, I'm already aware of when these facts happen.

Right.

But yeah, it's just a, it's just a quick, you know, you can do it in a minute.

And it's just like a good little touch point of like the things that happened in the past in the NFL that I think we have a ton of NFL knowledge that we just doesn't come to the surface day to day.

And this is like one little way to, like, remember that.

And.

Oh, yeah, I remember when, you know, someone did xyz.

Yeah.

But you don't give yourself enough credit.

You do educate people about that because you're.

You just educated me.

I, I talk about football to somebody every single day of the year.

And yeah, for years.

And, you know, I learned something that, you know, the Falcons drafted him in 91.

You know, I was sitting there thinking it was like 93, 94.

But yeah, you.

You definitely taught me something.

So you do Educate people.

And many people might not know that the Boston Redskins are, you know, were in Boston.

You know that the people don't know that.

Yeah, I mean, I, I didn't know that before researching that.

Like, they were in Boston at some point.

Yeah.

It's an interesting story if actually we've talked about it on Pigskin Dispatch a bunch of times.

Because the NFL was nothing compared to what college football was.

College football was king and on the gridiron.

So what they did is they would try to go on the shirt tails of baseball teams that were in the, in the same city.

So the Boston Braves, the Atlanta Braves were in Boston at that time.

Yeah.

And so they wanted to go.

They had the football team there.

They played at the Braves park, and they didn't want it to be Braves, you know, like, you know, the Pittsburgh Steelers at first were.

The Pittsburgh Pirates.

They were exactly the same name, you know, so.

But they didn't want to do that, so they said, okay, let's call ourselves the Redskins.

And they did have some Native Americans on there on the team at the time.

Did, did the rest, the Redskin Native American theme come from.

You know, the Braves are also Native American.

They, they, they sort of use that moniker, you know, sort of like the Bears and the Cubs, you know, type of thing.

So, so they tried to make them relate to each other, to go on their shirt tails a little bit.

And, you know, the, the owner then was.

He was a big businessman.

He didn't like how Boston was treating him about the media and everything.

A couple name changes recently since then, but.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, I've been doing some research, and it's fascinating.

You know, was it the Lions that were founded as the Portsmouth.

Yep.

Spartans, I think.

Yep.

Who.

They were robbed out of a couple championships in the early NFL and finally got one, you know, when they moved to Detroit, you know, soon after.

Yeah.

So, like, some of these stories are like that.

Yeah.

I had no idea that they were called Boston.

They or they were in Boston before they moved to Washington.

And now.

Yeah, now they're the two years over the football team, and now it's the commanders.

So everything's got a story behind it.

Yeah, most definitely.

And that's why you have, you have so much information that you can put into a trivia game like this.

And it's fascinating Now I have seen this.

I believe the New York Times has a game that I played once or twice, probably more than that, where you're moving some things around.

But I like this a little bit better than what theirs would do because you still have everything right up in front of you.

So you actually are learning something.

It's relatable and I think that's really clever.

So nice work.

New York Times.

Is that also like a timeline based game?

It sort of is.

It's sort of did this happen before this?

But they're going, you know, when was, you know, the first, you know, loaf of bread made?

And then they'll compare it to something else, you know, something else.

And if it's first, they're easier.

Like sort of like what you're talking about.

It might be when was first loaf of bread made and you know, when was the first automobile assembled?

You know, and then these, you kind of know the bread is before the car, but then they start get throwing some trickier ones in, you know.

Yeah.

And, but yeah, this is, this is clever.

I like, I like how this is.

And it's all, you know, NFL based and very relatable to people that love football.

Yeah, my brother and I, we played.

I don't know if it was the same.

I mean, it wasn't made by the New York Times, but a similar game where it was just general history.

Okay.

And my brother and I like, can, you know, have enough historical knowledge that like we can play and like, that's fun for us.

But I mean, I definitely play with some people and like, it's like, this is not fun.

Like I, I don't want to do history.

And so that was the, that was the inspiration for this of like, you know, niching down into like NFL, like there's a ton of NFL fans.

And so, you know, this quiz that's specifically about NFL, like, there'll be a lot of people who, who could do this, who could do it well and would enjoy it.

Yeah, people like to win.

So that's, that's good when you get, get scores, you know, like that on daily and compare them to, with your buddies and you know, that's good for you too.

As soon as they, somebody plays and say, hey, I want to see how you do, and they send it to their buddy and they send it to their friend and yeah, you got something going there.

So that's very cool.

Yeah.

And I've definitely since doing this, like, yeah.

Connected with some friends that, you know, I'd lost contact with and you know, now we're texting about this, and so, you know, we're rebuilding that friendship.

Like, it wasn't necessarily, hey, let's text because of football, or let's, let's rebuild our friendship.

But, like, hey, we're texting about football.

They generally will ask me about stuff might happen in my life.

I'll ask them about stuff that happened in my life.

So some of these, like, little connection points can really, like, restart some of those relationships that, you know, I. I hadn't talked to in a couple years.

And so it's just really cool how, you know, we were talking earlier.

Football is kind of a connecting point to a lot of guys in America.

Yeah, it sure is.

So what are some of the things that you.

You already told us shared one or two things that you want to maybe develop into this going in the future, where.

What are some of the other things?

Maybe if you're allowed, if you can share it.

You know, I don't want to have you reveal any top secrets or anything, but just where you want to go with this project.

Yeah, I mean, I would love to develop it more.

I would love to.

I think two things I would like to implement, features wise, is like, have a little, like, team scoreboard, and so you and your friends could sign up and, you know, the app keeps track of, you know, what you're doing.

You know, you could get a notification at that point, but, you know, you could say, like, the last 30 days, you know, who's answered the most.

And, you know, that would be something that the app tracks for you.

It's easy to see and builds a little bit of friendly competition amongst your friends.

I also was thinking about.

So we have.

We have fantasy football.

I was thinking about fantasy, fantasy trivia.

If I get enough people signed up that represent all 32 teams in the NFL, you go and you could say, you know, I'm a Lions fan, I'm a Bears fan, I'm a Cowboys fan.

And as the NFL plays through, you know, they're playing actual football games.

Maybe like the week leading up to an actual game, you know, the fans on this app or battling against each other and see, like, which fan base is the most knowledgeable.

That one's definitely, like, a little more in depth, a little more out there.

But, like, I thought.

I think that could be really cool feature.

Just get people engaged.

Get people.

Yeah.

So that's.

Those are like, the two things I think I would like to do at some point with this app.

Yeah, well, very interesting.

So why don't you share Once again, what the app is called, Morgan, and where folks can find it?

Yeah, it's called Gridiron Guru.

You can find it on gridironguru app.

You know, it's a simple page.

You know, you load it, click the quiz and you know you're there.

So simple site, pretty easy to load, pretty easy to get through.

But yeah, I mean, it's up every day is a new quiz and so if you've got a minute of downtime, you know, you can load it up and play through and see kind of what you know.

Yeah, most definitely.

Well, you, you got somebody here that you're talking to right now that's going to get on this and, and be a daily supporter of this because I find this, find it pretty cool.

So listeners, if you decide you start doing this too and you want to compare some things with me, you know where to find me on a social or you can email m me@pigskind dispatch gmail.com and we'll have a little friendly competition.

We'll get get some people going here on this on the Gridiron Guru trivia daily.

So, Morgan, we really appreciate you coming on here and creating such an interesting way to preserve football history because that's what we're all about and we see that you are too, and appreciate you coming here today and talking to us.

Yeah, I appreciate it, Darren.

Appreciate it just the way you're also catalog, cataloging, you know, football history in your own way.

So happy to talk about it.

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

Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

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