This podcast episode delves into the intricacies of one of the most exhilarating offenses in college football history, specifically focusing on Minnesota's unique "spinner" play during a time when the passing game struggled significantly. I engage in a detailed conversation with Tim Brown, who unveils the fascinating techniques employed by the Minnesota team under the guidance of Bernie Bierman, highlighting the stark contrast between their elaborate running strategies and their rudimentary passing mechanics. We explore the historical context of football during the late 1940s, unraveling how the advancement of the passing game lagged behind the innovation of running plays, which were executed with remarkable precision. Tim elucidates the challenges faced by the players of that era, particularly the limitations in their training and the evolution of football strategies that have since transformed the game. Join us as we reflect on this significant yet often overlooked chapter in football history, enriching our understanding of its development and the innovations that have shaped the sport as we know it today.

Timothy Brown recalls one of his famous Tidbit stories that he titled: Minnesota's Spinner and Their Ineffective Passing Game.

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You're just in time to join Timothy P. Brown and I as we go back in time to talk about one of the most exciting offenses in college football history.

Tim's up in just a moment to tell us all about it.

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

Your host, Darrin Hayes is podcasting 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 deposit football history.

And welcome to another Tuesday.

And Tim Brown of FootballArchaeology.com joins us to tell us about one of his recent tidbits.

Tim, welcome back.

Hey there.

Looking forward to, you know, I guess, providing my spin on a whole football story.

All right.

How's that sound?

How's that sound?

That sounds, sounds good.

That sounds good because it's in one of the words of your, your title, of your tidbit that we're going to be conversing about tonight, and that tidbit was titled Minnesota's Spinner in their Ineffective Passing Game.

So, yeah, this sounds like it's maybe a roller coaster ride of emotions here.

It is, you know, it's kind of a yin yang, you know.

Right.

Both, you can do that while you're listening to the podcast.

The link is in the notes.

It's also in the YouTube channel show notes.

So click that linking.

You can watch the films as Tim's talking about.

Yeah.

So, you know, so it's one of those things where I guess the, on the one hand football was so precise back then.

You know, the faking that they're do, they're doing.

And so one of the things that they do with Minnesota's, you know, team under Bernie Beerman is they do the spinner.

They do the half spinner and the full spinner.

He was an all American quarterback at Chicago under Stag.

And, you know, it's that whole thing where, you know, the quarterback gets a snap and then turns around sometimes turns this way, turns that way, spins around, faking handoffs.

And it's like, bizarre.

And yet you can imagine that it would be confusing if you're the defensive lineman.

Right.

Or the linebacker or a referee.

Yeah.

Wow.

And, yeah.

So, I mean, it's just.

It's kind of a fun thing just because.

So, you know, kind of what this tidbit does is it.

It looks at.

And it's got a bunch of his play designs and here's the technique for doing a half spin and da, da, da.

And then it's kind of mirrored up with the.

The YouTube video of them executing some of those plays that he shows in the.

In this premium.

And.

And they're playing Michigan and Michigan runs the.

The single wing at the same time.

And they're doing spin spinners, too.

So it's just kind of a funny, funny thing.

So with, you know, so they're so precise in their backfield movements on.

In the running game, and yet then they also start trying to pass in the same game and they suck.

You know, there's no other way to put it by Modernize, you know, or according to Modernize, you know, the.

They hadn't developed cup protection.

Linemen couldn't, you know, extend their arms.

You know, they had the shoulder block and all that kind of stuff.

So the, you know, the running backs were.

Or the.

The backs were under pressure anytime that they tried to pass.

There's one play where, like, you see this guy, he gets a direct snap and he drops back like 10 yards from where he got that snap, and then he throws this terrible screen pass.

You know, I mean, it's so.

They're just so archaic in their passing relative to kind of the intricacy of the running game and that the faking that they're doing.

It's, you know, you just.

It's.

I don't know.

To me, I just find it to be a really interesting contrast because, you know, then not too long after that, you know, we got guys throwing the ball downfield.

You know, I mean, early 60s, they're thrown, you know, especially like the AFL, they're throwing that ball downfield and, you know, with the T formation and all that kind of stuff.

I mean, there's.

Things changed very quickly, you know, from the late 40s to the early 60s in terms of the style of play in football.

So I don't know, I just, I find it to be a really interesting period where there's this really archaic running style, yet it's very precise.

And then their passing game is just, you know, quarterbacks are throwing off their back foot all the time.

They're kind of backing up and they're.

It's a mess.

It's a mess.

Do you think maybe it could be because, you know, they're, they're so precise in their footwork at the beginning of the play that maybe it throws off the timing at the latter end of the play, like they're getting their footwork right.

I mean, that's all you're thinking about how much you're processing in a human mind in four or five seconds, you know, and maybe just throws off the timing for the rest of their.

That play for them.

Well, so I, I can't tell exactly when this occurred.

I got it written in my, one of my books about the, you know, football terminology.

But the whole idea of precise three step drops, five step drops, seven step drops, none of that existed at the time.

Right.

So quarterbacks were not trained to they, you know, timing routes as we think of them didn't exist.

Right.

They found an open guy and they had reads.

But the whole like the idea of boom, boom, boom, I'm going to take this many steps, I'm going to make a read and I'm going to throw the ball right now.

None of that existed at the time.

So it was much more, much more like a backyard game, you know, where you and your buddies are out there at the, you know, up the street, at the park or out on the street or whatever, you know, wherever you played, you know, just running around doing patterns.

Yes, they had, they had specific routes, but it was, none of it was timed as the whole game is today.

And none of there weren't specific reads.

The where, the way there is today.

It was just so much more archaic, you know, so basic.

I guess what I was getting at though, maybe almost like you relate it to like baseball, like a baseball outfielder, you know, if they're going to drive that ball, you know, to throw home or to throw into second, they're going to take an extra step to set their body up in position to get the ball where, you know, an infield or maybe just trying to get A play to second base, you know, shortstop trying to field it and get second base, he's going to throw off balance and it, you know, doesn't have a lot of oomph behind the ball.

Maybe that's, I guess that's what I'm saying is maybe with all the footwork that the quarterbacks are doing, the fakes and the spinners to, and then you go back to pass, you're off balance, you're, you're not lined up right, you're just releasing the ball.

Yeah.

So I, I would just say that, like, my sense is that they didn't do, they didn't pass off of spinners.

You know what I mean?

It was like either that they either did the intricacies of the run game.

Okay.

Or they passed or they just dropped back and.

Yeah, okay, I gotcha.

You know, obviously a lot of rollout too.

And they, you know, they just weren't as well schooled, well trained, you know, I mean, I'm not faulting that.

I'm just saying that was the nature of the game at the time.

You know, it just wasn't as precise, whereas they were precise with the running game.

So what do you think?

What happened?

Why don't people run the spinners today?

Why don't they do that?

If it's an intricate part of the running game and throwing, is there somebody that figured out a way to, to stop it or.

Yeah, I, I, well, I, I think it, I think, you know, for the most part, people decided and this is really the, the original, like the, the modern te and then, and even the split te, which came out like a year later, everything there became much more about hit, hit the line now.

You know, so instead of, there's still misdirection in football, there's counters and, and whatnot, but nowhere near the misdirection, you know, that, that existed back then.

You know, linemen couldn't, just didn't have as many tools in their kit in terms of how they could block, they couldn't extend their arms, those kinds of things.

So they had that they could get like one hit on a player and, you know, they could drive block, obviously, but, you know, sometimes that didn't work.

But so I think, I think it was more just that they, it was a transition period where the modern tee and the split tee were all about.

Instead of intricate backfield play and misdirection, it was about, boom, we're going to hit the line now right now.

And you know, the immediacy of it and shield blocking as opposed to drive, blocking somebody out of the way.

And so it just.

Everything was about speed, speed to the ball, speed to the line.

And so that was the real transition.

And that's what, you know, football for the most part, is about now.

You know, I mean, even like, you know, inside, outside zone, they're still hitting the line pretty darn darn hard and then cutting back and, you know, I don't know, it's.

I think it's just a fundamental, fundamentally different view of the game.

I guess maybe the closest correlation in the modern game is maybe like triple option teams, you know, where they're putting all the pressure reading off the defensive end and that at quarterbacks, holding that he's pitching it or he's passing it, you know, it's.

Yeah, you got that threat of how that defensive end is going to react, what's coming at him.

Yeah.

But, you know, like.

Like in the.

The original stuff, I mean, they weren't.

A lot of times they were only reading, like, one guy, you know, or like the.

The T. They weren't reading anybody.

You know, they were just, boom.

You know, it's complex.

We're going to this hole.

That's it.

Our guys are gonna block your guys and we're gonna.

Yeah.

Whereas, like, I mean, I. I still.

I still, you know, love, love the option.

And, you know, now the current version, the read option, you know, which is really different way of thinking of, you know, it's like, instead of we're going to predetermine where we're going, we're gonna go where you tell us we should go, right?

Same thing with pass routes.

We're gonna make the reads and we're gonna go where you.

Where you're not.

Right.

You know, it's kind of the same thing, but.

But football wasn't there yet.

You know, that whole reading option mentality didn't exist.

And.

And really, the split T is what introduced that to football.

The split T really is the first option offense and, you know, deliberate reading one individual player and making this decision on him.

And so it's.

It's one of those things like people are nowadays, people don't recognize the importance of the split tea, but fundamental.

Fundamental to the development of football, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah, Very well said.

And, you know, you.

You dig into a lot of these fundamentals of football in your tidbits and, you know, tell us some stories about it and some of the.

The great legends of the game that really navigated and made the game to what it is today.

And, you know, the innovators and some of the unique items that happened in your tidbits.

So maybe you could tell folks how they could share the tidbits as well.

Sure.

Just, you know, go to footballarchaeology.com it's a substack site.

You can follow on the site and then you won't get an email, but you can come in and you'll see listings of it.

If you subscribe, you'll get an email every time that I, you know, create a new story or just follow me on Blue sky or just bookmark it, come out and look around anytime you want.

So.

All right.

Well, we really appreciate you coming on here and sharing this one.

And you know, folks, make sure you check out those videos on the links that get on Tim's site and check that out and love to talk to you again next week, Tim.

Very good, sir.

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