The podcast delves into the historical significance of sideline gear within American football, mainly focusing on the evolution of equipment worn by players not on the field.

This information comes from his original post titled: The good old days of sideline gear-

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There was a new innovation by coach Curly Lambo of the packers that day it was so cold that he asked his reserves to stay in the locker room.

Only the starters went out onto the field.

This didn't catch on very well, but it did promote the use of better sideline gear for the players that were sitting out there.

I mean, there's more of them in.

A normal NFL game today than there are out on the field.

Well, Timothy B.

Brown joins us today to talk about Football Archaeology's tidbit on sideline gear and its evolution.

There's some interesting things.

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, Darren 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 Pigskind dispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And welcome once again to a Tuesday when we get to talk with Timothy b.

Brown of footballarchaeology.com and see what's on his mind in the light of gridiron history.

Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pens.

Hey there.

Looking forward to chatting about jackets and capes and parkas and.

And visors and visors.

That's a very interesting visor here.

We've seen that the last couple episodes and I've been waiting to ask you about it and happy that we're going to be talking about tonight because you have a tidbit that you wrote.

It's called the Good Old Days of Sideline Gear.

So why don't you share that with us?

Yeah, so I'll set the stage just by saying that, you know, now I've, I've got something on the order of 90 old football catalogs.

Some of them are.

Some of.

The wife hasn't kicked you out of the house yet?

No, no, they're nicely contained.

And okay, now that 90 includes PDF versions only that I've found out there on the Internet.

So if I can find a PDF, I'm perfectly happy as long as, you know, decent quality.

So anyways, in going through all of those, you know, you just, they're offering, you know, all the wares that are available for football teams and basketball teams and Wrestling teams or whatever are in these catalogs.

And so, you know, there was a point where I decided, wouldn't it be fun to just look at all the things that they've offered over the years on the gear that players wore when they were on the sideline?

You know, I've written a lot of things about the gear they wear during games and even in training, but what do they wear on the sideline?

And so you got to remember that in the old days, they didn't play indoors, at least not very often.

So you didn't have like a.

These play.

I'm in the Detroit area, so a place like Ford Field didn't exist.

Right.

And you know, I mean, a lot of NFL games, fair number of college games are played indoors nowadays.

And so that wasn't an option then.

So they were playing outdoors in any weather conditions that might arise.

They were seated on wooden benches.

And because there were limited substitutions, you didn't get off the bench very often.

If you were there at the beginning of the game, you were likely there at the end of the game, unless, you know, you were getting beaten badly or somebody had been injured, etc.

And so.

And then you were also wearing, you know, canvas or moleskin pants, which are cotton fibers.

And so they get wet and they retain moisture.

They get wet either because it's a wet field or because you're sweating, because you're working out.

And, you know, likely a.

Either a cotton shirt or earlier on, you know, wool, wool, you know, jersey, so, you know, you're not wearing these, like, really nice, keep you warm kind of synthetic things that, you know, breathe properly.

And oftentimes you were at a place where there were no locker rooms at the, at the football field.

So, you know, when you walked out there, you were out there for the next, you know, two hours.

And typically games are shorter, but still you were, you were going to get cold if it was a cold day.

They basically gave you a blanket and you wrapped yourself in a blanket, and that's what you had to stay warm.

And the, the players who were in the game who came off out at halftime, they would get a blanket too, and they'd wrap themselves up in the blanket.

And there's images, in fact, there's some in that tidbit of guys laying on the ground at halftime, listening to the coach talk to him, wrapped up in a blanket.

So sideline gear was blankets, you know, for, for quite a While in the 20s, you start seeing warm up jackets and parkas, wool parkas.

So there's, there's some cool images out there.

You know, Red Grange is wearing, you know, kind of like a, the jackets of baseball coaches and managers, you know, used to wear.

And so it's kind of along those lines.

But football players used to wear those things too and they'd warm up in them and, and then like, if, if you played for like the Duluth Eskimos, then you might wear the, this wool parka that went, you know, halfway, you know, or basically went down your knees.

They got a park and a blanket probably.

So, you know, so it transitioned to, you know, more of a jacket sort of situation.

So now all of a sudden, if there's a turnover or just a change of possession, now the guy who's sitting on the bench has to jump into the game.

So you don't want him having a jacket on with buttons, you know, that have to be.

Or zippers that have to be taken off and put, pull the sleeves out, all that kind of stuff.

So basically all the gear, the sideline gear, transitioned to those capes that, I mean, I, I remember, you know, using those capes, you know, when I was playing or, you know, coaching and stuff.

And you know, so they, it was like one or two snaps and you could pop it off and, you know, run out there on the field and go conquer all.

So, and then, so anyways, you know, that stuff, there's still kit, you know, if there's, if it's an outdoor game, you know, you'll still see, you know, some of the NFL playoff games, you know, you'd see guys wearing capes.

Mahomes was wearing a cape on the sidelines.

And you know, for some of the cold weather games and things, you know, indoors, you don't have to do that.

Everybody was wearing them, you know, when it got cold out.

Like you said Mahomes recently in the playoffs.

Well, you got heated benches, you can put your helmet on a heater, you know, I mean, so it's a.

Yeah, a little bit different world.

I mean they didn't have campfires on the sidelines, you know, back in the nineteen teens.

But one other thing on sideline gear that I got a kick out of was baseball hats.

And I still, I think that probably was when it kind of generally came into use.

So here's this goofy looking visor that, you know, I forget who this is.

It's like SMU or somebody like that, somebody himself and you know, wearing a visor, wearing visors on the sideline.

So.

So somehow like that whole cap and visor thing went a little, went back a little bit further than like what I had imagined.

But it's only from looking through like yearbooks and whatnot that you know, you end up finding pictures like this going what the heck are they doing with baseball caps or visors on the sideline?

Well, in fact they, they had them a lot longer than we think.

And they're pretty interesting visors in that having almost a suspension mechanism to them, you know.

Well, it looks like they're all bookies.

So maybe, you know, maybe there' a little bit of gambling going on with that team.

I don't know.

Playing the numbers.

Yeah, but, but the guy, the guy in the middle, closest to behind coaches Fedora there looks like he's.

I don't know if that's a visor.

His looks more like a more modern day visor.

He's got a different look.

So.

Yeah, I'm not sure I didn't.

He, he was the bookie that, that lost the, the bet.

The other guy's got the nice leather ones or wherever they are.

Yeah.

So anyways, I mean it's just, it's just interesting the way equipment evolves and it's not just you know, game or on field equipment.

Well, that's definitely an important part of the game that, you know, especially us fans of today, they're watching more games on television, which hardly ever show close ups to the sidelines.

Just interesting to see some of that and I'm, I'm glad you bring that to light because it's really an important part of football history.

And uh, you do this quite often in your tidbits, Tim, and we really appreciate that.

And maybe you could tell the listeners how they can watch and, or read your tidbits and your interesting comments on football history.

Yeah, it's just footballarchaeology.com It's a substack site.

And subscribe, you can do free subscriptions.

There's paid subscriptions that just give you access to, you know, everything basically.

And then, yeah, I mean it's.

You can also follow me on, on Blue sky at, you know, Football Archaeology is the name and you know, and if nothing else, just go out and take a look at the site every so often.

If that's kind of the way that you consume media, it's definitely worth the.

Trip to go and check all those different avenues to see your articles and the images that you post, which are so, so awesome.

And folks, you can.

Anytime you're listening to these podcasts where we have Tim on or on YouTube, you can follow the links in the show notes and go right to his site on that particular article and see what Tim's talking about and what inspired him to write his tidbit.

And Tim, we really appreciate you coming on today, appreciate you visiting us each Tuesday and we can't wait to see what you have next week for us.

Look forward to it as always.

Thanks.

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