Book Report: George H. Brooke's The Story of a Football Season (1907)

At the end of July, I submitted a book report concerning James Church's University Football, published in 1893. Church's nonfiction book documented the state of Eastern collegiate football. Today, we look at a work of football fiction by reviewing George H. Brooke's The Story of a Football Season, published in 1907, which you can download for free from the Library of Congress. There was a genre of football books targeted at the youth market back then. Those books still take up space in used bookstores across the country. I don't recall ever reading one of the golden oldies, but George Brooke's book is different since he was a well-known coach with a fine pedigree, having spent eight years on one college roster or another.

Brooke was the head coach at Swarthmore, and he also advised and helped coach Penn during his spare time.

I took a chance reading his fictional account of a college team during the 1906 season because he published more than anyone else about how he expected the new forward pass and other rule changes to affect the game in 1906. In ten lengthy Philadelphia Inquirer articles, he outlined his expectations for passing techniques (see the grenade toss throwing technique on the book’s cover), play designs, and many other game elements. So, his article provides a window into the thinking of at least one well-connected coach.

The Story of a Football Season is a quick read that walks through fictional Kent University's training camp and game-by-game accounts. There is no romance, political intrigue, or other silliness. It focuses on football, including 15 diagrams of formations and plays and text explaining the rationale behind each. The reader also comes across dialogue in which a coach or other characters give lengthy explanations of 1906 football concepts, much like movies sometimes set plots with dialogue that would not occur in real life. Despite faults with the fictional plot, the book is an accessible way to understand how people thought and talked about running, punting, passing, and other parts of the game in 1906.

Below are some of my favorite elements. Most show elements of the game that existed in 1906 and did not come into full flower until decades later.

Bunch Passes

Pass interference by either team was not a foul in 1906, so a common approach to pass plays involved sending a group of players downfield in a bunch and throwing the ball to the receiver while the other downfield players blocked for him as the ball was in flight.

Later, the Kent coach mentions that the Indians painted the caps of eligible receivers during the 1906 season to distinguish them. (Carlisle did that in 1906.) Kent chose to have the open receiver raise his handle to signal he was open.

The bunch pass contrasted with the single pass. While several bunched players might catch the pass, the single pass has only one possible receiver. Brooke's single pass was a misdirection play that foreshadowed the bootleg pass that became popular two decades later.

23 Skidoo

No one knows why, but 23 and Skidoo were turn-of-the-century slang for leaving quickly, sometimes by trickery. Plays were numbered and called at the line. According to the storyline, they developed play #23, and to keep up with the times, they called it the 23 Skidoo since the slang had merged the two terms by 1906.

The play resembles the bunch pass shown earlier but includes a dive fake to the right halfback and has the left end trail the quarterback. When the defensive end attacks the quarterback, the quarterback tosses the ball to the sweeping end, who then throws to the bunch or runs the ball. (On at least one occasion, the quarterback keeps it.

The play foreshadows the Split T of the 1940s and the Triple Option of the 1970s. It took football several decades to adopt a concept, staring them in the face in 1906.

Defensive Shift

The season's second-to-last game is against Prairie University, a school that combines elements of Michigan and Minnesota. Prairie's offense is the key to its success: It runs plays quickly and employs shifts to gain a numerical advantage at the point of attack. The book includes diagrams showing shifts used by Kent for each of Prairie's five or six formations, one of which is below.

Several other side comments in the book, confirmed in nonfiction accounts of the era, reinforce the realistic nature of the story. They include:

• A player twists his knee during the season, which the trainer treats with lead water and laudanum. I found a 1906 Journal of the American Medical Association study about the combination, but I still don't know what lead water was. However, laudanum was a commonly used tincture that contained 10 percent opium by weight. No wonder that player's knee stopped hurting.

• Kent performs a bonfire ceremony the night before the last game, where players burn their practice equipment and pads. By that time of year, the leather gear had to smell pretty sweet.

That ends the book report, other than my point that The Story of a Football Season can be downloaded for free and worth reading if you want to get a feel for football in 1906. The football content in the book corresponds well with Brooke's articles published before the 1906 season, so it paints a realistic picture of the technical side of the game at the time.

Bonus: The PDF version available from the Library of Congress does not have that musty smell, unlike a copy you might find in a used bookstore, which is nice.

Happy reading, and enjoy the weekend’s game!

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