Confusion Reigned Before Penalty Signals

Official penalty signal examples. 1(944 Great Lakes-Northwestern game program)

Football is information-rich today, but it was not always so. Before 1910, only a few teams had worn jerseys with numbers. Distinguishing one player from another and keeping track of the substitutes entering the game was problematic, even for coaches. Likewise, loudspeaker systems did not exist, and the scoreboards of the day were primitive -none had game clocks. The information challenge only grew worse as stadiums got bigger, further separating fans from on-the-field sights, sounds, and actions.

The game's officials did little to help the situation. The first penalty flag was not thrown until the 1940s, meaning fans could not tell when or where infractions occurred, which player committed the foul, or which official called the penalty. Those in the stands watched the referee step off penalty yards without any idea of why he did so. The referee's contortions we know as penalty signals would not become mainstream for a few more decades.

Of course, football aficionados recognized a problem and developed solutions, but no one could get it right. The first solution came from the naval and firefighting worlds, which used various voice enhancers to coordinate men in noisy environments. The megaphone, a term coined by Thomas Edison, became popular in the 1890s, with the 1894 Penn-Lehigh contest being the first to use a megaphone to inform spectators of gridiron goings-on. It is unclear who voiced the announcements or what was said, but megaphones had shortcomings when used to provide information to crowds in noisy stadiums. Each message had to be repeated left, right, and center and they seldom produced the volume needed to be heard above the din.

The noisy environment got worse when fans saw the megaphone's potential for generating sound. Harvard fans amplified their messages to Yale later that season. Penn cheerleaders used megaphones in 1897, two years before their use by Minnesota, who is often credited for pioneering the megaphone's use by sideline shouters. While fans and cheerleaders successfully used megaphones to generate incoherent noise, megaphones were ineffective in providing clear information about the nature of called penalties.

A generation later, a cheerleader's booming voice and massive megaphone did little to keep the crowd informed of the penalties called on the field. (1916 UPenn yearbook)