Today's Tidbit... Col. Roy C. Baker And The Flip-Style Down Marker

While I enjoy learning and writing about football innovations that Amos Alonzo Stagg, John Heisman, or even Rich Rodriguez sent our way, my favorite stories are those in which an everyday person takes a different approach and develops something that impacts the football world. This is one of those stories, and even better, it crossed my path because a family member of the innovator contacted me looking for information about his contribution, but I had nothing to offer. I had never heard of him.

His name was Roy C. Baker or, more accurately, Colonel Roy C. Baker. Does that name ring a bell? Probably not, but if you were a sentient football fan before 1995 and even later at football's lower levels, you witnessed his invention in use on nearly every football field. And yet, few have heard of him.

The NFL recently acknowledged that it is testing a technology-based approach to determining whether the football crossed the line to gain to earn the offense a first down. Football first measured for first downs in 1882, when Walter Camp convinced others that teams should gain five yards in four downs or give up the ball. To help referees judge whether a team gained five yards, they added parallel lines on the field spaced five yards apart. It took another dozen years before clever folks with the Crescent Club of Brooklyn connected two poles with a five-foot length of chain or cord, inventing football chains. The next year, the rules required the home team to provide two assistants to man the chains for the linesman, who came to be called the head linesman.

Over the next few decades, there were many other measurement inventions, including various surveying-like tools to add precision to the first down-measuring process, but few had any impact. In 1916, the rules committee considered adding stripes to the field every two yards to help the measurement process, but cooler heads prevailed.

One change that became widespread was the addition of a third assistant linesman who held the down box or down marker, marking the spot where plays started. Early down boxes were simple boxes attached to a pole with a 1, 2, 3, or 4 on each of the box’s four sides. They stood waist-high early on before growing taller so spectators and the press could see them.

(antiquesfootball.com)