Today's Tidbit... Early Jocks and Abdomen Protectors (aka Cups)

Football Archaeology has covered many aspects of the clothing and equipment worn by early football players but has never written about one of football’s most important pieces of equipment, the jock.

“Jock” is the Scottish and Northern English diminutive of John, just as Jack or Jacky is the Southern English form. Jock and Jack also described men or boys generally, and a boy riding a horse was a jockey, so when bicycles came along in the 1800s, men who rode them were also called jockeys.

As painful as it may seem, early bicycles had wooden seats (without padding) that were often ridden on cobblestone or otherwise bumpy streets, resulting in their riders needing an undergarment to "keep themselves in place.” Since necessity is the father of invention, Chicago's C. F. Bennett designed a thong-like undergarment in 1874 that became known as a bike jockey strap, or jock. Twenty years later, Bennett started his own company, the Bike Web Company, to manufacture these useful garments, leading to Bike becoming the dominant brand name in the jock trade for more than a century.

(1908-1909 Spalding Catalogue of Fall & Winter Athletic Goods)