Today's Tidbit... Factoid Feast VI

As discussed in Factoid Feast I, II, III, IV, and V, my searches through football history sometimes lead to topics too important to ignore but too minor to Tidbit. Such nuggets are factoids, three of which I share today.

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This Story Bugs Me

We play football regardless of the weather. Neither snow nor rain will stay our mighty ball carriers from the swift completion of their end arounds. Of course, we do not play when there's lightning, hurricanes, or sometimes when it's hot.

However, at least one game was canceled due to insects. Back in nineteen and thirty-eight, the Rochester Junior College team in Minnesota had a game scheduled with the reserves of Luther College of Iowa.

I don't know what happened weather-wise in Southern Minnesota that year, but it must have been wet. As August became September, the area had hordes of mosquitoes—worse than normal.

Rochester's football team tried practicing the day before the Luther College game but was forced back inside by mosquitos. Rather than wait until the next day to cancel the game, Rochester canceled it on Friday due to the mosquito infestation.

The story shows that football often comes down to the little things.

Papa Bear and Baby Bear

The university, now known as UCLA, began life as part of California's normal college system that evolved into San Jose State. It shifted in 1919 to become the Southern Branch of the University of California. As an underling of Cal-Berkeley and its athletic Bears, the LA teams were initially known as the Cubs. Upon joining the Pacific Coast Conference in 1926, they became the Bruins, which still acknowledged their Bear origins.

Two time zones to the east, the Decatur Staleys became the Chicago Staleys in 1921 and the Chicago Bears in 1922 under the ownership of George Halas and Dutch Sternaman. Two years later, George Halas, who had played basketball at Illinois and for the Great Lakes Naval, founded a professional basketball team to complement his football team. What did he call the cagers? They were the Chicago Bruins, a team that joined the American Basketball League in 1925. Joe Carr, the NFL president, also ran the ABL, and several other NFL owners had ABL franchises. The ABL was the top pro basketball league then and continued in various forms until 1955.

George Halas stands on the left with other 1917-1918 Great Lakes Naval basketball team members. (Great Lakes Recruit)

What might have been had the ABL been a long-term success with ownership overlapping the NFL's?

Dudley Do Wrong

William Dudley was an influential figure in early Southern football. A faculty member at Vanderbilt, he was a primary figure in founding the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the forerunner of the Southern Conference, SEC, and ACC.

Dudley became a member of the football rules committee in 1907 and immediately suggested a change to football's scoring system. At the time, touchdowns were worth five points, field goals earned four points, the point after was worth one, and safeties were two points.

(How Football Became Football)

Dudley was not a fan of kicks from placement and wanted the drop kick to regain its spot at the pinnacle of football scoring.  Dudley proposed a scoring system assigning four points for a dropkicked field goal, tw

o for a touchdown, one for a place-kicked field goal, one-half point for a safety, and one-quarter point for a kick after a touchdown. Keeping Dudley's same proportions, had a point after been worth one point, a touchdown would have been worth eight points, and a dropkicked field would have been good for sixteen.

As we all know, the rest of the committee rejected Dudley's scoring system, and the only quarters in football appeared when they split the halves into quarters in 1910.

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