Today's Tidbit... Football's Heaviest Player Pre-WWI

During the first eighty or ninety years of football, the linemen were often the same size as the backs, though there were occasional guards like Pudge Heffelfinger, who carried 210 pounds while playing at Yale from 1888 to 1891. Pudge's size was legendary, in part, due to pairing it with tremendous mobility.

Pudge Heffelfinger and halfback Lee McClung at Yale in 1891. (Yale University Library)

Another sizable early player was Tiny Maxwell, whose 240 pounds moved the needle on the scale while donning the moleskins for Chicago in 1902 and 1903 and Swarthmore in 1904 and 1905.

Robert “Tiny” Maxwell (left) with Swarthmore teammates. (Swarthmore College Historical Society)