Today's Tidbit... Football's Oddest Jersey Designs

Billy Laval may have been the Mike Leach of his day. He took a different approach to the game and succeeded but was not your usual sort of fellow. Laval became Furman's football head coach in 1915 after playing minor league baseball for some years while assisting Furman in football near the end of those years.

(1929 South Carolina yearbook)

He did well at Furman, going 80-35-4 while playing in the SIAA, which included the core of what became the SEC and ACC. Back then, the SIAA was more an eligibility forum than a scheduling platform, so many teams only played other SIAA teams in their home and border states. As a result, people focused on informal state championships more than SIAA championships. After Billy Laval won a few state championships at little old Furman, the University of South Carolina folks hired him to take over their program in 1928. He went 39-26-7 there through the 1934 season before spending another 13 seasons at Emory & Henry and Newberry.

Descriptions of Laval suggest he was either a bit odd or just liked stirring his own drink, but either way, he stood out from the crowd by designing the strangest football jersey of all time and had another one in the Top 5.