Today's Tidbit... Herbert Vollmer, The Human Motor Boat, Plays Football

The days are long gone when a swimmer could set three world records in an afternoon and later that year letter as a college football lineman, but that is what Herbert Vollmer did at Columbia in 1916. Called the Human Motor Boat when speed boats were still new, Vollmer was among the top swimmers of the pre-WWI era.

Vollmer, seated to the left of the captain holding the ball, also played water polo at Columbia. (1917 Columbia yearbook)

Raised in New York City, Vollmer played football at Stuyvesant High School but did not initially at Columbia because they dropped the game in 1906 and did not bring it back until his sophomore year. Vollmer also played Tarzan water polo, a rather rough version of water polo favored in America due to our building smaller indoor pools than the rest of the world (or something like that).