Today's Tidbit... Press Boxes and Sideline Communication

As baseball and other sports stadium operators sought the coverage and publicity provided by newspapers and magazines in the late 1880s, they offered advantageous, separate seating to reporters. Such areas became known as press box, with the first mentions of press boxes at football games coming at the 1892 Yale-Princeton game at Manhattan Field in New York and the 1893 Harvard-Yale game in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Like all other elements of stadiums, press boxes evolved, becoming fancier and more comfortable, so let's look at some old press boxes.

(1911 Missouri yearbook)

(1912 Illinois yearbook)

(1922 Tulane yearbook)

(1926 BYU yearbook)

(1951 Boston College yearbook)

Press boxes atop the bleachers or grandstands also proved to be valuable spots for assistant coaches to monitor play from above, spotting alignments and actions that can be difficult to see from ground level. Telephones were used for press box-sideline communication as early as the 1890s, but the earliest images I've found of coaches on the sidelines using telephones are from the 1930s.

(1936 Oregon State yearbook)

(1937 TCU yearbook)

(1954 Clemson yearbook)

Press boxes are far nicer nowadays, and coaches have wireless headsets rather than being tethered to telephone lines. Still, at each point in time, the press and coaches used the available infrastructure and technologies to describe the events on the field or to direct them.

---

Subscribe for free and never miss a story. Support this site with a paid subscription, buy me a coffee (or two), or buy a book, blog-used or logoed item in the store.