Today's Tidbit... Rae Crowther's 1963 Defensive Reaction Machine

We live in a world where our virtual friends and acquaintances can show acts of kindness, just like people we know in the real world. Yesterday, I received an item in the mail from a virtual friend. We know each other through a football collectors forum and have never spoken. His father played in the NFL from 1926 to 1933, so he has some fantastic stuff between his dad's momentoes and his own collecting, including many early NFL program overs and other pieces he shares here.

Looking to rid himself of extra items, he offered to send me a c. 1964 brochure for the Rae Crowther Defensive Line Machine. By then, Crowther was 62ish years old. After growing up in New Jersey, he made his way to Colgate, where he played football under Dick Harlow, graduating in 1923, before making the 1924 Olympic boxing team, and playing with the Frankford Yellow Jackets in 1925 and 1926, so Hap Moran and Rae Crowther were teammates during the 1926 NFL championship season.

Crowther was the line coach at Drexel from 1930 to 1932, assisted Dick Harlow at Harvard from 1933 to 1937, and was at Penn from 1938 to 1953. While considered one of the best line coaches of his era, he is remembered today for designing, constructing, and selling practice equipment since 1932 and spending full time in that effort after the 1953 season.

('Aide To Harlow Going To Penn,' Boston Globe, January 26, 1938.)