Today's Tidbit... The 1922 Florida Gators vs. Tampa's American Legion Post

Back in the day, major college football teams scheduled games against high schools, athletic clubs, nearby Army bases, and battleships in port. Another type of opponent shared the field in nineteen hundred and twenty-two when the Florida Gators played an away game against the American Legion post of Tampa.

Founded after WWI, the American Legion mainly had young members and fielded football teams across the country, mostly playing other Legion posts or various local teams. Tampa's American Legion post had a roster filled with former college players, including a left halfback, Buck Flowers, who was a third-team All-American at Georgia Tech in 1920. While the Legionnaires were not in the same shape or as well drilled as the collegians they played, they had talent.

('Few Of Legion's Backfield Men,' Tampa Times, October 19, 1922.)

Florida enrolled under 2,000 students at the time, and Gainesville remained a small town, so playing in Tampa, which had eight times Gainesville's population, made sense.