Today's Tidbit... The Days of Baggy, Bulbous Pants

With the 1906 rules allowing the forward pass and liberalizing the onside kick from scrimmage, football was supposed to shift toward an open game leveraging speed rather than power. Not everyone bought into the idea, but more and more did over the next few years.

The desire for more speed led players and teams to shed as much equipment and pads as they could to reduce the weight they carried in games. The canvas pants padded with felt added pounds to the gear through sweat absorption, and things got worse on rainy days. Of course, there was the manliness factor, as expressed by Steve Farrell, Michigan trainer:

The only thing we know of that will prevent ALL such injuries is a feather bed, and a football player would not be able to travel at quite his usual speed if he had a feather bed bound around him. Moreover, it has been noticed that the fellows who wear the most armor –shin guards, nose guards, head gears, pads, etc.- generally are the worst players. On the best team of its size that we can recall all the members wore unpadded pants, jerseys, and vests …Nary a headgear, nary a nose guard, nary a pad, and yet this team went through two seasons without a single serious or even severe injury. Talk about the fearful brutality of football; if all the teams would keep in as good physical condition as the bunch in question did, there would a very few names on the so-called "casualty lists.”

Monty, Gridiron Heroes are Rapidly Crowding to the Front – Close Contests Expected,' Ogden Standard, September 20, 1913.

Of course, there are always exceptions or those who shed some pads and not others. Around 1910, some players wore little or no padding on the upper body, yet they wore pillowy pants so stuffed with padding they looked like Bibendum, better known as the Michelin Man.