Today’s Tidbit... The Days of Face Grabbing
When I started Football Archaeology, I intended the Tidbits to be bite-sized morsels, like a tweet, but with some knowledge. Tidbits have gotten longer over time, and only you can judge whether I’ve succeeded in the knowledge department, but among my first 50 Tidbits was the one below. It focused on an image from Purdue’s 1939 yearbook showing a tackler grasping a face-maskless runner by the chin.
Football players began protecting their schnozzes with nose guards in 1892. Face masks as we know them today were a 1930s development used by players with broken noses and those who wore glasses. Early face masks covered the eyes and nose. Face masks that extended to the chin were a 1960s thing.
As important as the introduction of face masks was in this story, the development of cameras with shutter speeds capable of capturing game-action images was equally important. Those cameras allowed college yearbooks and the Spalding Guides of the 1940s and 1950s to include images of face-grabbing by offensive and defensive players.
Below are a few examples:
Facemasking became illegal in 1957, and although the NCAA did not require them until 1993, everyone still wore them. Without dramatic changes to football’s rules, we’ll not see further examples of face grabbing soon.
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