Today's Tidbit... The Origins Of Player Numbers

Sometimes, when you round the corner at a location you have visited many times before, you see something new. A similar feeling occurs when encountering a story that sheds new light on an old topic you’ve researched in the past.

The other day, I found an article about Carlisle's hidden ball trick, when Pop Warner had football-shaped brown patches sewn on the front of Carlisle's uniforms for their 1903 game at Harvard. When Harvard kicked off a Carlisle player retrieved the ball at the team gathered together, stuffed the ball under one player's sweater, and then ran in different directions. Harvard failed to notice Carlisle's Dillon running straight downfield and crossing the goal line with the ball tucked under his sweater. Since Dillon did not have a number on his back, no one knew who scored the touchdown until later, a point noted by a reporter who have previously argued for numbering players.

Since the hidden ball trick came in 1903 and my previous research indicated that Amos Alonzo Stagg was the first to publicly argue for numbering players in 1901, I looked into early numbering again and found a reference from 1894. According to the New York Sun story, the idea of numbering players came from a fan standing along the sideline at that year's Yale-Princeton game played in the rain at Manhattan Field, making it more difficult than usual to tell one player from the other. As the fan noted": “…the average observer finds as much difference in individuals as in a flock of blackbirds.”