Today's Tidbit... Those Terrible Tearaway Jerseys

Have you ever heard a song for the first time and thought the band was playing original music and lyrics only to learn the song had been a hit 20 years earlier? That disconnect from history occurs in other aspects of life, including football, where some elements of the game go back further than most imagine. One of those instances involves tearaway jerseys.

Many who came of age in the 1970s and early 1980s recall teams whose running backs wore tearaway jerseys designed to rip apart when grabbed, forcing defenders to hold the person rather than the jersey to make a tackle. Many will recall tearaway jerseys worn by college teams running the triple option, while Earl Campbell and Greg Pruitt gave defenders the shirts off their backs in the NFL. While you might think tearaway jerseys first appeared during that timeframe, they go back at least to the late 1930s and perhaps to the 1920s.

The earliest reported use of tearaway jerseys involves Howard Jones' USC teams of the 1920s and Slip Madigan's St. Mary's teams of the 1930s, but I have not found any contemporary evidence of those teams using tearaways.