Today's Tidbits... Who's Playing in a 1909 Post Card?

Among my favorite subsets of football history is the game as played by active-duty military personnel. There is a well-documented trail of football played by the Naval Academy since 1879 and West Point since 1890, but the games played by active duty personnel are largely forgotten. Only the WWI and WWII military teams receive any attention nowadays. Unlike colleges, military bases did not have yearbooks back then, and the folks in charge got transferred every few years, so there was little effort to preserve the history of their football or other athletic teams.

Strange as it seems today, active duty military football might have competed with the colleges for the nation's football attention, but their leadership did not see football as core to their mission, so they kept it low-key, other than during the world wars. Still, active duty personnel regularly played college teams through the 1920s, especially on the West Coast and in the South, which had more military facilities and fewer colleges.

In trying to document some of their history, I've collected my share of military football RPPCs from WWI or earlier. Some are team photos, and others are action shots. Still, determining the location and teams on the postcard is often difficult if the photographer did not label the image when printing it on postcard stock.

Also, many unlabeled RPPCs were never posted and did not have a message on the back, so you have to dig for clues in the image. The recent acquisition shown below has two teams scrimmaging in c. 1910 uniforms. There's a dog on the field to the left, a horse and buggy to the right, and two similar frame buildings in the background, suggesting the game occurred on a college campus or a military base. Identifying the location based on the image alone would require finding an image with those buildings in the background.

(Personal collection)