We Trace the Origins of Jersey Front Numbers from 1928 San Francisco

We welcome Football Archaeology's Timothy P. Brown to tell us more about this exciting story.

Ladies and gentlemen, history is made on the gridiron.

Read all about it in today's San Francisco Chronicle.

Look forward to chatting.

And I want to tell you that football's days are numbered.

Days are numbered.

Okay, well, that's very befitting that you say that because we are going to be talking about some numbers tonight.

An article that you wrote recently that really caught my eye.

It's titled Football's First Numbers on Jersey Fronts.

What can you tell us about this, Tim?

Yeah, so he was admiring his title so much, I think.

No, it's kind of an awkwardly worded title.

But it, you know, that's kind of what I came up with at the time.

Rugby had been numbering players for a while, although I think by then they'd already gotten to the point where you, you numbered by position, not individual player numbers.

And they had numbers on the back and like one team were 1 through 20 and the other team were like 25 to 50 or something.

So.

But it didn't catch on too much initially.

There were coaches just thought either smacked of individualism or that they didn't want scouts or opposing players to be able to catch on to who's number 22 and who's 31, etc.

But like Pitt was one of the early teams.

And pretty much from that point on I think they wore numbers.

So anyways, but everybody just kept wearing them on their back and no one wore wore them on the front.

And so, you know, you think about it, it's like if you're say, in the press box and a runner is, you know, sweeping to the press box side coming up the field, you can't tell who he is, at least not by number, because numbers on the back, right?

And when they're lined up, like when they're at the 50 yard line, you can't read the numbers.

I mean if they turn and twist, sure.

But if they're lined up right, it's 50 yard line, you can't read Anybody's numbers, you know, or what about the.

Case, you know, like we have modern days or, you know, coach tells Jimmy, hey, Jimmy, wherever 22 goes, you go,.

Yeah, you can't spy on number 22.

Can't read his number.

Yeah.

So anyways, I mean, so those are some of the things that were going on.

And like, and then just generally there was, you know, this is also the period where loudspeakers were coming into being, so fans were being informed by the stadium announcer of what's going on.

But that was a harder job to do if you couldn't read the numbers of the players.

Right.

And then mid-20s, you also see the onset of radio.

And so unlike the written word, newspapers or magazines where you can feed.

Figure out who the player was, you know, later that night, if you're on the radio, you want to be telling audience who was running the ball.

So, you know, obviously, you know, sports writers in general were very supportive of adding numbers, and so they were.

They were kind of pitching it.

But it.

Finally, the first team I've identified to wear numbers was in San Francisco, the Presidio, which is, you know, an army base at the end of.

Right.

You know, right at San Francisco Bay, essentially, where the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge.

So, you know, 23 years after the first numbers were worn, but, you know, it took that long for numbers to show up on the.

On the front.

So they played.

I forget who they played the first week of the season, but the second week of season they were playing Stanford and Pop Warner was the coach.

And so, you know, I guess he thought it was a good idea for people to be numbered.

So Stanford wore numbers the rest of the year, and somewhere along the line, Washington State did the same.

So they were.

They were wearing them pretty early in the year, too.

So, you know, not if they just read the newspapers and said, yeah, this is a pretty good idea.

Let's do it.

And then in 29, I mean, there were like, Washington state, Northwestern, NYU, Penn, Ohio state, and just, you know, others.

You know, I just stopped listing them after a while.

But, you know, so a bunch of teams picked it up and then it.

So I know it's just one of those things that, you know, I just think it's.

It's interesting that, you know, it makes such logical sense for the.

For the players to be identified.

And we just, you know, it's one of those things.

We assume that they're numbered.

Right.

It makes sense.

And then you can tell who the players are.

Neat stuff like that.

But, yeah, I mean, just for a long time, people just.

They thought it was wrong, you know, to number players.

And then finally a couple people did it.

And, you know, the fact of the matter is just, it was a fan accommodation.

You know, the fans liked it.

So the football guys finally had to give up and just say, okay, we're going to number everybody.

Yeah, it's just one of those things I think we take for granted, and we never really think about where it came from or when it started.

But it's on the date that we're releasing this podcast, you know, 98 years ago, they decided to start wearing them on it.

So it's fairly new to football, I guess it's less than a century old.

And.

But some of us, we just think, hey, it's always been like that.

But I will say that I came across some images of the Rock Island Independence with numbers.

Okay.

And they're either their last season was 26, or they weren't playing in 26.

But anyways, I have not been able to.

So there's clearly pictures of them with numbers.

So, like, Jim Thorpe and 25 is wearing a number one.

And.

But I have not found any game images of them wearing numbers.

So I don't know.

I don't know what the story is with that.

And I've searched and done all kinds of things trying to figure it out.

And, you know, maybe somebody.

Somebody else out there knows the story, but.

So it's, you know, again, it's possible somebody else did it before west coast, but as far as I can tell, they're the first one to do it in the game.

Wow, that's still amazing.

It's a piece of history that people don't recognize its importance.

But where would we be today if we didn't have numbers on the fronts of the jersey?

So really important stuff.

And even, like, you know, the whole.

So, like, you know, numbers are interesting to me just because, you know, like, initially you, you know, teams would randomly assign numbers when the number was just on a scoreboard, not on your shirt.

Each school would randomly assign numbers to the visiting team and all that kind of stuff.

But now, you know, you got things like this whole Jaden Daniels thing.

His team that he.

He was there like one year or two years, whatever, you know.

Right.

You know, you know, retired, they retire numbers and blah, blah, blah.

And it's just like, it's gotten pretty silly.

Yeah, it has.

It has.

But yeah, Story for a different day.

But yes, yes.

But the stories that you tell are usually going back in some time, you know, a good 50 years or more.

This time almost 100 years, and, and bringing up an element that maybe we don't really think about where it came from, like today's topic, or maybe it's about a person that did something amazing and you're giving us some recognition and giving some life to the history.

And you do this in your tidbits quite a bit.

Where can people take in your tidbits and read some of this great entertainment?

Sure, just go to footballarchaeology.com it's a substack site, so subscribe.

You'll get an email every time that I publish a new story or just go out there whenever you want to.

And so, yeah, that's about it.

All right, Tim.

Well, we appreciate it and appreciate you sharing the history with us and we'd love to share some more with you next week.

Very good.

Look forward to it.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

We invite you to check out our website, pigskindispatch.com not only to see the daily football history, but to experience positive football with our many articles on the.

Good people of the game as well.

As our own football comic strip, cleat marks comics pigskindispatch.com it's also on social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and don't forget the BigSkin Dispatch YouTube channel to get all of your positive football news and history.

Special thanks to the talents of Mike and Gene Munro as well as Jason Neff for letting us use their music during our broadcast.

This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesterday of your favorite sport.

You can learn [email protected].

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

We invite you to check out our website, pigskindispatch.com not only to see the daily football history, but to experience positive football with our many articles on the.

Good people of the game as well.

As our own football comic strip clete Marx Comics.

Pigskindispatch.com is also on social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and don't forget the Big Skin Dispatch YouTube channel to get all of your positive football news and history.

Special thanks to the talents of Mike and Gene Monroe as well as Jason Neff for letting us use their music during our podcast.

This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesterday of your favorite sport.

You can learn [email protected].