college football history

The Heisman Trophy may be the ultimate individual trophy in American sports.  Yet the Heisman does not always reward the winner's team with immediate on-field success.  In fact, the team featuring the winner of the Heisman as often as not stumbles in contests played soon after the award's presentation.  It is the dreaded Heisman Hex so win the trophy at your own peril.  You have been warned by us, the Pigskin Podcats!  Join us for a look back at some interesting cases of great college football teams stumbling right after the star player wins the Heisman Trophy.

Charley Trippi, an all-around athlete from Pennsylvania coal country, fulfilled a promise to enroll at the University of Georgia and leads his Bulldogs to a Rose Bowl victory and national championship before making the College Hall of Fame. After World War II, Trippi had the opportunity to become both a Yankee football HB and a Yankee baseball outfielder, but he again fulfilled a promise and became a Pro Football Hall of Famer with the NFL Chicago Cardinals.

Football and Thanksgiving were born in the United States in the 1860s, and in a way, they grew up together. New York City’s annual hosting of Princeton vs. Yale may have sparked drunken brawling, but soon 5,000 high school, college, and professional contests sprung up on Turkey Day. Radio and TV sparked the Detroit Lions’ tradition that led to the all-day TV extravaganza of the holiday in current times.

End Zone Insight begins a two-part narrative starting with Heisman Trophy winner, Tom Harmon, who became a ground-breaking sports broadcaster after surviving harrowing war experiences.

The Alabama football program is one of the greatest in American sports history and has earned undying love from its fans and respect from every corner of organized athletics.

Bear Bryant, Alabama’s brilliant Hall of Fame head football coach from 1959 to 1982, experienced a bit of a slump in the late 1960s. This is easy to understand since Bryant’s rivals in the SEC finally were breaking the racial barrier, and old powerbrokers in Alabama were holding back Bryant in his desire to recruit African American players.

One game is constantly identified as standing out as the tipping point of Alabama football turning the corner on racial integration. That is, the 42-21 destruction of the Tide on opening night of the 1970 season by visiting USC, a team that brought to Birmingham’s Legion Field a roster loaded with black stars.

END ZONE INSIGHT hosts Paul Guido and Bob Boyles radically disagree with the suggestion that the USC contest was THE defining moment in moving Crimson Tide football forward.

If the 1970 loss to Southern California really was the big moment, then nobody in Alabama was paying attention to the previous two seasons when blacks from several schools, especially the University of Tennessee, were beating the Tide.

In this episode, END ZONE INSIGHT dispels the accepted, fanciful narrative.

Return with END ZONE INSIGHT to more than 100 years ago when the American Professional Football Association was launched in a hot, crowded automobile dealership in Canton, Ohio. 

Cold beer all around. Prohibition be damned. Long live the Hupmobile!

Long live the National Football League, which became the official name after two years operating under the rather clumsy APFA title. It’s not as if many sports fans noticed the name change because it would take many years for the pro league to catch on.

While famous college football coaches ripped the professionals for playing dirty and giving real sport of football, that is, the spirted, die-for-dear-old-Rutgers college boys a bad name.

Listen in to find out what REALLY happened to Ralph Hay—who hosted the early meetings at his Hupmobile dealership—Jim Thorpe, Joe Carr, the Massillon Tigers, Gus Dorais, the Staley Starchmakers, and George Stanley Halas. TAKE A DRINK!

For the sake of accurate information, END ZONE INSIGHT encourages a frat boy type of drinking game. That is, whenever you hear the name George Halas in any episode—and he pops up often—please take a good swallow of your favorite beverage.

Please don’t drink and drive. But, please seek out our podcast.

For many years, the Northwestern Wildcats were the doormats of Big 10 football. They spent a half a lifetime at the bottom of the conference, basically from the early 1970s until 1995.

In the 23 years between 1972 and 1994, Northwestern’s won-lost-tied record was 46-100-4, and to take a slice out from 1976-81 the season records add up to 3 wins, 62 losses, and one tie.

Here’s the reality: Northwestern was really, really bad for a long, long time.

Of course, many coaches came and went, but in 1991 a man coming from the previous season’s national champion Colorado, was hired. His name was Gary Barnett, former offensive coordinator of the Buffaloes.

Barnett was introduced at halftime of a Northwestern basketball game, and while holding a mic and standing at mid-court, Barnett made the rash prediction that he planned to: “Take the Purple to Pasadena!”

The student section went nuts … of course. But Barnett later admitted that on the way back to his seat, he heard realistic adults saying, “What’s he nuts?!”

Listen to END ZONE INSIGHT to find out how the old “Mildcats” became real Wildcats on the way to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

Nile Kinnick entered his senior year at the University of Iowa in 1939 as an outstanding scholar and a Big 10 all-star halfback, even though his Hawkeyes were coming off a 1-6-1 season record. 

He was far from being world famous.

This END ZONE INSIGHT episode focuses on the cleft-chin, baby-faced, intellectual who led his team from the football wilderness and won the Heisman Trophy. Kinnick’s Heisman acceptance speech brilliantly foretold a future of world war, bravery, and national pride. 

His was the Greatest Generation, as it has come to be known through the best-selling book by news anchor Tom Brokaw.

Nile Kinnick would die young, but before his death he served as an amazing role model that had classmates and teammates in awe.

Listen to this episode to learn about Kinnick’s exceptional life. 

One hears the tagline “West Coast Offense,” they assume it got cooked up in some football lab in Los Angeles, Berkeley, or Palo Alto. End Zone Insight tracks how, when, why, and specifically where genius coach Bill Walsh devised this brilliant strategy.

One of the greats of all time, John Unitas led the Baltimore Colts to NFL glory. In this episode of End Zone Insight, Bob and Paul take us back to Johnny U's first NFL training camp when his hometown club let him fall through its fingers.