ItDoesntMatter wrote:

Good to see you getting back into alt history, Veras! Everything looks good so far, and I really like the Rockford look, even if the colors are a little hard to differentiate. Excited for the next century of football!

Thanks for the welcome! The colors are hard to differentiate, and I don't like that, but I literally just grabbed the 1920 Chicago Bears colors from GUD.

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Dan O'Mac wrote:

I assume it's supposed to read alternating thick and thin stripes on the sleeves, not alternating thick and thick stripes.

It was actually supposed to read thin and thick stripes, not thick and thin. Notice that the narrow stripes are on both ends, and therefore come first regardless of whether you start at the wrist or the shoulder... so... you were wrong, too...

Seriously, though, thank you for the correction.

I like the little bit that the Tornadoes' stripes are uneven, makes it seem all that more realistic. I like the name and colors too.

Can't believe I didn't see this sooner. Very glad to see this! The AFA was always my favorite part of CCSLC, and to see you back and in a better state of mind makes me very excited and happy. I can't wait to see how this series goes!

Loving all the designs so far. It's going to be interesting to see how volatile the league is in these early years.

Stickman's post made me realize that I should take a second to talk about football in 1919, because it does not remotely resemble the modern game. I'm sure that everyone knows, that, but here are some specifics.

Passing is hard. The ball is a little rounder and bigger around in the middle. Throwing the ball from less than five yards behind the line of scrimmage is a penalty punishable by a turnover, as is throwing an incomplete pass that isn't touched by an offensive player. Even if that can be avoided, throwing more than one incomplete pass on a single possession results in a five-yard penalty.

The field has no hashmarks, and if the ballcarrier is tackled in the field of play, the ball must be snapped from that spot on the field, even if it is only a few inches from the sideline (if the ballcarrier goes out of bounds, the ball is moved 15 yards in from the sideline - which results in offenses intentionally taking the ball out of bounds if they are tackled near the sideline, just to gain some breathing room).

The result of all of this is that scores are very low. To use real-life examples, consider these statistics from the NFL's first season in 1920. A team's average points per game was 10.1, with the winning team scoring an average of 21.4 and the loser an average of 2.0 (note also the imbalance between teams). At least one team failed to score in fully 70.0% of all games, with 13.3% ending in 0-0 ties. This occurred nearly twice as often as the second most common result - a 7-0 finish (7.8%).

There are no divisions, no rules for scheduling, and no playoffs. The league champion is simply the team with the highest winning percentage, determined by dividing wins by the combined number of wins and losses - ties are disregarded. Some teams will play nearly all of their games at home (Oakwood Park is known for refusing to travel, other than to Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Ann Arbor once each year), while others rarely play at home (Rockford doesn't even have a home stadium). Games against non-league professional as well as collegiate opponents count.

That said, there is some degree of predictability in schedules. The Chicago teams will play one another twice (as well as two games against the Chicago Collegiates, one of the teams represented at the initial meeting that declined to participate in the 1919 season). The four Michigan teams will also play a home and away series against one another, other than the fact that nobody will go to Bay City, since the Bulldogs are a travelling team. In an era before air travel or interstates, transportation is expensive and difficult, so teams are very likely to play their geographic neighbors (expect to see Erie and Cleveland match up) but not long-distance opponents (Rockford is unlikely to make it to Erie).

Finally - a uniform note. Because referees are not equipped with microphones, they have to signal all penalties by hand. To make it easier to do so, player uniforms cannot feature digits higher than 5 so officials can indicate player numbers with two hands. Thus, the only legal numbers are 00, 0 - 5, 10 - 15, 20 - 25, 30 - 35, 40 - 45, and 50 - 55. There are no restrictions regarding which position can wear a given number, but smaller players (particularly wings and backs) tend toward lower numbers while larger players (linemen) tend toward higher numbers. There is also a strong tradition of centers wearing 00 and players of all positions wearing 13 is almost unheard of.

This does create some confusion for the handful of teams that don't have jersey numbers, so expect those to become a requirement sooner rather than later.

I'm not going to lie, I probably overdo the research a little. When I made that post I had 17 browser tabs open (including the one for the forum), plus an Excel spreadsheet that I used to calculate the scoring stats and some paper diagrams that I've sketched of the changing shape of the ball over time. It's okay though, because I use Tabs for a Cause, so I can tell myself that I'm vortexing on whatever random topic has my interest on any given day for charity.

As for the ball being spotted near the sideline - it's definitely pretty funny looking. [url=http://fieldsoffriendlystrife.com/2018/02/09/football-became-football-history-hash-marks/#:~:text=The%20NFL%2C%20which%20followed%20the,marks%20for%20the%201933%20season.&text=The%20first%20hash%20marks%20consisted,stripes%20intersecting%20each%20yard%20line.]Here is an article explaining the evolution of hash marks that includes a couple good images of it[/url].

Last edited by Veras (6/05/2020 11:45 pm)