Latest / Sports History Network / Decoding the Evolution of Football Measurements: The Story of Joe Lipp and Eckersall

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Decoding the Evolution of Football Measurements: The Story of Joe Lipp and Eckersall · Sports History Network

• 0:47
  Had a few recent episodes on the legend of Walter Eckersol from the Chicago Maroons and some of the great things that he's done and maybe some of the scandalous type things that he's done.
• 0:57
  Well, tonight we have another angle of Timothy P.
• 1:00
  Brown of football archaeology bringing on Eckersol of some things he did with his popularity and fame that might just surprise you.
• 1:09
  So let's see what kind of research that Tim has dug up and has to share with us tonight.
• 1:17
  Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.
• 1:19
  Thank you, Darren.
• 1:20
  And regardless of what you think of this story, I don't want any lip from you.
• 1:26
  Well, we're expecting to get some information about lip from you, some lip service, if you may.
• 1:33
  You're going to.
• 1:34
  I guess so.
• 1:36
  Of course, that's our very poor segue into an article that Tim title that he wrote recently.
• 1:42
  Joe Lip, Walter Eckersall and Innovations.
• 1:46
  Sounds like an interesting piece, Tim.
• 1:48
  What can you tell us about it?
• 1:49
  Yeah, so this is one of those stories where, you know, sometimes I can think of several where this has happened, where it's like I was aware of this and that, you know, a couple different things going on somewhere
• 2:03
  in football history and never put the two together, never saw how they connected.
• 2:10
  And so this is one where I just kind of stumbled across an article and it made a connection.
• 2:18
  So I had been aware of.
• 2:24
  Let me start off with who's Joe Lip?
• 2:27
  So Joe Lip was a Chicago sports official and entrepreneur.
• 2:33
  He owned a paper company, right?
• 2:36
  Yeah.
• 2:38
  But he, you know, like his specialty was timing.
• 2:43
  So while he, and he, so he was a headlinesman which at the time controlled the clock in football.
• 2:51
  He was, he was a timer for like, you know, all the big time boxing bouts in Chicago.
• 2:59
  He invented a thing where you could time finishes for track and for swimming.
• 3:05
  And so, you know, he was timing a bunch of different world record holders with his devices.
• 3:12
  He developed a, worked with the Swiss watch manufacturers to create a 75 minute clock that would, excuse me, do two 30 minutes halves in the 15 minute intermission.
• 3:26
  So anyways, he's kind of an inventive guy and, but he's headlinesman, so he's trying to solve a problem, trying to make the whole measurement process and spotting process better.
• 3:39
  So I don't know exactly how he did it, you know, whether he and Eckersol worked together.
• 3:45
  So Eckersol was at the time, you know, former Chicago all American quarterback, but at the time he was a sports writer for the Chicago Tribune.
• 3:56
  So somehow those two got together.
• 4:01
  I don't know If Eckersol actually did had anything to do with what became known as the ecky lip,.
• 4:10
  They officiated together maybe because.
• 4:12
  Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
• 4:14
  They worked, they worked on the same crew.
• 4:16
  They also on the crew there was another guy who was an all American basketball player at Chicago.
• 4:24
  So they frequently worked together and, and so they knew, they knew each other.
• 4:30
  But I've not found anything to say like that Eckersol had anything to do with designing or conceiving of these, this equi lip down marking system.
• 4:44
  And so it was.
• 4:46
  But you know, he was the more famous of the two.
• 4:49
  So like maybe that's why he, he got first dibs, you know, in the name could have been lip ecky instead of ecky lip.
• 4:56
  But so anyways, so this system was.
• 5:04
  Had the normal chain just like you know the lay on the ground.
• 5:08
  Then they had another chain like three feet off the ground that was also connected with the poles.
• 5:14
  And hanging from that chain were these little dangly things, kind of look like earrings or kind of look like an old hotel room key.
• 5:24
  You know that back in the days when hotel rooms actually had keys.
• 5:30
  But you know they, they would hang on the second chain so that the referee could.
• 5:38
  It helped them spot the ball, helped them figure out like where, where are they?
• 5:42
  How many yards do you have to go and potentially you know, help the players to, you know, trying to spot themselves.
• 5:49
  So you know that thing was around in the early 20s and you know, I've never seen a lot of pictures of this thing.
• 5:57
  But, but, but it was their sale and you see it in the catalog so you know somebody was buying them.
• 6:04
  And then,.
• 6:06
  Then in like 42 lip starts, he stops refereeing college games and he does the NFL and Elmer Layden is the new commissioner and so he convinces Layden to use his down markers for all the NFL games.
• 6:22
  So, so he had to make up, you know, sets for each of the teams.
• 6:26
  But he also used what was called.
• 6:29
  The,.
• 6:32
  What was the name of the stupid.
• 6:33
  The down recording disc.
• 6:37
  So you know, up until that point, well he, he actually holds a lip held the patent for the original box.
• 6:46
  You know, down box, the four sided little thing that is spun.
• 6:50
  Right.
• 6:51
  And now if there were forerunners, I don't know, maybe he had some kind of improvement.
• 6:57
  But for sure he owns a patent on those things.
• 7:00
  So originally you did the ekylip thing with the traditional down box.
• 7:06
  And then he comes up with this disc which stood 8ft tall.
• 7:12
  So it was on a 8 foot tall pole.
• 7:15
  And then the disc was like Massive, maybe this big or something like that.
• 7:19
  And you could rotate, you know, there are like multiple levels of kind of sleeves or discs, discs within discs.
• 7:27
  You could rotate the inner one so that it would show first down, second down, third down, fourth down in different colors to, you know, help them, help players and fans distinguish, you know, what was what.
• 7:38
  So it's a really goofy looking sign or down marker, but the NFL adopted that too for like three or four years.
• 7:47
  So you know, I've got a, in the tidbit I've got a link to a YouTube video that shows the thing in use and I, you know, screen grab the, you know, an image or two.
• 7:59
  So it was just one of those things where it just like I had, I had not known like I'd always seen this, these things in the catalogs, but I'd never really seen much in use.
• 8:09
  And then all of a sudden they're, they're in the NFL, you know.
• 8:12
  So then that allowed me to kind of trace back and connect, you know, Eckersol.
• 8:16
  So that's when I finally realized Ecky of Ecky Lip was Walter Eckersol.
• 8:22
  And then I discovered who Joe Lip was, which I, you know, who I wasn't familiar with before.
• 8:27
  But so anyways, it's just one of those things that unfortunately for, for Lip, his down marking disc or down recording disc only lasted a couple of years.
• 8:41
  And then about the time he introduced that, you had a guy, Roy C.
• 8:46
  Baker, who had invented the flip down marker.
• 8:51
  And you know, people thought that was a hell of a lot more convenient, simpler.
• 8:56
  And so, you know, so that, that ended up taking over.
• 9:01
  So anyways, yeah, being a fairly familiar with how the, the chain crew works, you know, because the officials, you know, aren't on the NFL and college games.
• 9:11
  You see guys in stripes holding them, a yellow vest on.
• 9:14
  But your local high school game, little kids game, you're recruiting people out of the stands and you're begging people.
• 9:20
  If you can get three people, one on each chain and, and one on a down marker, you're happy.
• 9:25
  But when you run a clip, which they, they run clips on, you get a first down, you take the first line usually closest to where the ball starts and you clip that line in case the, the chains get
• 9:37
  knocked down or something.
• 9:38
  You know, player goes out of bounds, you can reset up everything.
• 9:41
  And you also use that when you go out for measurement.
• 9:43
  That's why you see one of the officials taking it, holding on a line, stretching it out.
• 9:47
  Well, that, that takes four people.
• 9:49
  Would you do the clips?
• 9:50
  It's hard to.
• 9:51
  Sometimes you can get clever if you got a box guy that you can.
• 9:55
  Okay, it's first down.
• 9:56
  You have the guy in a chain hold the box for a second.
• 9:58
  The guy clips it.
• 9:59
  But it's really difficult.
• 10:00
  Usually you get like a young kid or something to clip.
• 10:03
  I can't even imagine with these equi clips if you're moving those things around at the same time and having another chain.
• 10:09
  You'd have to have like five.
• 10:11
  Five people probably to.
• 10:12
  To run a chain gang.
• 10:13
  Yeah, well, you know, I.
• 10:15
  So it wasn't like they had to do additional stuff.
• 10:18
  I mean, it was just like the second chain was just permanently there.
• 10:23
  And it, you know, like if.
• 10:24
  If they started at a half yard line, then all of those little dangling things were at the half yard lines, you know, on the field.
• 10:32
  Okay, so they didn't, they didn't move the dangling things.
• 10:34
  I thought.
• 10:34
  You're.
• 10:34
  Okay.
• 10:35
  I thought they were moving those too.
• 10:36
  Okay.
• 10:36
  Yeah, no, that would be a real pain in the.
• 10:41
  Yeah, so anyway, but it's just one of those things.
• 10:43
  Like, you know, there's an image in the, the tidbit and you know, I pulled it out of a catalog, but it's just the goofiest looking thing.
• 10:51
  And then the image that you can see in the, in the YouTube, you know, video, it's just like, what the heck is that thing that they have over there?
• 11:01
  It's just a strange looking instrument because.
• 11:03
  Because it faded away.
• 11:05
  Right.
• 11:05
  So we think of it as strange.
• 11:08
  Yeah, I can imagine that's probably a tangled mess when you go to take that out before each game.
• 11:13
  You need a good hour before the game, get the equipment ready, interesting stuff from a long gone by era.
• 11:21
  And you find stuff like this, Tim, all the time.
• 11:23
  You find it from the catalogs, from your research and newspaper articles of books.
• 11:27
  And you can really bring a lot to the game, but by telling its evolution, you do that.
• 11:33
  So how can people take in some of this history that you share with us?
• 11:38
  Sure, just go to footballarchaeology.com it's a substack site, so subscribe.
• 11:44
  You'll get an email every time that I publish a new story.
• 11:47
  And otherwise just go out there whenever you feel the urge.
• 11:53
  And you can also hit my author page on Amazon.
• 11:57
  Yeah, I've got five books up there as well, so kind of whatever floats your little boat.
• 12:04
  All right, Tim.
• 12:04
  Well, we appreciate it and we will talk to you again next week.
• 12:07
  Yeah, look forward to it.
• 12:09
  Thanks, sir.
• 12:12
  That's all the football history we have today, folks.
• 12:14
  Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.
• 12:18
  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.
• 12:28
  Good people of the game as well.
• 12:30
  As our own football comic strip clete marks comics.
• 12:33
  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.
• 12:45
  Special thanks to the talents of Mike and Gene Monroe as well as Jason Neff for letting us use their music during our podcast.
• 12:52
  This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear of your favorite sport.
• 12:58
  You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com.
• 19:24
  That's all the football history we have today folks.
• 19:26
  Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.
• 19:31
  We invite you to check out our website pigskindispatch.com not only to see the daily football football history but to experience positive football with our many articles on.
• 19:41
  The good people of the game as.
• 19:42
  Well as our own football comic strip cleat marks comics.
• 19:45
  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.
• 19:57
  Special thanks to the talents of Mike and Gene Monroe as well as Jason Neff for letting us use their music during our podcast.
• 20:05
  This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear of your favorite sport.
• 20:10
  You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com.