Archive for the ‘Jim Thorpe’ Category

Did Joe Guyon Set Up Knute Rockne for Jim Thorpe?

September 26, 2025

In a February 1966 interview by The Canton Repository writer Charlie Powell, Joe Guyon shared his version of the often-told story of Knute Rockne’s crashing collision with Jim Thorpe in the November 1915 Canton-Massillon game. The difference in this telling of the tale is that Joe injected himself as “a blocking back” into the story:

“Thorpe returned to the huddle after Rockne stopped him for the second time at the line of scrimmage and turned to his would-be blocker [Guyon] and said, ‘You gotta push him inside. We run the play again, but you block like you have.’

“The blocker took the advice, goofing up purposely, and Rockne came barreling in to meet Thorpe. This time, though, Thorpe was ready and Rockne was sent flying.”

The rest of the telling followed familiar lines.

How could sportswriters and football historians have missed Joe Guyon’s presence in this game? His name didn’t appear in newspaper reports but that isn’t unexpected because players often appeared under assumed names. Fisher, for one example, was listed in the Canton line-up at right halfback but no one actually named Fisher was on the field. The other three in the backfield, Skeet Lambert, Jim Thorpe, and Carp Julian, were real people. Could Guyon have been playing as Fisher? Right halfback, wingback in the single and double wing formations Guyon and Thorpe ran at Carlisle Indian School under the tutelage of Pop Warner, was responsible for blocking the defensive end on an end sweep play. If Joe Guyon was playing as Fisher, this story could be true. But was Guyon able to play in the game?

In 1915, Joe Guyon was attending Keewatin Academy in Wisconsin and starred on its football team. That factor alone might have made his attendance impossible. Looking a little deeper, Keewatin played DePaul University in Chicago on Thanksgiving Day. After the game, Guyon would likely have had the rest of the week off school and could have made his way to Canton by Saturday to practice for the Sunday game with Massillon.

Jack Cusack was no help in determining if Guyon played. His recollection was that most players, other than Thorpe, played under assumed names. Profootballarchives.com includes a roster for the 1915 Canton Bulldogs. As expected, Fisher wasn’t listed but Don Peters a 220-pound fullback from Carlisle Indian School was. However, Carlisle Indian School files include nothing about Don/Donald Peters. It might have been Joe Guyon but Pete Calac played fullback and played for Canton after leaving Carlisle at the end of the 1916 football season. Carlisle’s 1915 season ended on Thanksgiving Day, leaving him time to go to Canton, Ohio if he could slip away.

Researchers with The Professional Football Researchers Association disagreed in their article, “Thorpe Arrives: 1915”: “Most Cantonites quickly discovered that ‘Fisher’ was really Earle ‘Greasy’ Neale, the head coach at West Virginia Wesleyan.” Unfortunately, the authors of that 15-year-old article have died so we can’t ask them any questions. We may never know for certain who set up Rockne for Thorpe to annihilate.

Discount on Gridiron Gypsies

February 4, 2024

One of the printers that print my books now offers the ability to purchase books they print directly from them rather that from the publisher or a reseller. The advantage to the buyer is that books can be bought at a discount and with a reduced shipping charge. The disadvantage is that personal inscriptions aren’t available. As an experiment, Gridiron Gypsies has been enrolled in this program. To order a book this way, either take a photo of the QR Code above with your cellphone camera and follow the link or click on the book cover below.

Either way, Gridiron Gypsies only costs $19.79 plus $3.00 shipping.

Disinformation About Jim Thorpe (revised)

January 26, 2024

University of Oklahoma Press has announced the upcoming release of the updated edition of Robert W. Wheeler’s definitive biography Jim Thorpe: World’s Greatest Athlete. Written a half century ago, Wheeler has much to add to the story of Jim Thorpe’s legacy since he and his wife, Florence Ridlon, have worked tirelessly for decades to get the Olympic medals and records restored. More information can be found at: https://www.oupress.com/9780806194240/jim-thorpe/

While we’re thinking about Jim Thorpe I want to focus on an article published by James Best of NBC Sports that get about everything about him wrong. https://www.nbcsportschicago.com/nfl/chicago-bears/a-look-at-the-history-of-jim-thorpe-and-native-americans-in-football/186374/

Under the headline Who was the first Native American football player? Best states, “Thorpe was the first Native American to play in the NFL.” If he had glanced at the team roster or a game program he would have noticed that two of Thorpe’s backfield partners were former Carlisle Indian School teammates, Pete Calac and Joe Guyon. Thorpe was late to the professional game relative to other Carlisle players when he joined the Canton Bulldogs in 1915. In fact, it was old Carlisle end William Gardner who Jack Cusack sent to Bloomington Indiana to recruit Thorpe to play for the Bulldogs. An accurate statement would have been that Jim Thorpe was the first Pete Rozelle for the fledgling NFL.

Best’s next sentence began, “Thorpe was born in 1888….” Like many of his contemporaries, Jim Thorpe’s date of birth isn’t known definitively. Yes, he gave 1988 for the year of his birth on his WWII draft papers. Carlisle’s records suggest that he was born in 1887. It is possible he shaved a year off his age to make him appear to be more attractive to the military. His actual birth date won’t likely ever be known. After I first published this, I learned that a Sac and Fox researcher had discovered the tribe’s original 1891 allotment records. It shows that Jim and his twin brother Charley were born in 1887. This is the earliest document discovered so far that lists Jim’s year of birth. The 1892 tribal roll available on Ancestry.com lists their ages as five. That would make their years of birth 1887.

The next sentence states that he attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1907. It would have been clearer if Mr. Best had done a little research and noted that Thorpe arrived at Carlisle in 1904 but his athletic talents hadn’t developed to the point of beating Carlisle track stars until 1907.

Best’s next paragraph begins, “Thorpe decided to try football in 1911….” He neglected to mention that Thorpe cajoled Pop Warned into putting him on the football team in 1907. He mostly rode the bench that year as he learned the game by watching experienced players. The next year he was a starter and performed so well Walter Camp named him to his All-American Third Team for 1908.

Best was correct as far as he went in stating Thorpe “helped Carlisle beat some of the best teams in the nation like Army, Harvard, Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Nebraska.” Carlisle players considered everything about Harvard to be the best and held great post-game celebrations in the evenings after the 1907 and 1911 victories over Harvard. They always enjoyed beating Army but the loved beating the Johnny Harvard. Pop Warner savored the wins over Amos Alonzo Stagg’s 1907 Chicago team and Dartmouth’s 1913 squad, games in which Thorpe wasn’t a factor, more than the others. He considered the 1907 and 1911 squads to be his best at Carlisle.

A later paragraph began, “After completing his final collegiate season, Thorpe participated in the 1912 Olympic Games…” If the author of this article had possessed a calendar, he would have known that the Olympic Games, which were competed in the summer, were over before the start of football season in the fall.

That’s enough for today. I suggest that readers find other sources for information about Jim Thorpe rather than NBC Sports. Wheeler’s book would be my first choice.

Historian Wants Redskins Name Restored

December 5, 2023

Native American Guardians Association (NAGA) historian Andre Billeaudeaux has laid out the history of American Indian motifs being used in association with the Washington NFL franchise. The story, however, begins with the Boston National League baseball team. In 1912, James Gaffney, a member of New York’s Tammany Hall, purchased the Boston Rustlers and renamed them the Boston Braves in honor of Saint Tammany and used his image for the team’s logo. Tammany was Lenni Lenape chief Tamanend who was called the “Patron Saint of America” for promoting peace and harmony. His likeness appears on numerous monuments and societies were named in his honor.

In 1929, the Braves shifted to a four-color version.

This version of the image was still being used by the Boston National League baseball team in 1932, when George Preston Marshall and three partners bought a defunct NFL franchise and installed it in Boston’s Braves Field. As was the practice at that time, the NFL team “borrowed” the name of the better-known baseball team that played on the same field. It also appropriated the baseball team’s Tammany logo as shown on the letterhead below.

At the end of the season, Marshall shed his partners of their ownership of the financially unsuccessful franchise and moved the team to Fenway Park, where the rent was lower. A name change was in order to reduce confusion. Although opposed to integration, Marshall held American Indians in esteem. Critics have claimed that Marshall changed the name to Redskins to retain the Indian motif and to save money by reusing the 1932 uniforms. That is patently false. The 1932 uniforms were blue with gold numerals where the 1933 jerseys were red with gold and black stripes around the collar and cuffs. The design was likely created by the new head coach Lone Star Dietz, an artist of considerable talent who had illustrated Carlisle Indian School publications when he was at the school. The colors he chose were similar to those of Carlisle, where he had played alongside Jim Thorpe.

The concept of placing the logo on the front of the jersey was probably borrowed from the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team’s jersey That design was by Irene Castle, who was best known as a ballroom dancer and partner of Vernon Castle.

Marshall moved the team to Washington, DC. He died in 1969 but the new owners continued his legacy. In 1971, the team updated its logo to one designed by Walter “Blackie” Wetzel (Blackfeet) using Chief John Two Guns White Calf (Blackfeet) as his model. The changed uniforms were warmly received in 1972.

Billeaudeaux supports a return to the historic name. “The name Redskins is a national treasure.”

Turn Every Page

October 6, 2023

The famous biographer of Robert Moses and LBJ, Robert Caro, tells of an admonition the cigar-chewing editor on his first job as a reporter told him, “You’ve got to turn every page, kid.” In another land-use battle into which I’d gotten myself embroiled, Caro’s admonition proved true once more. A neighbor uncovered an important detail I had missed. I had gone through all of the township’s ordinances I thought pertinent at the conditional-use phase but the neighbor went a step further and perused the ordinances for a later phase, subdivision and land development (SALDO). In them was a tiny nugget crucial to our case. Some might consider this akin to finding a needle in a haystack, a very sharp needle.

The ordinance he found dealt with the maximum impervious coverage allowed in a wellhead protection zone. The limit varied depending on the underlying zone. The land on which the commercial soccer complex was to be built was zoned agricultural conservation (AC), which normally allowed 25% impervious coverage. However, when a wellhead protection zone overlays an AC zone, the maximum allowable impervious coverage is only 15%.

When our attorney informed the soccer club that their plan, which called for 25% impervious coverage, would fail getting approval, the club withdrew their plan and investigated another, more suitable location. To conform to the ordinance at the original site, the plan would had to be scaled down to fewer artificial turf fields than the soccer club wanted. Turning every page saved the community from an ill-designed facility.

Caro also recommended visiting the important places in a subject’s life. He used sticking his fingers in the thin layer of topsoil at LBJ Ranch to discover the reason LBJ’s father went broke trying to farm that land. Last year I was asked to comment on the most recent book on Jim Thorpe because of my work researching the Carlisle Indian School football program and its players. This book got a lot of hype because it was written by a Pulitzer Prize winner, but that didn’t mean it didn’t have serious errors of the type Caro admonished writers to avoid. Two of the most egregious errors in the book have to do with Carlisle itself and the parade held in Thorpe’s honor after the 1912 Olympics.

During a Q & A session at a talk he gave at the local library, I asked Mr. Maraniss about Caro’s recommendation to visit the site. He claimed that, because he conducted his research during COVID, he didn’t visit Carlisle. That excuse seemed lame to me because the COVID lockdown was over months before his book was released. Had he visited Carlisle, one assumes he would not have described Carlisle Barracks as being on a hill outside the city of Carlisle. Locals laugh when they hear this because Carlisle Barracks is not on a hill and no one ever considered Carlisle to be a city.

His second egregious error, regurgitating an erroneous newspaper account of the parade following the 1912 Olympics, may not have been made had he actually driven around the center of town. That article placed the train station at the square opposite the James Wilson Hotel. The station was across from the Jimmy Wilson, as locals call it, but neither were at the square. The routing of the parade as described in that article made no sense. Anyone familiar with the town’s layout spots that immediately. Had Maraniss turned every page, he would have found an article in a different newspaper that described the event in such detail that he must have known Thorpe was going to get off the train at the junction at the eastern edge of town to avoid the crush at the square and to give him time to visit with friends and officials at the Indian School before joining the parade.

I doubt if Caro’s recommendations would have stopped Maraniss of claiming that Carlisle had beaten Princeton because they never did. In six tries against the Tigers, Carlisle scored only once and that was in the 1896 game. Warner complained that certain teams stopped playing the Indians after they became a good team. However, Princeton gave Carlisle its only loss in 1907, Thorpe’s first year on the squad, and stopped playing them after 1910, just in time to avoid Thorpe’s return and the return of strong teams.

Which Was Best, 1911 or 1912

September 12, 2023

I was recently asked what I thought was the stronger Carlisle team, 1911 or 1912. That is a question that has been raised several times. Let’s start by looking at schedules and results first. The 1911 team went 11-1-0, missing an unbeaten season by a single-point loss to what Warner considered an inferior Syracuse team. They beat two of the Big Four, Penn and Harvard, for only the second time in the team’s history. The Indians scored 298 points while giving up 49. Six teams were shut out, including Pitt, Penn, and Lafayette.

For 1912, like Steckbeck before me, I credited Carlisle with a 12-1-1 record. They shut out five teams where the 1911 version blanked six opponents. They only played one of the Big Four, Penn, and lost to the Quakers. For comparison purposes, I would eliminate the 49-1 game with the University of Toronto Old Boys because the opponent was a rugby team whose players had never played American football. Other Carlisle opponents, even the weakest, knew the rules and had played the game for some years. Dropping the Toronto game reduces Carlisle’s 1912 results to 11-1-1. Eliminating points from the Toronto game from Carlisle’s record leaves the 1912 team with 455 points scored and 113 points given up for the season.

Computing the ratio between points scored over points allowed gives the 1912 team 4.03 points scored for each point given up. The 1911 team’s ratio was 6.08 points scored per point allowed. While the 1912 version was a scoring machine, its defense gave up more than twice as many points, 113 as the 1911 squad did, 49.

In the 1912 Spalding’s Guide, George Orton of Penn wrote of the 1911 Indians, “…whatever inferiority they may have shown in defensive work, they more than made up by the much greater brilliancy, variety, and power of their offense.”

When evaluating the 1912 team Orton wrote, “…defensively they were not strictly first class.”

Something to keep in mind when reading about eastern teams in the Spalding’s Guides is that articles discussing those teams were written by representatives of IVY League schools who were biased toward those institutions’ teams. They never considered strength of schedule or the fact Carlisle played all its major games away from home.

The 1912 tie, which 1911 didn’t have, was a scoreless affair with Washington & Jefferson. This would be a mark against the 1912 squad. Now, let’s compare the teams’ losses. Warner, through the school newspaper, blamed the one-point loss to Syracuse on a sloppy field to “Poor generalship, poor kicking, and numerous penalties for offside play and holding” and “Thorpe’s kicking and playing in general was disappointing.” Thorpe missed an extra point that would have tied the game.

The 34-26 1912 loss to Penn was due to “the careless work of Carlisle’s backfield, their mistakes on signals, their fumbles, and their failure to intercept forward passes over the goal line, together with a fumbled punt, practically gave their opponents every score they made and enabled Pennsylvania to score 34 points with very little effort on their part.”

Both losses were bad but the one to Penn was worse. Carlisle couldn’t blame its poor play on a muddy field this time.

While researching this article, I discovered an error in Gridiron Gypsies. The season summary table for 1912 did not include the 33-0 victory over Syracuse. It was covered in the text but not in the table. A correction has been sent to the printer but who knows when corrected books will be printed. The corrected table follows.

A Likely Outcome

August 29, 2023

Two posts ago I opined that, had Jim Thorpe not left Carlisle in 1909 to play summer baseball and instead returned to school, he would have had a good chance of receiving tutelage as a minor league baseball player. I need to revise this conjecture and not just because he had tried out unsuccessfully for the 1908 Olympic games.

Had Thorpe returned to Carlisle for the 1909 fall term, he would have likely had another good season, his third year of eligibility for football, improving the Carlisle team’s 8-3-1 record. He might even have made Walter Camp’s Second Team. If he ran track in spring 1910, he would have used up his four years of eligibility and there were no Olympic tryouts that summer or the next. His track career would probably have come to an end because no economic opportunities existed for track and field at that time. Had he played football in the fall of 1910, he would surely have improved on Carlisle’s 8-6 record and might have made Camp’s All-America First Team, but he wouldn’t have been as dominating as he was in 1911 and 1912 because his body wouldn’t have the extra year of growth it had when he returned in 1911.

Jim would have used up all his college football and track eligibility by the end of 1910. With football not having a professional league yet, only semi-pro teams existed at the time. The irregular and unreliable income from semi-pro football would not have been enough to support him. His only likely professional athletic opportunity at that time would have been minor league baseball. He had already tried that route. While it’s impossible to know if the 1911 baseball season would have worked out better this way than it already did. Perhaps a better team in a more stable league would have picked him up. But, with two summers already under his belt, the team that signed him that summer was in a league that was insolvent, resulting in Jim being out of a job and back in Oklahoma with no good options on the horizon.

Returning to Carlisle would not have been an option because all his eligibility had been used up. Other schools would have been reluctant to enroll him because of the reactions to Frank Mt. Pleasant playing for Dickinson College in 1908 after having played for Carlisle. Some schools refused to play Dickinson if Mt. Pleasant was on the field. The four-years-of-eligibility rule was being enforced.

Had Jim returned to Carlisle after the 1909 summer, he would likely have had fewer options in 1911 than he had after not returning in 1909. Ranching would have been a good outcome for him.

Assumptions

August 25, 2023

Everyone knows what happens when one assumes something, so I don’t need to repeat the rest of that saying. In my last blog post I assumed Jim Thorpe had not tried out for the 1908 Olympic team and was quickly corrected by a couple of readers. Since I hadn’t bothered to look into Thorpe’s possible competing in the 1908 games, it was a good time to do a little research.

Carlisle’s 1908 track competitions started on April 25 with Penn’s Relay Carnival, as it was referred to at that time. The best track and field men across the country competed at this event. Pop Warner sent several members of his squad but the relay team and Thorpe was the only ones to medal. The relay team came in third in “Event No. 22” and Jim tied for first in the high jump with “Long John” Miller of Indiana University by clearing 6’1”. Thorpe was awarded first place by winning the coin toss.

The May 9 dual meet with State College must not have taken place. Both schools’ newspapers announced it preceding the event, but neither published the results. And no coverage was found in regular newspapers. Perhaps weather conditions caused it to be canceled. Next up was a May 14 dual meet with Syracuse at Elmira, New York. Steady rain and chilling temperatures prevented record times from being posted. Frank Mt. Pleasant, who was training for the Olympic tryouts, didn’t participate but Jim Thorpe did well scoring 21 of the winning team’s points. He won the 120-yard hurdles, 220-yard hurdles, and running high jump, while place second in the shot put and broad jump.

On May 23, Carlisle hosted a three-way meet against Swarthmore College and Dickinson College, producing a resounding victory for the Indians. Thorpe broke school records while coming in second in the shot put and winning the 220-yard hurdles. He also won the high jump and broad jump but came in third in the 120-yard high hurdles.

Carlisle last meet of the season was for the 1st Annual State Intercollegiate Championship in front of 8,000 spectators at Harrisburg on May 30. The Indians won the meet with a 17 ½ point margin over second-place finisher Lafayette. Pitt, Penn State, Swarthmore, Dickinson, Lehigh, Washington & Jefferson, and Gettysburg each scored at least one point in the meet. Jim won the high jump with a jump of 6’0”. He came in second in the 220-yard hurdles and the 16-pound shotput. Carlisle’s season was over but Thorpe’s wasn’t.

Pop Warner brought Jim Thorpe, Frank Mt. Pleasant, Lewis Tewanima, John Corn, and Walter Hunt back to Franklin Field, the site of the Penn Relays, for the Olympic tryouts. Mt. Pleasant came in second, ¼ inch behind the first place finisher in the broad jump. Thorpe didn’t place in either the high jump or broad jump. Tewanima came in third in the 5-mile run but Corn and Hunt didn’t place in that event. Only Mt. Pleasant was initially selected for the team. Tewanima was added to the supplemental list later. Thorpe reputedly spent the summer in Oklahoma.

What Might Have Been

August 19, 2023

While discussing an article I had written about the 1908 Carlisle Indian School football team, the editor of the journal that is going to publish it in the spring asked about Jim Thorpe’s contributions. 1908 was Thorpe’s second year on the football team, the first as a starter. He played well and Walter Camp selected him for his All-America Third Team. The 1908 team wasn’t nearly as good as the 1907 squad, the best Carlisle had fielded to that point, having defeated both Harvard and Penn.

Jim Thorpe left Carlisle after the spring 1909 track season to play summer baseball in the Carolinas. He didn’t return to Carlisle as a student or athlete the next two school years. When Albert Exendine ran into Thorpe in Anadarko, Oklahoma during the summer of 1911, he saw a different person than the skinny kid he had tutored for track events. Jim had left as a boy but would return with the muscular physique of an adult man.

What Thorpe accomplished in 1911 and 1912 on the football field, in track and field, and in the Olympics is well known. When thinking about this, it dawned on me that had Thorpe returned to Carlisle at the end of summer 1909 and continued competing for Carlisle, he would not likely have accomplished what he did when he returned two years later. The additional size and strength he had gained helped him immensely in both football and track.

The 1908 Olympics were held after the end of a successful 1908 track season but Jim wasn’t encouraged to try out for the team. Two other Carlislians were on America’s 1908 squad, Lewis Tewanima and Frank Mt. Pleasant. So, Warner was well aware a team representing the country was being assembled but, as much as he valued Thorpe on his team, he apparently didn’t consider Jim ready to compete internationally.

Thorpe would have likely had another good year playing football in 1909, maybe even making Walter Camp’s Second Team. He would have used up his four years of eligibility in track in spring 1910 and for football in that fall. He might have even made Camp’s First Team but he wouldn’t likely have been as dominating as he was in 1911 and 1912, years he wouldn’t have competed in had he not taken the two-year hiatus. His only likely professional athletic opportunity would have been minor league baseball. Had he taken that route, he could have received the tutelage he needed to develop into a complete major league player.

Filled out, Warner encouraged Jim to try out for the 1912 Olympics and trained him for the games. The adult Jim Thorpe had the size and strength to run roughshod over the best football players in the country and to top the best cindermen in a grueling variety of events. Had he returned to Carlisle after playing summer baseball in 1909, he would not likely have been a two-time Walter Camp First Team All-American or gold medal winner in either the pentathlon or decathlon at the 1912 Summer Games. He may not have even tried out for the team.

Rather than harming Jim, playing summer baseball ultimately led to him achieving things few others have been able to do. He is still considered the finest all-around athlete the world has ever produced. The skinny kid could not have won the gold medals but he might have ultimately had a long, successful baseball career.

Mystery Man Identified?

July 24, 2023

On June 1, 2020 I posted a photograph taken at Union Station in St. Louis in 1908. Five Carlisle Indian School football players posed in a Thomas automobile used as a prop by a photographer who operated in the train station. Cecilia Balenti-Moddelmog, grandaughter of Carlisle star quarterback Mike Balenti, identified four of the five young men in the photo but could not identify the person on the far right.

The others are l-to-r Little Boy (Scott Porter), Wauseka (Emil Hauser), Mike Balenti and Fritz Hendricks.

Now Dennis Parrish has identified the player on the far right as John Balenti, Mike’s brother. In the team photo below, he is in the back row fourth person from the left. At least that is what the Pittsburgh Press said.

Why Mike’s granddaughter didn’t recognize her great uncle is a reasonable question. However, I had an uncle I never met even though he was alive decades into my adult life. I am so bad at picking people from old photos that I’m little help sorting out this one.