Joyce Sports Research Collection Manuscripts

The collection consists of magazines and illustrations assembled by Michael Oriard on the single subject of football dating from 1834 to 2012, though the bulk of the material pertains to the twentieth century. The majority of images are held within the original publications and are a visual record of the early years of football and offer comprehensive documentation of football's distinctive place in American culture.

Significant publications include: Harper’s Weekly, Leslie’s Weekly, Collier’s, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Liberty Magazine, Judge, The New Yorker, Sport Story Magazine, and Boy’s Life. MSSP 10063

Original statistical summary sheets from each regular season and playoff game in the four-year history of the All-America Football Conference (1946-1949). Game summary sheets were completed in pencil on a printed form by the home club's official scorer; copies went to each club and to the Commissioner's office in New York. The forms include 28 statistical categories for individual players, as well as team statistics and general game data. Present in the collection are sheets for all 210 regular season league games and all six playoff games; there are also team composite sheets for each season, and several press releases. MSSP 1000-.

The Leslie Pollard Letters consists of a small number of letters pertaining to Leslie Pollard, African American athlete, football player, football coach, and journalist. Pollard wrote three of the letters to his wife Eleanor Pitts Pollard while serving as the Head Coach of the Lincoln University football team in the fall of 1914. Pollard addressed the letters with various nicknames for his wife and discussed several topics including the 1914 Lincoln University football season, events at the New York Amsterdam News newspaper, gossip about friends, and his younger brother Fritz’s Pollard’s attempts to enroll in colleges in New England. Formats include letters.. MSSP 1008-1.

Papers related to the professional football career of Roger Ellis. Materials include original contracts from the American Football League, the National Football League, and the Canadian Football League; correspondence and ephemera from his playing days from several teams including the New York Giants, New York Titans, New York Jets, the Oakland Area Football Club, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, and the Montreal Alouette. The correspondence documents the daily life of a professional football player in the late 1950s and 1960s, and the correspondence between Ellis and the New York Titans, in particular, contains significant information about negotiations over his contracts.MSSP 10103

This collection consists of printed material related to the National Women’s Football League (NWFL) and predecessor teams associated with the Women’s Professional Football League. The NWFL was a professional American tackle football league that existed from 1974 through 1988. The collection includes programs, yearbooks, guidebooks, ephemera, and clippings. MSSP 10087

One homemade fan poster of the Harrisburg Trojans football team. The poster consists of clippings pasted to a piece of cardboard from an unknown printed book or program about the Harrisburg Trojans written by Manager Ned Givens in about 1945. The poster includes a summary page that reads: “The 1945 Harrisburg Trojans professional football club have played five games thus far this season, and they are proud after eight years of playing to honor the loyal fans with this book. The Trojans held the Negro World Championship three times, 1941, '42 and '44, while holding championships of seven Pennsylvania Counties and three States. MSSP 10118

Reginald W. P. Brown (1876-1961) was an 1898 graduate of Harvard who coached football at his alma mater and at several other schools in the Northeast. Five of the notebooks in the collection, dating to 1904, 1905 (2), 1911, and 1914, were compiled by Brown during his years as an assistant at Harvard (1902-16); one (1928) comes from his tenure as head coach at Boston University (1926-29). The 1911 and 1914 notebooks contain scouting reports on Harvard opponents, while the 1928 notebook is a collection of administrative documents on many aspects of Boston University's season, especially player personnel. MSSP 1001.

One board game for two players designed to simulate the annual Yale vs. Harvard football game. The box cover depicts about 12 players in a scrum on a football field. Players wear either blue for Yale or red for Harvard, and the cover features Harvard and Yale pennants on the top left and the top right of the box. The box also features a referee watching the action, a grandstand filled with fans, and a single goalpost.MSSP 10108

One board game for any even number of players designed to simulate football game play. The board is printed in green yellow, red, and black, and marked to resemble a football field. Players spin a dial marked with numbers from 1-12. Tables on the game board indicate gains or losses correlating with each spin result. A two-sided football game piece (lost from this set) is used to track movement up and down the field. The game was played in four quarters and with points (for touchdowns, place kicks, etc.) counted the same as in sport football games. The board game was patented January 6, 1925 by Success Composition and Printing Company and advertised Tone Bros. coffee. The entire front outer panel of the folded game board reads: "Tone's Tone's Tone's," and depicts a football player in mid stride holding a football as another player attempts to tackle him before a full stadium. The entire rear outer panel consists of an illustrated advertisement reading: "Tone's Golden Coffee: Champions in their class." EPH 5057

The Albert Richard Football Map Collection consists of four oversize poster maps published by the Milwaukee-based Albert Richard Clothing Company and created by artists F.E. Cheeseman. The colorful maps depict the contemporary football scene with an emphasis on college football. Many college football teams are represented geographically on the maps by pennants and/or mascots. The maps also include other information around the edge like conference champions, historical All-Americans, or keys to the map. Some maps include brief information about professional football. The reverse of the maps include advertisements, the previous season's All American teams, and sometimes list conference schedules. Formats include posters. MSSP 10097

5 mimeographed scripts, each 16 to 19 pages. A group of five mimeographed radio scripts, 19 October to 23 November 1941, for the Bernie Bierman Program on WCCO, Minneapolis. Bierman was head coach of the University of Minnesota football team, consensus national champions in 1941. MSSP 1002-1 to MSSP 1002-5.

This small collection includes two notebooks of financial records kept by owner/coach DeBenneville "Bert" Bell of the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles during the 1937 season. One consists of player salaries, broken down by game; the second records advertising revenue from the Eagles' game programs. There is also a personal letter written by Bell in 1934 to his future wife, Frances Upton. Bell served as NFL commissioner from 1946 to 1959. MSSP 1009-.

30 letters and telegrams related to Homer Clifford Selby (1880-1959), a Portsmouth, Ohio shoe company executive who in late 1931 assumed leadership of a committee to rescue the National Football League's Portsmouth Spartans from insolvency. Throughout 1932—when the Spartans lost to the Chicago Bears in a playoff for the NFL title—Selby remained deeply involved, though he ultimately failed to raise enough money to pay the club's debts; the Spartans moved to Detroit in 1934, becoming the Lions. Most of the letters in the collection were written by or directed to Selby, and relate to the team's finances (especially players' back wages). MSSP 1006.

The chief item in the collection is a personal scrapbook on the Princeton University athletic career of John R. DeWitt (1881-1930), star and captain of the 1903 Big Four football champions. Included are clipped newspaper and magazine articles and photographs; congratulatory telegrams; and various kinds of printed ephemera. Materials are chronologically arranged, and cover the 1902 and 1903 football seasons (with great emphasis on the 1903 victory over Yale) and the 1903 and 1904 seasons in track and field. MSSP 1003.

A letter written on 25 November 1877 by Cambridge, Massachusetts schoolboy Charles Northend Cogswell (1865-1941), relating his attendance at a rugby football match between "the Cambridge High School and the Beacons of Boston". Cogswell includes two drawings of the match. MSSP 1004.

A letter on Brooklyn Dodgers (National Football League) letterhead, written by Dennis J. Shea, general manager of the club, to player Harry Jacunski, formerly of Fordham University and the Green Bay Packers. Shea sounds out Jacunski about playing for the Dodgers in 1943. MSSP 1005.

A collection of materials, including five scrapbooks/photo albums deriving from and relating to Yale University athlete Edward H. ("Ted") Coy (1888-1935). During his lifetime Coy was remembered as one of the greatest college football players in the game's history, a two-time consensus All-American who captained the 1909 Yale squad that went undefeated, untied, and unscored upon. Two scrapbooks contain materials (ca. 1902-06) from Coy's prep years at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut. A third scrapbook covers the 1909 football season at Yale, mostly through clippings, while a fourth contains materials pertaining to Coy's marriage to his third wife, Lottie Bruhn. MSSP 1007.

51 Scrapbooks covering football in the San Francisco Bay area. Scrapbooks 1 to 10 are mostly given over to newspaper columns and articles covering Bay area college football teams and the San Francisco 49ers. Vols. 11 to 20 consist mostly of clippings on St Mary's College (CA) athletics, especially football. Vols. 21 to 34 consist primarily of football related newspaper photographs, drawn from sources across the country. Vols. 35 to 51 include a miscellany of football related clippings, including cartoons, advertisements, and other illustrated material, as well as schedules, game lineups, and short articles; emphasis is again on Bay area teams. MSSP 1010.

A collection of 21 scrapbooks in loose-leaf binders on college and professional football, 1946-1957. The greater part of the material consists of newspaper clippings, but magazine articles, programs, and game charts are also included. Coverage is national in scope, though there is some emphasis on pro and college teams from California and on Notre Dame. MSSP 1011.

Five scrapbook covering subjects including the annual Chicago Tribune All-Star Charity Games (which are dealt with intensively), the NFL Chicago Bears, and college bowl games. Many of the clipped articles and photographs that make up the scrapbooks derive from the Chicago Tribune. MSSP 1012.