101 Gift Giving Ideas

This month’s Siuslaw Genealogy Society meeting featured a program on Gift Giving! Thinking about the Holidays? Get ideas to help encourage family members become interested in family history! This presentation shared many ideas that you can give as gifts. If you missed the meeting and would like the list of ideas (it actually totals 104!) contact us! The November 16th meeting will be a follow up to the Gift Giving list.

Football Huddle and Genealogy?

Some may think it a stretch to somehow link the two terms, but in a recent article by Barry Shuck titled ‘Genealogy in American Football: The Huddle‘, he attempts to do just that. I’m certain I’m not alone in wondering what exactly goes on in a huddle. Do they talk about ‘stuff’ (the Gatorade flavor, crowd noise, etc.), or just use numbers and remind each other what to do in the next play?

According to Mr. Shuck, the game of football began without huddles. It was ‘invented’ in 1894, and was initially viewed as a violation – a disruption to the game’s flow, or timing. Some criticized it as a stalling tactic. As it turns out, there was no rule preventing it. By 1930 the rule makers decided the huddle anomaly was here to stay and allowed it for 15 seconds. In 1939, the huddle time allotment was expanded to 30 seconds . . . and that eventually gave birth to generations of 30-second commercials.

The No-Huddle
The article cites a 1957 University of Oregon game as the 1st time the huddle was sacrificed to utilize their team’s speed as a way to overcome the opponent’s defense. Whether it can be directly attributed to the no-huddle offense or not, that season Oregon went to the Rose Bowl.

So in the end, perhaps the football huddle does indeed have a familial lineage to the game as we know it today – although what actually is said in a huddle remains a mystery to me.