Nittany NOTES:

Penn State football fans in 1915 who could not make, or afford, the $7 round-trip train trek from the State College area to Philly, plus extra for a Pullman sleeping berth or an overnight Friday stay at a hotel (plus food expenses), and also pay the $1.50 game ticket price at Franklin Field, gathered in Schwab Auditorium on the State College campus that October afternoon where for 25 cents (see ticket at very top) they could hear updates announced by megaphone and posted on a gridiron board describing the game action as it came in via a “leased private wire” from a telegrapher in the stands at Franklin Field… The private lines were typically provided by AT&T, Western Union, Postal Telegraph & Cable, or similar… This became known as “Football Telephone Returns”…

The concept of “Football Telephone Returns” is believed to date to the 1903 Michigan at Minnesota game which reportedly used an actual voice “phone call” on a private line from a student stationed in a tower above the 55-yard line of Northrop Field in Minneapolis (this is arguably the first instance of football play-by-play)… Penn State adopted the “telegraph version” of Football Telephone Returns for many key road games (typically Pitt & UPenn) with fans known to have gathered in Old Main Chapel as early as the 1909 season… This would continue into the mid-1920’s before finally giving way to the rise of live game play-by-play on that newfangled invention, radio…

The on-site game telegraph operator would “key” in Morse Code (no doubt using some pre-determined football shorthand and a player numbering scheme—actual jersey numbers were not required prior to 1915, although State wore numbers on their backs as early as 1908 at Pitt) to quickly describe the “live” game action… A second telegrapher (or possibly more than one) at the chapel, and later, the college auditorium would decode the messages and hand them to the megaphone announcer to relay to the crowd on hand… (There were also reported instances where alumni groups, in Pittsburgh for example, would pay for a similar feed from Franklin Field across the state to folks gathered in a hotel ballroom, or similar location)…

Why telegraphy over a “voice” phone call?

Remember, in 1915, the first attempts at a “live radio game broadcast” were still 6 years away and football stadiums were not really equipped for this sort of thing in the “pre-Press Box era” (New Beaver Field, for example, did not have a press box until the early 20’s)… Also, an open telephone line for live voice description via a 2-plus hour phone call would have been prohibitively expensive, if not technologically difficult, at the time… There were limits on how far a voice could actually travel over phone lines and still be understood (and this doesn’t take into account competition with crowd noise from the bleachers)… HISTORICAL NOTE: The first known transcontinental voice phone call was tested in January 1915 (NYC to San Francisco) using hundreds of miles of AT&T copper wire lines, many amplifiers, and multiple switchboards (the cost was estimated at $20 per three minutes in 1915 money—now do the math for a football game and adjust for inflation)…

Telegraphy from the grandstand was simpler and more cost effective when you consider there were no loudspeakers to allow folks in an auditorium to directly hear the “voice on the telephone” coming from the stadium in these early years (Michigan’s 1903 voice report attempt required 10 manned telephones in their auditorium to listen and take turns in making the announcements via megaphone)… In some cases, games in this era would have several telegraphers side-by-side in the stands, furiously “keying” Morse Code to multiple destinations including newspaper offices… Imagine if they had all been trying to make phone calls instead…

Note: Interestingly, the 1921 Penn State game with Georgia Tech at the Polo Grounds in New York saw Nittany Lions fans get their “Telephone Returns” outdoors at New Beaver Field… Ironically, this took place exactly 3 weeks after KDKA in Pittsburgh broadcast the first known college football game live on radio (Pitt vs. West Virginia at Forbes Field with the announcer sitting in box seats using a converted telephone as his microphone)… Penn State’s first “live football game on radio” was still over a year away—the 1923 Rose Bowl Game… The college radio station WPSC would finally begin regular broadcasts of home games in 1927…