Collecting Football Memorabilia

When I moved to North Dakota from Wisconsin I experienced some culture shock. Following the Green Bay Packers is nearly a religion, so moving to a state without an NFL team felt strange. What do people do without it? I wondered.

Soon I had my answer: Local school sports.

In fact, people here are so devoted to their college and even high school sports that prime-time television shows are bumped for coverage of local games. At first this seemed crazy — and annoying. I hated it when I had to wait until after the 10 o’clock news to see my show — why didn’t the moms, dads, grandparents and other family folks get off their butts and go see the teams play live? And then it clicked. The high school teams have more fans than just the families of the players and the current student population; nearly everyone in the community is a fan.

I knew what football meant to me and my family; now I was discovering what it meant to this community. The shared love of football made me feel more at home here.

I’m such a football fan that when I attended the MPMA conference I sat in on a session called Grabbing Gridiron Glory. In that session curators of the Kansas State Historical Society, Laura Vannorsdel and Murl Riedel, discussed how they used sports memorabilia to illustrate cultural concepts.

Curators are generally concerned with the overall quality of their collection, and in this case the subject of sports came up. I’m not sure which came first in this ‘chicken or the egg’ scenario, and it really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the museum staff saw a connection between sports and community — and that they set out to document it.

This exhibit (on display at the Kansas Museum of History) is called Game Faces, and part of it focuses on high school football. The simple story behind the high school football part of the exhibit is that in Kansas, like many areas in our country, folks are moving from rural areas to the cities for jobs and whatnot, leaving many schools without enough students for traditional 11-man football teams. However, the passion for football will not be denied.

Schools (either as individual schools or several schools coming together to form a team) have adapted to the lower student population by playing football with less players. Eight players, to be exact, hence the name 8-man football.

Eight-man (and it’s relative, 6-man football) date back to the Great Depression but there’s nothing depressing or less-than about the game. Sure, communities don’t like to close or combine their schools, and yes, college coaches aren’t absolutely thrilled to re-train new players in the proper practice of 11-man football — but in 8-man football not only do the kids get to play, but all the glory (cheering), pageantry (tailgating), and pride (gloating) are intact.

This means the collecting of local sports memorabilia is alive and well too and that’s what makes the Kansas Historical Society’s exhibit fascinating and exciting. It’s great that the historical society is looking at the issues of geography, economics and Rural Depopulation; but what’s really cool for me to see is that this ’stuff’ is collected and preserved.

The collection includes uniforms, programs, game souvenirs, photographs, and audio recordings, which, due to it’s local community nature, isn’t what most of us would call ‘valuable artifacts’. But there is importance in these things, no matter how small or new the objects may seem. As Murl Riedel, Assistant Curator of the Kansas State Historical Society said, “This is history; it’s happened.” And as collectors, we know that the value of all these things will increase with the passing of time.

It’s true that the few items from a couple of local schools may not compel folks from Los Angeles to hop on a plane to Topeka *, but that’s not quite the point. These shouldn’t just be valued as individual objects, but rather evaluated as a whole collection. Together these objects do more than speak of Kansas. They do more than preserve the game of football, traditions, and the sense of community. I say the collection preserves our identity as Americans.

Just as I’ve adapted my love of the Green Bay Packers into support for my local school football teams, fostering a sense of belonging in my new community, so the adaptation of 8-man football by rural communities illustrates their desire to continue to feel at home as their communities change.

The economy can suck, we can feel separated by our differences &/or geography, and we can even feel that we are reduced to just a color on a demographic pie chart; but we’re adaptive Americans. We’re football fans.

* The Game Faces exhibit also includes items from famous Kansas sports figures, such as footballs signed by Barry Sanders and John Riggins, an NFL helmet and jacket worn by Jack Christiansen, and Wilt Chamberlain’s basketball jersey; so if you are near Topeka before the end of the year, check it out. If not, check out your local museum and see what nifty exhibits await you.

All images copyright Kansas State Historical Society; used with permission.

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