Today 101 Years Ago: First live sporting event broadcast on radio

[davideduardo]

"On April 11, 1921, KDKA in Pittsburgh broadcasts the first live sporting event on the radio, a boxing match between Johnny Ray and Johnny Dundee. Pittsburgh Daily Post sports editor Florent Gibson calls the event, about four months before KDKA's Harold Arlin announces the first Major League Baseball game broadcast on radio."

More at: First live sporting event broadcast on radio

 

[CTListener]

"On April 11, 1921, KDKA in Pittsburgh broadcasts the first live sporting event on the radio, a boxing match between Johnny Ray and Johnny Dundee. Pittsburgh Daily Post sports editor Florent Gibson calls the event, about four months before KDKA's Harold Arlin announces the first Major League Baseball game broadcast on radio."

More at: First live sporting event broadcast on radio

The "big three" sports in the United States in the '20s and '30s were baseball, boxing and horse racing. Football -- first college, then pro -- really didn't start to attract attention until the late '30s/early '40s. I have a feeling that the first horse race carried on American radio came not long after those pioneering boxing and baseball broadcasts.

 

[KeithE4]

Football -- first college, then pro -- really didn't start to attract attention until the late '30s/early '40s.

College football was huge in the northeast and midwest going back to the early 1900s. Walter Camp, the coach at Yale, invented the modern football field and set the rules that created the modern game. Pennsylvania and Ohio were semi-pro and pre-NFL pro football hotbeds, beginning at about the same time. The original National Football League was around for a couple of years beginning in 1902.

The modern NFL began in 1920. Red Grange put them on the map, beginning in 1925, after he had been a legend at the University of Illinois. George Halas had also played at the U of I a decade or so earlier, and played pro ball in the Chicago area before setting up the Decatur Staleys in 1919 -- today's Chicago Bears.

College football was more popular than the pro game, at least until television era. NFL teams assembled regional networks of stations to air their games, with most of them airing on Dumont affiliates.

 

[seatownmedia]

Wasn’t Brent Musburger on that first broadcast?

 

[KeithE4]

Wasn’t Brent Musburger on that first broadcast?

No, I think it was Jack Brickhouse.

 

[ZantennaG1]

College football was huge in the northeast and midwest going back to the early 1900s. Walter Camp, the coach at Yale, invented the modern football field and set the rules that created the modern game. Pennsylvania and Ohio were semi-pro and pre-NFL pro football hotbeds, beginning at about the same time. The original National Football League was around for a couple of years beginning in 1902.

The modern NFL began in 1920. Red Grange put them on the map, beginning in 1925, after he had been a legend at the University of Illinois. George Halas had also played at the U of I a decade or so earlier, and played pro ball in the Chicago area before setting up the Decatur Staleys in 1919 -- today's Chicago Bears.

College football was more popular than the pro game, at least until television era. NFL teams assembled regional networks of stations to air their games, with most of them airing on Dumont affiliates.

A lot of midwestern colleges took flight to football as early as the 1890's, or sooner! There is a correlation here between the soil, the weather, and the society of the Northeast and Midwest that allowed football to thrive there and not as much on the west coast until a few decades later.

It's crazy to remember that the NFL of 100 years ago was literally made up of small towns playing against one another in their own state. I'm truly shocked that there were football teams in places like Akron, Long Island, or Decatur. It's also neat that the 1919 Green Bay packers have made it to this very day despite being a town of 100k.