Here are a couple of little known historical facts about Penn State's famous plain and simple football uniforms you probably didn't know.

In 1908, when numbers were first used by two college teams, Penn State played one of those teams in the last game of the season, and for the first time numbers appeared on Penn State's jerseys.

Fifty-three years later, another Penn State opponent became the first team to place names on jerseys, and in their seventh game that season, they wore those jerseys and beat the Nittany Lions for the only time in a 37-game series.

Penn State won that 1908 game at Pittsburgh, 12-6, and lost the 1961 game at Maryland, 21-17, so maybe that's a good reason why names have never appeared on Penn State's jerseys-the names are bad luck. OK, that's a stretch, but that 1961 game ended in a controversial Penn State pass reception in the end zone that was ruled incomplete by an official. And to this day, the halfback who made the low diving catch is convinced he had it.

Now, you won't find any of this information about numbers and names in Penn State's official records. This writer discovered it all while researching the history of Penn State's football uniforms for a Blue White Illustrated article that appeared in the Sept. 5, 2011, edition. However, these facts weren't easy to obtain.

In both instances, an Internet search was utilized and e-mails were exchanged with various parties. Pinning down the first team to use numbers-Washington & Jefferson or Pitt-was relatively easy compared to the difficulty in finding out about the names on uniforms. In fact, this writer helped Pitt and Maryland prove they were the official pioneers.

My research started with the Internet, where I found a few sources that simply credited the first numbers to either W&J or Pitt but without any verification. On its website, W&J cited the opening game of the 1908 season, Sept. 19, against Denison at home, as the first use of numbers in college football, but there was nothing on the Pitt site. So I e-mailed E.J. Borghetti, Pitt's associate athletic director for media relations. He found a brief reference in his files to numbers being used in 1908 but no specific game or date.

The search for names on uniforms was more daunting. Finally, Hawaii popped up as an answer to a question at one website, but there was nothing more.

Meanwhile, I also had contacted Kent Stephens, curator at the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Ind., and sportswriter Dan Jenkins, who also is the official historian of the National Football Foundation. Jenkins could find nothing. Stephens also credited W&J as the first to use numbers, but his information on the question of names was hazy. "Names on the backs of jerseys may have started in the American Football League in 1960," he wrote, "but for some reason I want to say either Maryland or South Carolina was the first in college."

Stephens was right about names on uniforms debuting in the AFL when the new league started. It was a marketing gimmick, part of the AFL's effort to do battle with the entrenched NFL.

With Stephens' lead, I sent e-mails to the sports information directors at Maryland, South Carolina and Hawaii. All three told me they had never heard of this. A few days later, Derek Inouchi, director of media relations for Hawaii, wrote that the team's equipment personnel did not remember when the school added names, but old photos indicated it was 1986. Two weeks later, Maryland's Shawn Nestor, the associate director of media relations, e-mailed me a news clipping from the Washington Post dated Sept. 16, 1961, that was found in the university's archives.

"Maryland Decides to Spell It Out," read the one-column headline buried on page 3 of the sports section. "This season Maryland will be the first college team to have the players' names sewn to the jersey," wrote Bryon Roberts.

Bingo!

"Before a touring group of Atlantic Coast Conference sports writers, visiting the Maryland practice session, Coach Tom Nugent wheeled in big end Hank Poniatowski," Roberts wrote. "Completely garbed in football regalia, his name was prominently displayed in 3-inch white letters above the chest. ... Nugent's innovation will have just the last names on the uniform..."

That meant the names were on the front of the jerseys rather than the back - maybe.
This writer needed more proof. Knowing about that 1961 Penn State game at Maryland, I reviewed newspaper stories of the game to see if there was any mention of the Terps wearing uniforms with names and found nothing. Next, I looked at the Nov. 4, 1961, Byrd Stadium game day program, but there wasn't anything there, either. I then wondered if I would find the proof in the game film shot by the Penn State coaching staff that is now kept in the Paterno-Pattee Library sports archives, but I had to delay that archives visit because of other writing commitments.

Meanwhile, just as my deadline for the first BWI uniform story was approaching, I found proof that, yes, the University of Pittsburgh - once Penn State's bitterest rival - had used numbers in 1908, at least in that Thanksgiving Day game at Pittsburgh's now defunct Exposition Park. When Borghetti couldn't find any documentation, I contacted a fraternity brother, Ted Brown of State College, who collects Penn State memorabilia. I asked Ted to search through his program collection and find the earliest program he had that included numbers for Penn State players. After a few days, he told me he had found a program from the 1908 Penn State game at Pittsburgh on November 26, 1908 that had numbers.

Bingo!

I asked him to photocopy the program, and I then went online to search the 1910 Penn State yearbook, LaVie. (Back then, the section on Penn State's sports teams printed in the yearbook was usually two years behind because of printing deadlines.) I found the second confirmation in the photo of that 1908 Pitt-Penn State game on page 233. The photo depicts Pitt scoring its lone touchdown. One can see the large white numbers on the backs of five players, and although both teams' uniforms are dark, the jerseys and pants are different shades, confirming both Pitt and Penn State were wearing numbers.

The program is in the shape of a football, brownish in color, 9.5 inches long and 6.5 inches wide, with a drawing of a helmetless player running with the ball. The roster listing the players and their number is printed across the two inside middle pages, and the way the numbers are listed strongly indicates Pitt had used numbers before this game, but not Penn State.

The numbers for the 25 Pitt players are random, with the left end wearing No. 19, the left tackle No. 24, the left guard No. 3, the center No. 5, etc. The Penn State numbers are listed in numerical order from left end (No.1), left tackle (No. 2) and left guard (No. 3), etc., to right halfback (No. 10) and fullback (No. 11). Included are eight Penn State substitutes (Nos. 12 to No. 20 with no No. 13, the back luck number).

Borghetti was excited to learn of the LaVie photo and my fraternity brother's program. He asked for a photocopy of the program, which I sent, jokingly telling him this may be the first time since 1908 anyone from Penn State helped Pitt. He promised two tickets for the next Pitt-Penn State game scheduled at Heinz Field in 2016. Now, if Borghetti can find another 1908 program for Pitt's opening game against Mt. Union on the same day W&J played Dennison, he will have the documentation that Pitt and W&J were both first to list numbers on uniforms.

Before I'd had a chance to visit the sports archives to view the 1961 Penn State-Maryland game film, I found another reference to Maryland's use of names on jerseys in 1961. It was just one short sentence in Sports Illustrated's College Football Issue, dated Aug. 22. The magazine's summary of the Atlantic Coast Conference, contains this: "In 1961, Maryland became the first team in college football to put names on uniforms." A follow-up search of Sports Illustrated's online archives did not reveal another mention of that claim.

In the meantime, I did watch the 1961 game film and did see the names of players on the Maryland jerseys - but on the back, not the front as the Washington Post story had stated. The Terps are wearing dark jerseys with large white numbers on the back and front and a white stripe covering both shoulders with a dark stripe down the middle. There is another small stripe just below the neck in the upper part of the back that contains the names of the players. It is very difficult to see the names in the film, which was shot from the Byrd Stadium press box, but they certainly would be visible from most of the grandstands and at field level.

So now I had documentation that Maryland was indeed the first college team to use names on jerseys - unless another team were to come forward. But that's not where this story ends for Penn State.

Between 1917 and 1993, Penn State lost only one game to Maryland while also tying in 1989. But the Terps wouldn't even have this game to celebrate if an official had made a different call.

Both teams were 4-2, with each having defeated Syracuse. The Lions were a slight favorite, but as 34,000 spectators looked on, including the executive director of the Gator Bowl, George Olsen, Maryland grabbed a 21-6 halftime lead primarily on the passing combination of quarterback Dick Shiner and Gary Collins, two of the 19 Pennsylvanians on the squad. Thanks partly to a leg injury that sidelined Shiner for a good bit of the second half, Penn State's defense controlled the rest of the game, and the Lions trailed 21-15 with nine minutes left in the fourth quarter.

Then with about four minutes remaining, Jim Schawb's interception of a Shiner pass started Penn State on a grinding drive downfield from its own 12-yard line to the Maryland 5. Two plays lost 4 yards, but on third down, quarterback Galen Hall passed to right halfback Hal "Junior" Powell at about the 2-yard line near the right sideline. The game film shows Powell had beaten No. 32, linebacker Bob Burton, but the ball was a little to his right and looked like it might have been touched by a Maryland defender just beyond the scrimmage line.

Powell dives toward the end zone with No. 43, defensive back Tom Brown, closing in. You can see the outstretched Powell, about a yard from the sideline, trying to wrap his arms around the ball before hitting the ground, but the ball is hidden by Powell's body. Three yards away, an official is looking right at Powell and immediately waves no catch several times as Powell gets up holding the ball. Powell drops the ball and turns to the official with both arms outstretched as if to say "I caught it. Didn't you see it?" But to no avail.

Forty years later, Powell still insists he caught the ball. "But I really can't be so critical of the official because [the ball] was so low," said Powell, who has been an attorney in the Lewistown, Pa., area for decades. "I landed on the ground and I was on my elbows and the ball landed in my hand, real, real close to the ground. And I've never really held it against that official, because he would not have even expected something that lucky to happen.

"I actually ran the wrong pattern and I caught heck for that on Monday night film night, and deservedly so. I cut it too short. So it crammed me with another receiver [Schwab], and we allowed a defender [Brown] to cover both of us. I also remember the ball had been tipped by a linebacker [Burton] because it made a whomping sound. I wish the referee would have gotten it right, but I can't blame him, because it was blind luck on my part. I really didn't deserve it."

Hall's fourth-down pass attempt to Powell fell incomplete, and Maryland took over, taking an intentional safety, punting out and then stopping three last-ditch plays at midfield to win the game. Penn State didn't lose the rest of the season and went on to defeat Georgia Tech, 30-15, in the Gator Bowl, while Maryland lost its last game to Virginia and didn't get a postseason invitation.

And that ends the controversy and the historic day when Penn State played its first game against a team that placed names on its jerseys. Was it bad luck? Or was it double bad luck? Coaching as a Maryland assistant that day was another young man who has become a curse to many college football teams in the last two decades. His name is Lee Corso, and he and the Terps had Penn State's number that day.

(Lou Prato is a long time member of the NFF Central Pennsylvania Chapter and retired director of the Penn State All-Sports Museum.)