Official Knute Rockne Football Game and World Series Baseball Game in combination with Official Graham McNamee Radio Scoreboard for Football and Baseball
Scope and Contents
The double-sided wooden board game features Knute Rockne’s Official Football Game and the Official Graham McNamee Radio Scoreboard for Football on one side, and the Official World Series Baseball Game and the Graham McNamee Radio Scoreboard for Baseball on the other side.
The football game board features images and facsimile autographs of Knute Rockne and Graham McNamee. The baseball game board features two images of Graham McNamee with a radio microphone and features the text, “Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Radio Audience—This is Graham McNamee speaking.”
Football and baseball games are both played by spinning a cardboard wheel that determines the outcome of various events. Both sides of the board feature metal and cardboard dials for keeping track of the score and various statistics. The football game uses a metal rod and sliding ball to track the position of the ball on a replica football field. The baseball game uses rotating images of baseball players to indicate runners on base on a replica baseball diamond.
In addition to functioning as a board game, this item doubled as a ”radio scoreboard” for people listening to either football or baseball games on the radio. Listeners could use the scoreboards, dials, and game board playing fields to chart statistics and scores and to track the events of baseball or football games in real time while listening to the action on the radio.
The game includes a 4.5 inch long round wooden stylus for rotating the dials on the game board.
The top of the game board includes notches to display pennants for the opposing teams. The game includes 36 colorful pennants representing college football teams. The game also includes 32 blue pennants with black print representing baseball teams from the Major League American League and National League and from the Minor League American Association and Pacific Coast League.
The game originally came with four blank blue pennants. Three are still blank, and a former owner has written "Oregon" in red ink on one pennant.
The original cardboard box has suffered significant water damage and also features an original shipping label from the original vendor, as well as more modern stickers applied by a former owner. The box reads: “Official Knute Rockne Football Game and World Series Baseball Game in combination with Official Graham McNamee Radio Scoreboard for Football and Baseball Manufactured by Radio Sports, Inc., 6 East 44th Street New York City.
The box further reads, “Licensed to manufacture under name of Knute Rockne by exclusive agreement with Christy Walsh” and “Licensed to manufacture under the name of Graham McNammee by exclusive agreement with the National Broadcasting Company.”
One side of the box reads, “National Container Corp., Long Island City, N.Y., 1931.”
College Football Pennants
- Notre Dame (yellow print on blue background)
- Army (yellow print on divide tan and black background)
- Navy (yellow print on blue background)
- Penn. State (white print on blue background)
- West Va. (orange print on blue background)
- Syracuse (blue print on orange background)
- New York U. (white print on purple background)
- Wash. and Jeff. [Washington and Jefferson] (red print on black background)
- Nebraska (white print on red background)
- Missouri (black print on orange background)
- Kansas (blue print on red background)
- Vanderbilt (yellow print on brown background)
- Georgia Tech. (white print on yellow background)
- Cornell (white print on red background)
- Dartmouth (white print on green background)
- Stanford (white print on red background)
- Columbia (white print on blue background)
- California (yellow print on purple background)
- So. Calif. [USC] (yellow print on purple background)
- Oregon State (orange print on brown background)
- Texas (white print on orange background)
- Washington U. [University of Washington] (yellow print on purple background)
- Ohio [Ohio State] (gray print on red background)
- Wisconsin [white print on red background)
- Minn. [University of Minnesota] (orange print on red background)
- Iowa (black print on yellow background)
- Purdue (yellow print on black background)
- Indiana (white print on red background)
- Northwestern (white print on purple background)
- Illinois (yellow print on blue background)
- Chicago [University of Chicago] (white print on red background)
- Princeton (orange print on brown background)
- Yale (white print on blue background)
- Harvard (white print on red background)
- Brown (white print on brown background)
- Penn. [University of Pennsylvania] (red print on blue background)
Baseball Pennants - American League
- Philadelphia Athletics
- St. Louis Browns
- Cleveland Indians
- Boston Red Sox
- Washington Senators
- Detroit Tigers
- Chicago White Sox
- New York Yankees
Baseball Pennants - National League
- Boston Braves
- St. Louis Cardinals
- Chicago Cubs
- Brooklyn Dodgers
- New York Giants
- Cincinnati Reds
- Philadelphia Phillies
- Pittsburgh Pirates
Baseball Pennants - American Association
- Columbus
- Indianapolis
- Louisville
- Kansas City
- Milwaukee
- Minneapolis
- St. Paul
- Toledo
Baseball Pennants - Pacific Coast League
- Hollywood
- Los Angeles
- Mission
- Oakland
- Portland
- Sacramento
- San Francisco
- Seattle
Dates
- Creation: 1931
Creator
- Radio Sports, Inc. (Organization)
Conditions Governing Access
Access to university records in any format (paper, digital, photographic, or audiovisual) is governed by state and federal laws, University of Notre Dame policy, and the University of Notre Dame Archives Access Guidelines and is subject to review under the supervision of the Head of the University Archives.
Conditions Governing Use
Permission to publish or publicly disseminate reproductions of any material obtained from the University Archives must be secured from the University Archives and any additional copyright owners prior to such use. Please see Conditions Governing Reproduction and Use of Material for additional information.
Biographical / Historical
Born in Norway and raised in Chicago, Knute Rockne (1888-1931) graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1914. After playing professional football and working as an assistant coach at Notre Dame for several years, Rockne became Notre Dame’s Head Football Coach in 1918. Over the next 13 seasons, Rockne led Notre Dame to a 105-12-5 record and three consensus national championships, cementing Notre Dame’s reputation as a national college football power. With the rising profile of Notre Dame and of college football in the 1920s, Rockne also consciously promoted the fame of Notre Dame football, as well as his own celebrity as one of the most well-known football coaches in the country. In about 1925 he signed with sports agent Christy Walsh to handle his name and publicity rights. Rockne endorsed many different products from sporting goods to automobiles, lending his name to this Radio Sports board game/radio scoreboard soon before his untimely death in a plane crash in Kansas in 1931.
Born in Washington, DC, and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, Graham MacNamee (1888-1942) was one of the first well-known sports radio announcers. He was a struggling opera singer in New York City in the early 1920s, when he was hired to announce sports by local station WEAF. He found immediate success and attracted notice with his call of the 1923 World Series. Credited with popularizing the “play-by-play” announcing style, McNamee gained notoriety by calling many different famous sporting and other events. He lent credibility to the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) when he moved to the network in 1926. McNamee capitalized on his celebrity by endorsing products like this Radio Sports board game/radio scoreboard.
Radio Sports, Inc., was a New York City-based company incorporated in Delaware in 1931. It manufactured games and toys and mechanical and electrical apparatuses. The Official Knute Rockne Football Game and World Series Baseball Game in combination with Official Graham McNamee Radio Scoreboard for Football and Baseball was one of Radio Sports, Inc.’s, first products. Little else is known about the company and its subsequent activities.
Extent
3.2 Cubic Feet (2 oversize boxes) ; The game board measures 24.5 inches by 17.5 inches by 2.5 inches. All pennants are triangular in shape with dimensions of 1 3/8 inches by 8 inches by 8 inches. The original box measures 26 inches by 18.5 inches by 3.5 inches.
Language of Materials
English
Subject
- Rockne, Knute, 1888-1931 (Person)
- McNamee, Graham, 1888-1942 (Person)
Genre / Form
Topical
- Status
- Completed
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the University of Notre Dame Archives Repository