Tweet This episode we fire up the DeLorean and head back to explore the life and career of Beattie Feathers, the NFL's first 1,000 yard rusher.  Until 1934, his rookie season, it was thought to be impossible to amass 1,000 rushing yards in a single season.  Beattie Feathers would end up surpassing this mark on the way to one of the greatest rookie campaigns in NFL history.  So strap on your seat belt, and let’s get ready to take this baby up to 88mph.
 
Connect with the show:
Visit the show notes for this episode
Visit me on the web - my about page
Contact the show
Follow me on Twitter
Subscribe on YouTube
 
Click below for the transcript.  I have included affiliate links to Amazon throughout the transcript to complement the episode.  If you purchase through these links it will support the show at no extra cost to you.
Read Full Transcript Introduction The 2000 season saw 23 running backs that gained over 1,000 yards rushing. It took the NFL 14 seasons to get just 1 running back to this 1,000-yard mark, and then another 13 seasons after that for it to happen a second time. In this episode I’m going to give you the name of the man with the first ever 1,000 yard rushing season in the NFL.
Intro Music Welcome to the Football History Dude Podcast, where each episode is a journey back in time to learn about the rich history of the NFL. Your host is Arnie Chapman. Football is his passion and he wants you to come along with him to explore the yesteryear of the gridiron. So hop on board his DeLorean and lets get this baby up to 88 miles per hour (Great Scott).
Beattie Feathers Early Life This time as we step off our DeLorean the date is August 20th, 1909 and we are in Bristol, Virginia. The name of the man who is the hero of our story this time is William Beattie Feathers, whom we are going to just call “Beattie Feathers” for the remainder of this episode. That’s because in all of the NFL accounts they just called him Beattie Feathers. But he did have a nickname, and that nickname was “Big Chief”. One of the big reasons why he got this nickname is because he had a Native American Heritage. So being a football star, there was natural comparisons to Mr. Jim Thorpe. He was the first star of the league. The owners decided that they could use the stardom from being this great athlete. This world renowned Olympian and we’re going to go ahead and use him and he’s going to be the poster child for our new league so we can go ahead and rule all of the sports in this country. It didn’t happen that quickly. Now it is the most dominating sport in America. But we had a long ways to go. The guy that we are going to talk about in this episode, Mr. Beattie Feathers, definitely had his own little mark on the game. But we have to go back a little bit. When he was in High School, he led the Virginia High Bearcats to the Virginia State Championship. When he led this team to the Virginia State Championship, he was a star halfback. He was amazing at football. He was also really good at some other sports too most notably baseball, which he would go on in college to play as well.
College Days Speaking of college, he starred at the University of Tennessee (affiliate link). They would end up calling him “one of the greatest of all time” at that school. At the beginning he was just this young punk. He had to work for it just like everyone else. What I found was they said that he was brought in to be groomed to fill the shoes of a legendary Volunteer, Gene McEver. They didn’t necessarily need him at the time. It kind of reminded me of when the Packers took Aaron Rodgers (affiliate link) when they still had Brett Favre (affiliate link), a legendary quarterback in his own right. But they saw this potential in this dude. So they brought him in to fill Gene’s shoes. When he was in college, he played 30 games and scored 32 touchdowns. That is a pretty good mark. One of his teammates thought so as well, Freddy Moses. Freddy Moses is quoted as saying, “Beat