Charles Bachman, whose dad was a football coach at Michigan State, got a win at Soapbox Derby racing, and went onto study data structure access in computers (RAM) because he got a education at the university

 His dad was the quarterback for Knute Rockne, and they invented the forward pass, and that got him the coaching job at MSU

They could do that forward pass because Wilson sporting goods made a better football (less like the Rugby ball) that could be thrown overhand.

Wilson did that because he had worked in the Chicago stockyards and meat packing industry, and figured out what to do with meat byproducts, like the leather from pigs, aka, pigskin footballs

The stockyards in Chicago came along because the civil war's increased need for meat to feed the soldiers 

That appetite of the soldiers increased because there was one guy appointed to the rank of Captain of feeding the union soldiers, James Sanderson who had been in the restaurant and hotel industry, and who made a cookbook with some basic rules of how to properly run an Army field camp cooking stove to reduce diseases transmitted in the food (rancid meat, un hygenic pots and pans)

All things I learned from 6 degrees with Mike Rowe, on AMC +, episode one. Which I wanted to try because of Connections with James Burke