Yep, I'm assuming that team in the first pic did not take their hats off when they played. To do otherwise would have been ungentlemanly.
Considering these are football pictures, I wonder if these two objects are pylons?Also, you notice the gloves at the feet of the two players?
the one with the dog at his side looks like a old-timey prize fighter they may have been sparring right before the picture was shot
I thought about that and took a second to look at some boxing gloves circa 1900-1910 and they look similar, but there are a couple of distinctive differences. It's impossible to see if the gloves in the pic has laces. The stitching doesn't look right either...but who knows on that front. The closest comparison I found was this:
