Comment by JangoSteve

You could do what they're suggesting without being too clever. For instance, our dynatable plugin does it this way:

    table.find('thead tr').children('th,td')

But it could easily be something like:

    var headings = table.find('thead th');
    if (!headings.length) headings = table.find('th');
    if (!headings.length) headings = table.find('tr:first td');