Post by Coach Campbell on Mar 17, 2009 17:37:47 GMT
History
Early illegal & experimental passes
The forward pass had been attempted at least 30 years before the play was actually made legal. Vahe Gregorian researched the history of the play for an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on September 4, 2006 on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the first legal pass. Gregorian observed that passes “had been carried out successfully but illegally several times, including the 1876 Yale–Princeton game in which Yale’s Walter Camp threw forward to teammate Oliver Thompson as he was being tackled. Princeton’s protest, one account said, went for naught when the referee ‘tossed a coin to make his decision and allowed the touchdown to stand’ ”.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill used the forward pass in an 1895 game against the University of Georgia. However, the play was still illegal at the time. Bob Quincy stakes Carolina's claim in his 1973 book They Made the Bell Tower Chime:
John Heisman, namesake of the Heisman Trophy, wrote 30 years later that, indeed, the Tar Heels had given birth to the forward pass against the Bulldogs (UGA). It was conceived to break a scoreless deadlock and give UNC a 6–0 win. The Carolinians were in a punting situation and a Georgia rush seemed destined to block the ball. The punter, with an impromptu dash to his right, tossed the ball and it was caught by George Stephens, who ran 70 yards for a touchdown.
In a 1905 experimental game, Gregorian reports, Washburn and what would become Wichita State used the pass before new rules allowing the play were approved in early 1906. 1905 had been a bloody year on the gridiron; the Chicago Tribune reported 18 players had been killed and 159 seriously injured that season.[1] There were moves to abolish the game. But President Theodore Roosevelt personally intervened and demanded that the rules of the game be reformed. In a meeting of more than 60 schools in late 1905, the commitment was made to make the game safer. This meeting was the first step in the establishment of what would become the NCAA.
The final meeting of the Rules Committee tasked with reshaping the game was held on April 6, 1906, at which time the forward pass officially became a legal play.[2]
The first legal pass
Eddie Cochems, "Father of the Forward Pass", 1907
1906 St. Louis Post-Dispatch photograph of Brad Robinson, who threw the first legal forward passWriting in his book, The Anatomy of a Game: Football, the Rules, and the Men Who Made the Game, which was published posthumously in 1994, College Football Hall of Fame coach David M. Nelson (1920–1991) states that "E. B. Cochems is to forward passing what the Wright brothers are to aviation and Thomas Edison is to the electric light." Cochems, the coach at Saint Louis University from 1906 through 1908, was the first to use the legal forward pass on September 5, 1906 with Bradbury Robinson passing to Jack Schneider in a game at Carroll College (Wisconsin). St. Louis went on to win 22-0.
The first passing offense
The forward pass was a central feature of Cochems' revolutionary offensive scheme. In that first season under the "new rules", his "Blue and White" completed a perfect 11–0 season in which they outscored opponents 407–11. The highlight of the campaign was St. Louis' shocking 31–0 thrashing of Iowa. Coach Nelson reports that "eight passes were completed in ten attempts for four touchdowns" in the Iowa game. "The average flight distance of the passes was twenty yards." Nelson continues, "the last play demonstrated the dramatic effect that the forward pass was having on football. St. Louis was on Iowa's thirty-five-yard line with a few seconds to play. Timekeeper Walter McCormack walked onto the field to end the game when the ball was thrown twenty-five yards and caught on the dead run for a touchdown."
"Cochems said that the poor Iowa showing resulted from its use of the old style play and its failure to effectively use the forward pass", Nelson writes. "Iowa did attempt two basketball-style forward passes."
"During the 1906 season [Robinson] threw a sixty-seven yard pass ... and ... Schneider tossed a sixty-five yarder. Considering the size, shape and weight of the ball, these were extraordinary passes."
Because St. Louis was geographically isolated from both the dominating teams and the major sports media (newspapers) of the era ... all centered in and focused on the East ... Cochems' groundbreaking offensive strategy was not picked up by the major teams. Pass-oriented offenses would not be adopted by the Eastern football powers until the next decade.
But that does not mean that other teams in the Midwest did not pick it up. Arthur Schabinger, quarterback for the College of Emporia in Kansas, was reported to have regularly used the forward pass in 1910. Coach H. W. "Bill" Hargiss' "Presbies" are said to have featured the play in a 17–0 victory over Washburn University[3] and in a 107-0 destruction of Pittsburg State University.[4]
Adoption by Notre Dame leads to national popularity
Knute Rockne and Gus Dorais worked on the pass while lifeguarding on a Lake Erie beach at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio during the summer of 1913.[5] That year, Jesse Harper, Notre Dame head coach, also showed how the pass could be used by a smaller team to beat a bigger one, first utilizing it to defeat rival Army. After it was used against a major school on a national stage in this game, the forward pass rapidly gained popularity.
First pass in a professional game
The first forward pass in a professional football game may have been thrown in an Ohio League game played on October 25, 1906. The Ohio League, which traced its history to the 1890s, was the predecessor of today's NFL. According to Robert W. Peterson in his book Pigskin The Early Years of Pro Football, the "passer was George W. (Peggy) Parratt, probably the best quarterback of the era", who played for the Massillon, Ohio Tigers, one of pro football's first franchises.[6] Citing the Professional Football Researchers Association as his source, Peterson writes that "Parratt completed a short pass to end Dan Riley (Dan Policowski)" in a game played at Massillon against a team from West Virginia. Since the Tigers "ran up a 61 to 0 score on the hapless Mountain Staters, the pass played no important part in the result."[7]
According to National Football League history,[8] it legalized the forward pass from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage on February 25, 1933. Before that rule change, a forward pass had to be made from 5 or more yards behind the line of scrimmage.
Forward passes were first permitted in Canadian football in 1929,[9] but the tactic remained a minor part of the game for several years. Jack Jacobs of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers is recognized, not for inventing the forward pass, but for popularizing it in the Western Interprovincial Football Union, thus changing the Canadian game from a more run-dominated game to the passing game as seen today.
Early illegal & experimental passes
The forward pass had been attempted at least 30 years before the play was actually made legal. Vahe Gregorian researched the history of the play for an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on September 4, 2006 on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the first legal pass. Gregorian observed that passes “had been carried out successfully but illegally several times, including the 1876 Yale–Princeton game in which Yale’s Walter Camp threw forward to teammate Oliver Thompson as he was being tackled. Princeton’s protest, one account said, went for naught when the referee ‘tossed a coin to make his decision and allowed the touchdown to stand’ ”.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill used the forward pass in an 1895 game against the University of Georgia. However, the play was still illegal at the time. Bob Quincy stakes Carolina's claim in his 1973 book They Made the Bell Tower Chime:
John Heisman, namesake of the Heisman Trophy, wrote 30 years later that, indeed, the Tar Heels had given birth to the forward pass against the Bulldogs (UGA). It was conceived to break a scoreless deadlock and give UNC a 6–0 win. The Carolinians were in a punting situation and a Georgia rush seemed destined to block the ball. The punter, with an impromptu dash to his right, tossed the ball and it was caught by George Stephens, who ran 70 yards for a touchdown.
In a 1905 experimental game, Gregorian reports, Washburn and what would become Wichita State used the pass before new rules allowing the play were approved in early 1906. 1905 had been a bloody year on the gridiron; the Chicago Tribune reported 18 players had been killed and 159 seriously injured that season.[1] There were moves to abolish the game. But President Theodore Roosevelt personally intervened and demanded that the rules of the game be reformed. In a meeting of more than 60 schools in late 1905, the commitment was made to make the game safer. This meeting was the first step in the establishment of what would become the NCAA.
The final meeting of the Rules Committee tasked with reshaping the game was held on April 6, 1906, at which time the forward pass officially became a legal play.[2]
The first legal pass
Eddie Cochems, "Father of the Forward Pass", 1907
1906 St. Louis Post-Dispatch photograph of Brad Robinson, who threw the first legal forward passWriting in his book, The Anatomy of a Game: Football, the Rules, and the Men Who Made the Game, which was published posthumously in 1994, College Football Hall of Fame coach David M. Nelson (1920–1991) states that "E. B. Cochems is to forward passing what the Wright brothers are to aviation and Thomas Edison is to the electric light." Cochems, the coach at Saint Louis University from 1906 through 1908, was the first to use the legal forward pass on September 5, 1906 with Bradbury Robinson passing to Jack Schneider in a game at Carroll College (Wisconsin). St. Louis went on to win 22-0.
The first passing offense
The forward pass was a central feature of Cochems' revolutionary offensive scheme. In that first season under the "new rules", his "Blue and White" completed a perfect 11–0 season in which they outscored opponents 407–11. The highlight of the campaign was St. Louis' shocking 31–0 thrashing of Iowa. Coach Nelson reports that "eight passes were completed in ten attempts for four touchdowns" in the Iowa game. "The average flight distance of the passes was twenty yards." Nelson continues, "the last play demonstrated the dramatic effect that the forward pass was having on football. St. Louis was on Iowa's thirty-five-yard line with a few seconds to play. Timekeeper Walter McCormack walked onto the field to end the game when the ball was thrown twenty-five yards and caught on the dead run for a touchdown."
"Cochems said that the poor Iowa showing resulted from its use of the old style play and its failure to effectively use the forward pass", Nelson writes. "Iowa did attempt two basketball-style forward passes."
"During the 1906 season [Robinson] threw a sixty-seven yard pass ... and ... Schneider tossed a sixty-five yarder. Considering the size, shape and weight of the ball, these were extraordinary passes."
Because St. Louis was geographically isolated from both the dominating teams and the major sports media (newspapers) of the era ... all centered in and focused on the East ... Cochems' groundbreaking offensive strategy was not picked up by the major teams. Pass-oriented offenses would not be adopted by the Eastern football powers until the next decade.
But that does not mean that other teams in the Midwest did not pick it up. Arthur Schabinger, quarterback for the College of Emporia in Kansas, was reported to have regularly used the forward pass in 1910. Coach H. W. "Bill" Hargiss' "Presbies" are said to have featured the play in a 17–0 victory over Washburn University[3] and in a 107-0 destruction of Pittsburg State University.[4]
Adoption by Notre Dame leads to national popularity
Knute Rockne and Gus Dorais worked on the pass while lifeguarding on a Lake Erie beach at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio during the summer of 1913.[5] That year, Jesse Harper, Notre Dame head coach, also showed how the pass could be used by a smaller team to beat a bigger one, first utilizing it to defeat rival Army. After it was used against a major school on a national stage in this game, the forward pass rapidly gained popularity.
First pass in a professional game
The first forward pass in a professional football game may have been thrown in an Ohio League game played on October 25, 1906. The Ohio League, which traced its history to the 1890s, was the predecessor of today's NFL. According to Robert W. Peterson in his book Pigskin The Early Years of Pro Football, the "passer was George W. (Peggy) Parratt, probably the best quarterback of the era", who played for the Massillon, Ohio Tigers, one of pro football's first franchises.[6] Citing the Professional Football Researchers Association as his source, Peterson writes that "Parratt completed a short pass to end Dan Riley (Dan Policowski)" in a game played at Massillon against a team from West Virginia. Since the Tigers "ran up a 61 to 0 score on the hapless Mountain Staters, the pass played no important part in the result."[7]
According to National Football League history,[8] it legalized the forward pass from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage on February 25, 1933. Before that rule change, a forward pass had to be made from 5 or more yards behind the line of scrimmage.
Forward passes were first permitted in Canadian football in 1929,[9] but the tactic remained a minor part of the game for several years. Jack Jacobs of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers is recognized, not for inventing the forward pass, but for popularizing it in the Western Interprovincial Football Union, thus changing the Canadian game from a more run-dominated game to the passing game as seen today.