Editor's note: Each Friday throughout the remainder of July, West Virginia University is celebrating the 150th anniversary of college football. WVU has been playing the sport since 1891 and is currently the 14th winningest program in NCAA history. This week, we take a brief look at how college football came to adopt the forward pass in the early 1900s, and how West Virginia utilized it during those early years.
At the turn of the 20
th Century, the No. 1 serial killer in America was not some mysterious person lurking in the shadows in a dark, abandoned city street or hiding behind a tree out in the woods.
No, the top killer in the U.S. then was right out in the open for everyone to see - college football. In 1905 alone there were a reported 20 fatalities as a result of rough play, the violence getting so bad that newspapers began printing the obituaries of college and prep gridders on nearly a weekly basis.
The Chicago Tribune called the 1905 season in college football a "death harvest."
The unnecessary fatalities had reached a point where something drastic needed to be done. Even President Theodore Roosevelt, the famous Roughrider and a big supporter of football, grew alarmed when he saw the condition of his son, Theodore Jr., following a particularly brutal Harvard-Yale freshman football game.
Roosevelt Jr. was badly bruised and his nose broken - some believe deliberately - during a typical Harvard-Yale game. After the season, Roosevelt called a meeting of some of the top university presidents in the Northeast and demanded that they either clean up the sport or abandon it.
On January 16, 1906, a group of leading authorities got together in New York City to create the most sweeping rule changes college football had seen since its inception in 1869. They abolished mass formation plays that were causing so many injuries, created a neutral zone between the offense and the defense, doubled the distance for first downs from five to 10 yards, and, most significantly, legalized the forward pass.
According to Allison Danzig's
The History of American Football, published in 1956, college football historian Dr. L.H. Baker credits Yale tackle Walter Camp with throwing the first known forward pass in a game against Princeton in 1876, which was ruled a legal play following a flip of a coin by the referee.
There was also mention of a forward pass in the North Carolina-Georgia game in 1895, but it was a double pass tossed at the line of scrimmage that may or may not have traveled forward.
Then, in the early 1900s, leading football authority John Heisman began campaigning for college football to adopt the forward pass, according to Danzig. Heisman started writing some of his colleagues extolling the virtues of the forward pass in opening up the game and making it much more exciting. And of even greater importance, Heisman believed the forward pass could make the game much safer.
His pleas fell on deaf ears until January 1906 when Roosevelt demanded that changes be made. Heisman eventually found a backer in Navy Lieutenant Paul Dashiell, and those two were the primary catalysts in getting college football to adopt the forward pass, according to Danzig.
Notre Dame's Gus Dorais and Knute Rocke are often credited with popularizing the forward pass following their famous aerial exhibition against Army in 1913, but many serious college football historians point to St. Louis (Missouri) University coach Eddie Cochems as the originator of the forward pass in 1906.
He not only taught his St. Louis players how to throw high-arching, long passes that were to become favored by the Eastern teams, but he also showed them how to throw crisp, bullet-like aerials close to the line of scrimmage by holding the ball near the top of the seams and flipping it with a twist of their wrist so it would spiral.
The ball then was more suited for kicking than throwing, so players with big hands had the easiest time tossing it accurately. Consequently, it took a while for the forward pass to really catch on until passing techniques were perfected and the ball became slim enough for most players to throw it more accurately.
Precise records are incomplete, so it is unknown who completed the first forward pass in West Virginia University football history, but one of the first forward passes ever legally attempted came from the arm of Earle Pearcy against Ohio University on September 29, 1906. The ball didn't travel very far (he dropped it) and, unfortunately, it was picked up by a Bobcat player and returned 40 yards for a touchdown – the deciding score in a 9-6 WVU loss.
Newspaper accounts mention some completed forward passes in the game, but they don't indicate who threw or caught them.
The first game in which West Virginia was victimized by a forward pass for a touchdown came on Nov. 11, 1906, at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh when Western University (Pitt) right halfback W. Banbury completed a 25-yard toss to left halfback Charles Springer running wide open down the sideline. It was one of two completed passes in three attempts for the Panthers, the two going for approximately 40 yards.
And it wasn't until the third game of the 1907 season against Parkersburg Y.M.C.A. on Oct. 12, 1907, when West Virginia successfully completed its first touchdown pass. It happened late in the second half with the Snakes comfortably ahead, 45-0, when coach Clarence Russell felt comfortable enough with his team's lead to try something so risky.
The toss came from right end Lowry Huey, who heaved the wobbly oblong to left end Lee Hutchinson running on the other side of the field, resulting in a 15-yard touchdown.
It was the lone touchdown pass West Virginia threw that season.
The immediate coaches West Virginia employed after the forward pass was first legalized such as Carl Forkum, Charles Augustus Leuder, William P. Edmunds and Edwin Sweetland were schooled in the rudimentary elements of the game which were predicated on brute force and deception at the line of scrimmage.
It wasn't until 1912 when West Virginia saw firsthand the full potential of the forward pass. It happened in a game against West Virginia Wesleyan when the Bobcats, behind the passing of Harry Stansbury (who later became West Virginia's athletic director) and the sure-handed catching of end Greasy Neale (later a famous professional baseball player and professional football coach), upset heavily favored WVU, 19-14, to open the season.
Both touchdowns Wesleyan scored in the second half, including the game-winner, were the result of Stansbury's long throws to Neale. News accounts credited Stansbury with 16 attempted passes that afternoon, all six of his completions going to Neale for approximately 90 yards.
Meanwhile, West Virginia managed to complete a single aerial for a meager 10 yards.
Francis "Skeets" Farley
A year later, Wesleyan once again victimized West Virginia through the air in a stunning 21-0 victory at Fairmont's Southside Park, one Wesleyan pass traveling 45 yards to Neale for the game's first touchdown. This time, West Virginia tried to match Wesleyan's passing but could only complete three of its 16 attempts for 25 yards.
It wasn't until 1915, upon the arrival of the great Ira "Rat" Rodgers, that West Virginia managed to out-Wesleyan Wesleyan when he threw two touchdown passes in a 30-0 WVU rout.
Rodgers was West Virginia's first gifted passer because he had hands big enough to comfortably handle the ball and an arm strong enough to sling it down the field.
Another tremendous downfield passer who followed Rodgers in the mid-1920s was Charleston's Francis "Skeets" Farley.
At any rate, it was Rodgers' accurate passing that won the Princeton game in 1919 and helped earn him All-America laurels, the Bethany native becoming the school's first consensus All-American and later regarded as one of the game's greatest pre-World War II players.
It happened in large part as a result of the rule change 13 years prior to legalize the forward pass.
You can learn more about the great history of college football at
CFB150.org.
