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| Football, The Forward Pass, and | |  |
| Fred Biletnikoff |
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| The Consummate Receiver | |
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he pastime of kicking around a ball pre-dates recorded history. Ancient savage tribes played a form of primitive football. About 2500 years ago, Corinthians,
Spartans, and Athenians enjoyed a ball-kicking game which the Greeks named episkuros. The Romans competed in a similar game termed harpastum
which they transported west when they invaded the British Isles in the First Century, B.C. The game known in the United States as football derives its existence
from the English game of rugby.
Football was played informally on college lawns in the middle decades of the 19th Century and an annual freshman-sophomore series of "scrimmages" began at Yale in
1840. It was not unitl November, 1869, however, that the first formal intercollegiate football game was played - at New Brunswick, N.J., the Rutgers side defeated
Princeton 6 goals to 4. The first professional game was played in 1895 at Latrobe, Pennsylvania. The National Football League was founded in 1921 and merged in 1949
with the All-American Conference and in 1970 with the American Football League.
In the early days of college fooball, games were played with 25, 20, 15, or 11 men on a side. That varying number of players was standardized to 11
through the efforts of Yales's Walter Camp at the 1880 football convention. A year earlier, the same Camp was involved in the first recorded forward pass in
college football. During the Yale-Princeton game, as he was being tackled, Camp threw a football forward to the Elis' Oliver Thompson who sprinted to a
touchdown. The Tigers of Princeton pretested; by tossing a coin, the referee made his decision to allw the touchdown.
It was John Heisman who convinced the Football Rules Commitee to legalize the forward pass. For thirty-six years, Heisman coached at a number of schools
including Auburn, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Pennsylvania, Washington and Jefferson, and Rice. He, Alonzo Stagg, and Pop Warner, three of the greatest
coaches from the turn of the century through the 1920's, constitued the "football Trinity".
Heisman first witnessed a forward pass in 1895 when he scouted a game between North Carolina and Georgia. In order to avoid a blocked punt by onrushing
linemen, the Tar | |
Heel punter passed the ball downfield to a teammate who caught it and ran 70 yards for the only touchdown of the game. In response to the Bulldogs' howls
of protest, the referee admitted, "I didn't see the ball thrown," thereby allowing an illegal play.
Heisman envisaged the forward pass as the salvation of a sport which had degenerated into dangerous formations and tactics such as the flying wedge and
mass plays. After unsuccessfully attempting for 3 years to convince Rules Chairman Walter Camp to legalize the forward pass, Heisman enlisted the valuable
support of committee members John Bell and Paul Dashiell instead. Finally, in 1906, the Rules Committee, college football's governing body, legalized
the forward pass. The allowance of the forward pass became the most important development in football since Camp's introduction of scrimmage,
the system of downs, and the modern scoring system. The turning away from the unimaginative and brutal mass attack and, instead, toward the open, fast-striking
offense with the pass as a weapon appealed to players and spectators alike.
Nonetheless, for the next seven years the pass was rarely used. Then, in 1913, Notre Dame, through the athletic prowess Gus Dorais and Knute Rockne,
employed the forward pass with substantial success against the United States Military Academy team. After that game, the forward pass occupied a prominent
position in offensive stategy. Heisman, Camp, and Rockne would all later be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
The throw...the catch...the legal reception. Without the receiver there cannot be a successful pass play. A partial listing of great receivers could very well include
Don Hutson, Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsh, Tom Fears, Dante Lavelli, Raymond Berry, Tommy McDonald, Bobby Mitchell, Lenny Moore, Don Maynard,
Paul Warfield, Lionel Taylor, Lance Alworth, Charley Taylor, Johnny Rodgers, Stanley Morgan, Wes Chandler, Lynn Swann, Steve largent, James Lofton,
Art Monk, Irving Fryer, and Jerry Rice.
Several of the receivers as college players, including Hirsch, McDonald, Mitchell, Moore, Allworth, Taylor, and Rodgers, were often set in formation as halfbacks or wingbacks -
not split from scrimmage.
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The Tallahassee Quarterback Club Foundation, Inc., the creator and sponsor of the Biletnikoff Award. It is presented annually to the nation's outstanding college football receiver.