Inventing the Forward Pass

By HARRY CROSS

WEST POINT, N.Y.-The Notre Dame eleven swept the Army off its feet on the Plains this afternoon and buried the soldiers under a 35-to-13 score. The Westerners flashed the most sensational football that has been seen in the East this year, baffling the Cadets with a style of open play and a perfectly developed forward pass which carried the victors down the field 30 yards at a clip. Football men marveled at this startling display of open football. Bill Roper, former head coach at Princeton, who was one of the officials of the game, said that he had always believed that such playing was possible under the new rules but that he had never seen the forward pass developed to such a state of perfection.



The Eastern gridiron has not seen such a master of the forward pass as Charley Dorais, the Notre Dame quarterback. A frail youth of 145 pounds, as agile as a cat and as restless as a jumping-jack, Dorais shot forward passes with accuracy into the outstretched arms of his ends, Captain Knute Rockne, and Gus Hurst, as they stood poised for the ball, often as far as 35 yards away.



The yellow leather egg was in the air half the time, with the Notre Dame team spread out in all directions over the field waiting for it. The Army players were hopelessly confused and chagrined before Notre Dame's great playing, and their style of old-fashioned, close line-smashing play was no match for the spectacular and highly perfected attack of the Indiana collegians. All five of Notre Dame's touchdowns were the result of forward passes. They sprang the play on the Army seventeen times, and missed only four. In all they gained 243 yards with the forward pass alone.



This was the first time Notre Dame has ever been on the Army schedule, and 5,000 came to the reservation to witness the game. Report had the Indiana team strong, but no one imagined that it knew so much football. Dorais ran the team at top speed all the time. The Westerners were on the jump from the start and handled the ball with few muffs. The little quarterback displayed great judgment at all times and was never at a loss to take the Cadets by surprise. He got around as if on springs and was as cool as a cucumber on ice when shooting the forward pass. Half a dozen Army tacklers bearing down on him in full charge didn't disconcert the quarterback one bit. He got his passes away accurately, every one before the Cadets could reach him. He tossed the football on a straight line for 30 yards time and again.



Eddie Cochem, the St. Louis University coach, was the first to use the forward pass in 1906. Jesse Harper, who coached at Notre Dame in 1913, showed how it could be used by a smaller team to beat a bigger one. Once it was used against a major school on a national stage in this game, the forward pass rapidly gained popularity.



Notre Dame University Notre Dame's Knute Rockne, right, scoring on a reception against Army at West Point. Passing was a novelty then, and receivers planted themselves downfield, waiting behind the defense for the roundish ball to arrive.

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1938: Seabiscuit, the rags-to-riches people's favorite, beat the reigning Triple Crown winner War Admiral, son of Man o' War, in a match race arranged by Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt Jr., son of the railroad baron, at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. Later the subject of a biography and a 2003 movie, Seabiscuit set a record for the 13/16-mile course.



2001: Scott Brosius' dramatic two-out, ninth-inning game-tying home run off the Arizona Diamondbacks' Byung Hyun Kim at Yankee Stadium-following another by Tino Martinez the night before-allowed New York to take a threegames- to-two lead in the World Series. The D-backs came back, however, winning the championship three nights later (see Nov. 4).



1959: Jacques Plante of the Montreal Canadiens, hit in the face by a first-period shot from the Rangers' Andy Bathgate at Madison Square Garden, returned from the intermission as the first goalie ever to wear a molded fiberglass mask. Stitched up and newly protected, he stopped 28 of 29 shots in a 31 Montreal victory.