Football introduces the first head protection: the “nose guard.” Who needs a football helmet when a player can grow his hair long for plenty of head padding? (Hey, Kaepernick, you weren’t the first!) If a player in 1907 is more afraid of a broken nose than […]
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Coach Pop Warner, who trashed the forward pass in 1906, is eating his words in ’07. In the pre-season, he’s seen his Carlisle Indians throw spirals that are “deadly accurate.” A change in rules for the 1907 season also gave the forward pass a boost. In […]
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The tale is as wobbly as a bad spiral. Actually, the first passes weren’t spirals. They were lobbed like basketballs and thrown end-over-end like a kick. One “first” forward pass was a ref’s blunder. In 1895, as North Carolina played Georgia Tech, the Tar Heels’ punter, […]
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Nothing in the game-changing 1906 rulebook was more hotly debated than the forward pass. The traditionalists on the Rules Committee wailed, “It’ll sissify the game!” “It’ll turn football into roundball!” (aka basketball). So, to cripple and kill the forward pass in its rookie season, they hit […]
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