The Bradbury Blog, Bradbury Robinson, and The Forward Pass
Welcome to The Bradbury Blog!
This blog is a new adventure of mine where I put my obsessive fandom of gridiron football on to paper (digital paper to save trees). This blog will focus on interesting historical facts about the game that you likely did not know before, and will occasionally bring in my work in analytics to prove a point. I will cover all versions of the game: American, Canadian, Arena, nine-man, eight-man, six-man, and whatever future versions come into existence. If its gridiron football, I am interested.
So, why is this blog called The “Bradbury” Blog?
To properly answer this question, we must go back to what makes gridiron football different from sports like rugby or the other football (soccer): The Forward Pass.
Gridiron football begin in North America in the 19th Century. At the time, the sport was played very similar to the much older sport rugby football (said to have been started in the 1800s in England, which technically could point back to various ancient ball games). At the time, there was only the run and the kick, hence the word “foot” in football.
This version of the game was pretty violent, as the only way to move the ball was to run straight into each other. Just how violent was it? Well, in 1905, 18 people died playing football. This lead to many wanting football banned or at least reformed to something safer. This is where President Teddy Roosevelt stepped in to reform football. Teddy saving the beloved sport is a whole other story for another day. But, what came of this reform to save football and the strategic discussions by many in the football community at the time, was the legalization of the Forward Pass in the spring of 1906. Which spread the players out on the field and ultimately made less people die.
On September 5, 1906, a Bellevue Ohio born college football player by the name of Bradbury Robinson threw the first legal forward pass in a game between St. Louis University and Carroll College. Note, this pass was not a Big Ben to Antonio Brown type pass. In fact, it fell incomplete, and based on the rules at the time, resulted in a turnover. Luckily, Bradbury would later redeem himself and throw a 20-yard touchdown pass to Jack Schneider, making Jack the first player to make a legal reception of a forward pass (way to go Jack!). The St. Louis University Billikens would go on to shut out The Carroll College Fighting Saints 22 to 0. (What the heck is a Billiken, you ask? Apparently its a charm doll that looked like their head coach).
From what I gather, no one really batted an eye at this completed pass, despite its ability to change a scoreless game to a 22 point shut out (and that scheme would later lead St. Louis to an 11–0 record). This “no big deal” reaction may be because there is some controversy surrounding the claim that Eddie Cochems, the coach of St. Louis University, was the father of the forward pass. While he did call the first legal pass play, he only accomplished it first because most schools did not begin football yet. And according to a 1954 interview with Amos Stagg, coach of University of Chicago in 1906, nearly all schools were experimenting with the forward pass in 1906 after its legalization. So, maybe it came as no surprise to spectators/other teams that this would happen.
While many college teams were experimenting with passing plays in 1906, it did not become popular right away. According to a New York Times article at the time, the forward pass’s “desirability [was] doubtful” due to its high risk. Further, the ball at the time was not optimized for passing and many previously developed schemes simply couldn’t incorporate this novel way of moving the ball. It wasn’t until 1913 that its popularity in the game would increase, as Knute Rockne, coach of Notre Dame, successfully used a forward passing scheme in a big time game versus Army. Apparently, Knute had been working on the pass with Gus Dorais, another Notre Dame coach, on a Cedar Point Beach in Sandusky, Ohio earlier that year. Because of this, many people think Knute Rockne invented the forward pass (there is even a movie about this myth).
In addition to the wildly successful passing scheme by Notre Dame in this game, many other games/teams helped illustrate the use of the forward pass to win. In 1915, Minnesota is said to have had a unique and dominate passing game. In the 1921 Rose Bowl, a 53-yard touchdown pass was thrown (getting close to our Big Ben to Antonio Brown pass). In 1925, Dartmouth destroyed Cornell with six touchdown passes. In 1907, Vanderbilt did a double pass (The First Philly Special Anyone?).
In other words, many teams, particularly at the college level, made gridiron football the high-flying, strategic sport that it is today. But, only one guy threw that first legal pass: Bradbury Robinson.
And thus, The Bradbury Blog.
