page_title: Forward pass
section_title: First legal pass
hierarchical_section_title: Forward pass / Gridiron football / First legal pass
caption_attribution_description: English: Courtesy of St. Louis Universoty
context_page_description: In several forms of football a forward pass is a throwing of the ball in the direction that the offensive team is trying to move, towards the defensive team's goal line. The forward pass is one of the main distinguishers between gridiron football in which the play is legal and widespread, and rugby football from which the North American games evolved, in which the play is illegal.
  The development of the forward pass in American football shows how the game has evolved from its rugby roots into the distinctive game it is today. Illegal and experimental forward passes had been attempted as early as 1876, but the first legal forward pass in American football took place in 1906, after a change in rules. Another change in rules occurred on January 18, 1951, which established that no center, tackle, or guard could receive a forward pass. Today, the only linemen who can receive a forward pass are the ends. Current rules regulate who may throw and who may receive a forward pass, and under what circumstances, as well as how the defensive team may try to prevent a pass from being completed.
context_section_description: Most sources credit St. Louis University's Bradbury Robinson from Bellevue, Ohio with throwing the first legal forward pass. On September 5, 1906, in a game against Carroll College, Robinson's first attempt at a forward pass fell incomplete and resulted in a turnover under the 1906 rules. In the same game, Robinson later completed a 20-yard touchdown pass to Jack Schneider. The 1906 St. Louis team, coached by Eddie Cochems, was undefeated at 11–0 and featured the most potent offense in the country, outscoring their opponents 407–11. Football authority and College Football Hall of Fame coach David M. Nelson wrote that "E. B. Cochems is to forward passing what the Wright brothers are to aviation and Thomas Edison is to the electric light."
  While St. Louis University completed the first legal forward pass in the first half of September, this accomplishment was in part because most schools did not begin their football schedule until early October.
  
  In 1952, football coach Amos Alonzo Stagg discounted accounts crediting any particular coach with being the innovator of the forward pass.  Stagg noted that he had Walter Eckersall working on pass plays and saw Pomeroy Sinnock of Illinois throw many passes in 1906.  Stagg summed up his view as follows: "I have seen statements giving credit to certain people originating the forward pass.  The fact is that all coaches were working on it.  The first season, 1906, I personally had sixty-four different forward pass patterns."  In 1954, Stagg disputed Cochems' claim to have invented the forward pass:
  "Eddie Cochems, who coached at St. Louis University in 1906, also claimed to have invented the pass as we know it today ... It isn't so, because after the forward pass was legalized in 1906, most of the schools commenced experimenting with it and nearly all used."
  Stagg asserted that, as far back as 1894, before the rules committee even considered the forward pass, one of his players used to throw the ball "like a baseball pitcher."
  On the other hand, Hall of Fame  coach Gus Dorais told the United Press that "Eddie Cochems of the St. Louis University team of 1906–07–08 deserves the full credit."  Writing in Collier's more than 20 years earlier, Dorais' Notre Dame teammate Knute Rockne acknowledged Cochems as the early leader in the use of the pass, observing, "One would have thought that so effective a play would have been instantly copied and become the vogue. The East, however, had not learned much or cared much about Midwest and Western football. Indeed, the East scarcely realized that football existed beyond the Alleghanies ..."
  
  Once the 1906 season got underway, many programs began experimenting with the forward pass. On September 26, 1906, Villanova's game against the Carlisle Indians was billed as "the first real game of football under the new rules." In the first play from scrimmage after the opening kicks, Villanova completed a pass that "succeeded in gaining ten yards."  Following the Villanova-Carlisle game, The New York Times described the new passing game this way:
  "The passing was more of the character of that familiar in basket ball than that which has hitherto characterized football.  Apparently it is the intention of football coaches to try repeatedly these frequent long and risky passes.  Well executed they are undoubtedly highly spectacular, but the risk of dropping the ball is so great as to make the practice extremely hazardous and its desirability doubtful."
  
  Another coach sometimes credited with popularizing the overhead spiral pass in 1906 is former Princeton All-American "Bosey" Reiter.  Reiter claimed to have invented the overhead spiral pass while playing professional football as a player-coach for Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics of the original National Football League (1902).  While playing for the Athletics, Reiter was a teammate of Hawley Pierce, a former star for the Carlisle Indian School.  Pierce, a Native American, taught Reiter to throw an underhand spiral pass, but Reiter had short arms and was unable to throw for distance from an underhand deliver
caption: Eddie Cochems, "Father of the Forward Pass", 1907
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