Here is what happened in 1914 in the ongoing Football History Rewind series. We take a look at the game that year and see rule revisions, teams' and coaches' innovations, and brilliant play. Here is our post on the 1914 season.
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Transcripts
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ppened in football history in:
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We take a look around the game that year to see some of the rules revisions and the teams and coaches innovations and brilliant plays made.
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We have these stories and more coming up for you in just a moment.
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This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history on a day to day basis.
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Your host Darren Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.
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So as we come out of the tunnel of the Sports History Network, let's take the field and go no huddle through the portal of positive gridiron history with pigskindispatch.com.
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This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear of your favorite sport.
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You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com hello my football friends, this is Darren Hayes of Pigskin Dispatch.
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Welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history and we are here for another edition on our ongoing series of covering football year by year.
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We're all the way up to year:
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This is football history Rewind part number 33 and there was New innovations were allowing teams of obscurity in the football world to find some success and respect from the traditional powerhouses of East.
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Notre Dame's victory over army the previous year gave coaches of lesser schools hope that they could play with the big boys if they prepared well and used their minds.
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The season:
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Illinois is a very interesting case in this Coach Bob Zuppke, one of the great geniuses of the game, was only in his second year at the helm of University of Illinois, but he had a program on the rise, the group of very good players in his system.
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His biggest success came from a new offensive alignment that innovated he that he innovated called the I formation.
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In the I formation the quarterback was under center and the other three backs lined up directly behind him in a straight line that went north and south on the field.
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The formation caused confusion to defenders as it sent all three backs forward into the line and usually running on both sides past the quarterback.
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And a quarterback could hand off to any one of these backs or keep the ball himself.
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And a defender had to take a second to figure out who exactly had that ball.
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And sometimes by that point it was much too late for him to make a tackle as a runner may be beyond him and down the field.
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And in later years of Zupkey's 29 year stint as a head coach the Illini, he innovated many new concepts.
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He used the backwards pitch as players plays to cause confusion to defenses.
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His most famous playlist type was the hook and lateral pass play.
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Mazupki is also credited with being the pioneer in offensive line play.
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He taught his guards to drop back at the snap and move in new ways.
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And this was always something totally new because of the basic premise in football in those days was if you never gave up ground on the line.
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The most famous play for Zupke for this concept was was the screen pass play.
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And it just threw defenses all out of kilter.
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Now one of Zuppke's other strong contributions to the game was to charge his teams up emotionally before the games.
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Newt Rockne, who would later coach at that same Notre Dame team that he once played for, that we talked about last time, is also given credit for propelling the same strategy of firing up the troops before they took the field.
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till feeling good about their:
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hey played Yale the next year:
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The Irish were crushed 28 to nothing in the game.
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But the long train ride back to Indiana was not a time for depression for Harper and his new assistant Newt Rockne.
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It was a time for revamping their offensive system.
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Harper overhauled the Notre Dame offense by first implementing the backfield shift he learned from Amos Alonzo Stagg at Chicago.
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The Rock knee helped by implementing a new concept of having the end spaced out away from the tackles a step or two, giving a gap in there.
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And he also had the same ends shift in or out with the backs.
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Very interesting concepts.
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We know that to be very commonplace today, but just think of that.
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Almost 110 years ago was unheard of and Rockne helped develop that.
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Now some teams in the Midwest and the southern teams made their presence known.
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Teams in the Southern Midwest of the country were starting to make names for themselves at this time in history.
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Schools like Auburn and Texas were rattling off impressive seasons.
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Texas went undefeated in:
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f the south would continue in:
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es in just three seasons from:
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nt victory over Notre Dame in:
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Oklahoma in:
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They made the forward pass their main offensive weapon.
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rs old being legal and really:
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But it really wasn't commonplace like we know it today.
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Coach Benny Owen recognized that his running game was was poor.
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He couldn't run anywhere.
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Even with opponents preparing for an aerial assault by the Sooners, they still rattled off 25 touchdowns via the pass that year.
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its games and racked up over:
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Now, teams in the south central area enjoyed success rivalry so much they did decide to form a league of their own.
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Named the SouthWest Conference.
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The eight original members were Oklahoma, Arkansas, Oklahoma A and M, Texas, Baylor, Texas A and M, Louisiana State and Southwestern.
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And at the end of the season, Southern Methodist and Rice replaced Oklahoma and LSU in the conference.
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And the year after that South Southwestern dropped out.
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The stadiums were being built with construction that had not been seen in the American athletics before.
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on followed Harvard's lead in:
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t near the end of November in:
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Things were changing in the game and fast.
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And according to author Timothy P. Brown in his book How Football Became Football, the kick out following a touchback was eliminated by the rules committee.
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The Big Ten recommended its teams to start wearing numbers.
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And the first postgame crowd to take down the goal post occurred at Parsons High School in Kansas as they were frustrated by their team's 816 shellacking from a local rival.
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And it was over all a century ago.
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But boy does it sound familiar in some of these cases or not.
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Well, football was indeed becoming a national phenomenon and competitive teams across the land and things were just starting to get interesting.
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There was also some titles handed out.
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There was a three way tie considered as the national champions in the collegiate game.
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According to many experts posthumously.
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Later on in the years as Illinois, Texas and Army all received consideration.
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Many years later in the pro game it was the Akron Indians repeating as the champs of Ohio the defeating Canton 21 to nothing.
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And as we said for many years, the champions of the Ohio mystical Ohio League were considered to be the best professional team around and probably not too far off.
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it two years there in a row,:
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Well, we have plenty more years to cover.
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We're going to get more into:
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And next time on football history, rewind part number 34.
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Look for it soon.
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And we thank you for listening and we hope you'll be back tomorrow to hear some more great football history and some of our other segments here on pigskindispatch.com and don't forget to check out Jersey Dispatch for some sports of history on sports of all genres and all team sports.
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So we hope you'll join us there too.
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So till tomorrow, everybody have a great gridiron day.
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Peeking up at the clock, the time's running down.
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We're going to go into victory formation, take a knee and let this baby run out.
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Thanks for joining us.
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We'll see you back tomorrow.
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Tomorrow for the next podcast, we invite you to check out our website, pigskindispatch.com not only to see the daily football history, but to experience positive football with our many articles on the good people of the game as well as our own football comic strip, clete marks comics.
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Pigskindispatch.com is also on social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and don't forget the PigSkindiSpatch YouTube channel to get all of your positive football news and history.
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Special thanks to the talents of Mike and Gene Monroe, as well as Jason Neff for letting us use their music during our podcast.
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This podcast is part of Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear of your favorite sport.
