The focal point of this episode is the intriguing history of the forward pass in American football, as elucidated by our esteemed guest, Timothy P. Brown from footballarchaeology.com.

This information comes from his original post titled: Wabash and Kent Lambert's Forward Pass Innovations

For the written post of this story check out pigskindispatch.com/RorZ

We delve into the significant contributions of Wabash College and its quarterback, Kent Lambert, who innovatively navigated the complexities of early football rules to enhance the strategic use of the forward pass. Lambert's ingenious tactics included what is now recognized as intentional grounding, a concept that dramatically altered the dynamics of the game. Furthermore, we explore the historical context surrounding these developments, including the influence of Walter Eckersol, a former All-American quarterback who officiated and reported on pivotal games of that era. Join us as we unravel these fascinating narratives that underscore the evolution of American football and its enduring legacy.

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Takeaways:

• The podcast episode delves into the historical significance of the forward pass in American football, as elucidated by Timothy Brown.
• Timothy Brown expounds upon the innovative tactics of Kent Lambert during his tenure at Wabash College, particularly in relation to the forward pass.
• The discussion highlights Walter Eckersol's dual role as both referee and journalist, which significantly impacted football history documentation.
• Listeners are encouraged to explore the rich archive of football history available at footballarchaeology.com, where they can subscribe for regular updates.
• The episode emphasizes the evolution of football rules, particularly concerning intentional grounding and its implications for quarterback play.
• Darren Hayes and Timothy Brown engage in a thoughtful exploration of football's past, intertwining personal anecdotes with historical analysis.

You're in for a real treat in this episode as we learn more about the history of the forward pass from a man that probably knows more about it than most.

It's Timothy b.

Brown of footballarchaeology.com joining us to tell us about the Wabash connection and Kent Lambert's forward pass.

It's all coming up with Tim in just a moment.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from.

America's North Shore to bring you the.

Memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal deposit of football history.

And as we try to do each Tuesday, we bring our special guest, Timothy p.

Brown of footballarchaeology.com on to tell us about another little aspect of football history with his tidbits.

Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey, Darren, good to see you as always.

And I want us to be very intentional about keeping this discussion grounded.

Okay, yeah, we'll be very innovative about that.

Yeah, most definitely.

Of course, not our usual approach, but, you know.

Right, right.

But it is our usual approach to go on a goofy segue into one of Tim's tidbit titles.

And this is a bad one we did tonight, but a great tidbit, but bad segue.

And Tim's tidbit is titled Wabash and Kent Lambert's Forward Pass Innovations.

So, Tim, what can you tell us about this story?

Well, so for those who maybe don't live in the Midwest, Wabash College is in west central Indiana.

And it, at least the city it's in, which I think maybe is Wabash, but anyways, sits along the Wabash river and you know, it's a little dinky school.

The.

That maybe still is all male, but at least for a long time was all male.

And, you know, he was.

He was like a total stud for them, you know, multi, multi sport stud.

But back then, you know, they competed with several other schools like DePauw or, you know, St.

Joe's somebody for the small college championship.

It was, you know, unofficial championship of Indiana, but one of the teams that played for the small college championship was Notre Dame because they weren't anybody yet.

I mean, they.

They had good teams and stuff, but they were still competing mostly to small college level.

And so, so when he played football, players had long sleeved jerseys and it turned out that he displayed in the game against, you know, Notre Dame.

Wabash went and visited Notre Dame late in the season to effectively play for the small school championship.

An old skeet had a few tricks up his sleeve.

So, and one of the other kind of side notes to this story, but it's important, one is that Walter Eckersol, who had been an all American quarterback at Chicago and became a sports writer for the Tribune, he was the referee in the game.

So he both refereed the game and then reported on it, both like the normal after action report the next day.

But then he also wrote an editorial kind of our column sort of article a few days later in which he described what, what happened in this game and these tricks that, that Wabash had pulled.

So there were basically two tricks.

One was like a lot of teams then they did a lot of their passing out of punt formation, or at least kick formation because they might have drop kicked out of it as well.

And so basically what he did was he, you know, he'd sit back, he'd get, he'd get the ball maybe, you know, eight, nine yards, you know, snapped direct snap back to him.

And then, you know, he would either back up, roll right or left.

And if, if the pass rush was intense enough where it was going to reach him, he, he would take the ball and throw it into the ground, just, you know, wherever he wanted to, just throw it in the ground, making it an incomplete pass.

Because at that point, football, you know, forward pass was still relatively new and there wasn't a rule against intentional grounding.

So he, he was the first guy, as far as we know, to come up with the idea of intentional grounding.

So, and then afterwards, you know, Notre Dame picked up on that.

They had Darius and Rock me, they were juniors that year.

And so Darius would, you know, picked up on that.

He started doing it too.

And everybody's like, oh, what a smart guy.

If it didn't hit anybody, you know, while in the air, if it hit somebody, then it became a live ball.

It was basically a fumbled pass is what they would call it.

They cut it back to 15 yard penalty.

But if the ball was thrown and went out of bounds, then the defending team, it was a turnover and the defending team got the ball spotted wherever the, wherever the pass went out of bounds.

You know, just like how a punt, you know, punt going out of bounds, just basically how that works today.

And so what Wabash did, and again, they were the first guys to figure this out.

Instead of punting in a lot of situations, and especially if they were trying to do a, you know, coffin corner situation, Skeet would just take the snap and he would throw the ball downfield as far as he could or in the corner and make sure it went out of bounds.

So that instead of it just being treated as an incomplete pass and it, and in that case being a 15 yard penalty, the defense got the ball back where or yeah, wherever it crossed the sideline.

So anyways, you know, it was one of those things where like nobody had done either of those things until, until he figured it out or you know, maybe his coach that year and for the past couple of years was a guy named Jess Harper who had played at Chicago under Stag.

He'd been coaching three or four years at, at, at Wabash.

And then the next year he coached Notre Dame and you know, started a four or five year stint them.

So, so, you know, next year they, you know, Notre Dame was like doubly sure they were going to adopt those methods.

But so the funny thing is like, because of Ecker's article, the, the rules committee knew about these things and you know, generally if they saw something that was kind of, you know, manipulating the rules, they tended to outlaw it.

They left both of them alone.

You know, later on, obviously that became the rules chained in whatever 80s or something like that in the NFL because they wanted to protect the quarterbacks because they were worth a lot to them.

And so initially, you know, quarterbacks could throw the ball out of bounds, then you could spike it, you know, yada yada.

And you know, obviously now college has adopted that rule, but.

And then the, the throwing the ball out of bounds as a punt, that went on until 19, 19, 20 is when they finally changed it.

So it was one of those things where at the time they said, well, you know, it takes skill to do this.

So, you know, they were all about if, if you could do something that was skillful, they tend to leave it in the rules, even if it kind of manipulated the rules, you know, or that was an unintended effect.

So, you know, kind of, that's.

That's the way the thing worked.

And, you know, so it's just one of those goofy little set of rules that occurred in football.

And, you know, at some point somebody had to figure out that there was a need to.

To outlaw intentional grounding.

And he's basically the one who forced him to do that, you know, Skeet Lambert and.

Yeah, I don't know.

I just.

I think those kinds of little origin stories are fun.

Yeah, definitely.

I mean, there's so many great things about that story.

First of all, having a guy named Skeet be your quarterback, that's a.

That's a cool name, you know, especially for a quarterback.

You think like Skeet shooting or something, you know, some kind of projectile coming out.

I think it was kind of like mosquito, because I think he.

He was like 138 pound, you know, guy.

Okay, okay.

So I think it was more just because he was tiny.

Still, they had cool nicknames back then.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The second thing is, you know how much you have to admire Walter Eckersol.

You know, the guy was the perfect man at the right time for football because he's going, officiating these games, you know, he's a player, great player, goes officiates these games, records what he sees at these games in a newspaper.

And we have it now to talk about, you know, 100 some years later.

That's just a great.

That story all in itself, you know, and we talked about Eckersol multiple times during our conversations.

I know you've had multiple tidbits on him.

Yeah, well, and there's kind of along the same lines, like, you know, Rockne was a guy.

If there was a way for him to make a buck, he was all over it, you know, I mean, he.

He was into it and Warner was the same way.

But I think that's because he needed money for.

For his gambling debts.

But Rockne, I'm not sure that was.

I think he just cut this money.

But the.

So, you know, he would.

And other guys did the same thing.

He would write weekly columns and predicting the outcome of that week's games.

Right.

So you just kind of go, you know, I mean, can you imagine that today?

Right.

Yeah, that's a little bit of the.

The shaky side of his story, but just the historical aspect of it, you know, he's one of the great historians of the game, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, it wasn't like he was alone in doing that.

A lot of, you know, top notch coaches wrote, wrote all these articles.

I mean, you know, it's, it's really not that different in kind from, you know, if you had Urban Meyer sitting on a panel, you know, pregame halftime and they ask him who's going to win or well, he's going to give a predicted prediction.

Right now he wasn't.

He's no longer, when he's doing that, he's no longer playing or he's no longer coaching or his team's no longer playing.

But it's basically the same thing, you know, at least in my mind.

So anyways, it's just, but it's still, you know, in the season you're coaching and you're predicting in advance who's going to win.

Just kind of funny stuff.

Yeah, definitely funny.

And you have so many little interesting little stories like this, Tim, that you go back and you find and you dig into.

You know, whether it be based on an image you see or some little blurb you read in a newspaper or you know, however you got today's story and you call them your tidbits on your site, maybe you could tell the listeners how they can partake and enjoy in these tidbits.

Yeah, just go to footballarchaeology.com it's a substack site.

Subscribe and you'll get an email every time I release something new.

And then, you know, if, if you don't want to get them in the email, you can just follow me on the app, you know, the substack app.

You can follow me on Blue sky or just bookmark it and go and visit, you know, whenever you have a hunger for old time football.

Well, Tim, we really appreciate you coming on and joining us here and telling this great story and we'd love to talk to you again next week about some more great football history.

Sounds easy.

We'll do it.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

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