All right, class, show of hands: How many people here are familiar with the name Archimedes? Okay, and how many of you have seen the movie Pi multiple times? Ah, same ones. Just as I thought.Well, for those of you who haven't seen Pi, let me tell you the story of Archimedes, the great mathematician of Syracuse. He was there a couple millennia before Donovan McNabb. So one day the king receives gold as a gift, and he asks Archimedes how he can be sure this gift is actually pure gold. He thinks and thinks on this problem nonstop for weeks, and he can't come up with a solution. So his wife tells him he needs to take a break, because in his single-minded attempt to come up with an answer for the king, he's forgotten to bathe, and thus he's stinking up the bedroom.
So Archimedes goes to take a bath, and he notices the water rising as he steps in the tub. Suddenly, it hits him -- displacement, a way to measure volume and, thus, density, which will tell you if that gold is really gold. The light bulbs go off in his head, the angels start singing, and he gets so excited that he screams, "Eureka!", and he runs naked and dripping wet through the streets to the king's palace to share the solution with him.
Why do I share the story of a Greek mathematician in a football history class? Well, when it comes right down to it, John Heisman discovered the forward pass much the same way...
John Heisman
John Heisman is probably best known as the coach of the Georgia Tech football team that ran up a 222-0 score on Cumberland College in 1916 -- which happened to be a response to Cumberland's baseball team running up the score on the Engineers the previous year. He was involved in football long before that, though. He played football at Brown from 1887 to 1889 and at Pennsylvania for a couple years after that. Then he got into coaching, first at Oberlin in 1893, then at Akron in 1894, then at Auburn by 1895, where he coached for five years.
In all that time, his teams lost only five games. Clearly, he knew something about this new American football game, but he didn't want to be just another coach. He wanted to have more of an impact on this game, but he didn't know how.
It all came to him one day in 1895 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, during a game between the Tar Heels and the Georgia Bulldogs, who were coached by some guy named Glenn "Pop" Warner. He was a pretty good coach, I hear. As the story goes, Heisman stood on the sidelines and scouted during a brutal, scoreless tie that just about bored him to tears. Then, as the game wound down and UNC dropped back to punt, the offensive line failed, and Bulldogs rushed the punter.
Unable to get a kick off and probably terrified for his life, the punter ran to his right and prayed. His answer came in a teammate standing up field. He couldn't think of anything else to do, so he just threw the ball overhanded to his teammate, one George Stephens, who caught the ball and ran 70 yards for the only touchdown of the game.
At that moment, as ol' Pop Warner ranted and raved at any ref within 20 yards of him, the angels started singing in John Heisman's head. The forward pass. Eureka! This would revolutionize the game! No longer could the defense load up on the lines and maraud people. The forward pass would open up the field and make this American football game more intriguing and more exciting. He immediately ran naked and dripping wet through the streets to Walter Camp's house to report his discovery.
Okay, I made that last part up. I wanted to make sure you were still paying attention...
Heisman spent years trying to convince Camp of the wonders of the forward pass, but Camp wanted nothing of it. The forward pass was an abomination to the game he helped build. Camp stalled and dismissed Heisman for years as if he were trying to sell him on the miracle of cold fusion. Heisman then tried to convince other coaches that the forward pass would improve American football, but many of them scoffed. One coach even wrote to Camp complaining about "forward passes and other dream-like things."
As flying wedges and other mass formation plays made football more and more brutal, though, Heisman knew that the forward pass was inevitable, but he didn't get his opportunity to strike until 1905. His ace in the hole? A massive concrete cathedral to football called Harvard Stadium...
They're kicking off at Harvard Stadium a bit later today, actually, as they are at the stadium just down the road. You want to go see John Heisman's contribution to the game in action, don't you? Okay, we'll talk about how Harvard Stadium helped bring about the forward pass next week. Class dismissed. Enjoy the games, everyone.
