Today's Tidbit... Football On A Shoestring Play

A recent Tidbit reviewed the history of the hidden ball trick, often credited to Pop Warner but conceived by John Heisman. Warner is also commonly credited with inventing the "shoestring play," though that story is also unlikely.

The shoestring play has several variations or imitators. One take saw use in the days before hash marks when, for example, a player swept to the right and was tackled toward the right sideline. While the players on both teams lined up near the ball on the right side of the field, a teammate lingered on the left, appearing to tie his shoe so the defense would ignore him. At the snap, the quarterback threw a long lateral to the pre-1906 shoestringer or a forward pass to the 1906 and beyond shoestringer. Another variation had the lingering player lie down on the far side of the field so the opponent would not see him before the snap.

Given that there are variations on this trick play theme and there were likely different names for these plays, it is difficult to determine when they originated, but it is unlikely that Pop Warner conceived the play.

Pop Warner was a junior lineman at Cornell in 1893, the same year that Princeton and Yale met on Thanksgiving Day, a game Princeton won to finish 11-0 and earn the championship. Recalling the contest thirty years later, Phil King, Princeton's quarterback, remembered their right end and team captain, Thomas Trenchard, getting the ball and making a long lateral to King, who had lingered on the other side of the field. While that was King's recollection, a newspaper report from the day after the game indicated that King had thrown the ball to Morse, Princeton's right halfback, an arrangement that makes more sense given the players' positions.