Today's Tidbit... Penalizing Incomplete Passes
Today's Tidbit... Penalizing Incomplete Passes
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so is ugly.
For modern football fans, few plays are as exciting as a Hail Mary pass, tossed far downfield in the hope of connecting with a receiver to win or tie a game. Doug Flutie's toss against Miami is now considered one of the most exciting plays in football history. But that is the modern view of football and the forward pass, which was not shared by many of the game's top coaches and administrators back when the forward pass was a teenager.
After entering the game in 1906, the forward pass went through a teething period before emerging as a teen in the Teens, with the ball tossed downfield increasingly often. That did not sit well with traditionalists who wanted to put the foot back in football. Pop Warner, for example, wanted to ban the forward pass, though he used it as long as it remained within the rules. Many traditionalists disliked having lesser football teams come into their stadiums and employ the forward pass to compete with their power teams. They especially disliked it when beating teams in the fourth quarter of a low-scoring game, only to watch the little guy throw the ball far downfield, hoping for a lucky break. That, my good man, was not scientific football, so they began suggesting ways to take the Hail Mary out of American schools or, at least, their football stadiums.
The drumbeat began in 1920 when Eastern coaches called for a new rule allowing only one forward pass per series. Others called for incomplete passes to result in a 10-yard penalty, while former Harvard coach Percy Haughton wanted the forward pass banned during the last five minutes of games.
Still, others were looking to open up the game by liberalizing the forward pass, so the two groups battled it out until 1926 when football began a nearly decade-long period of tug-of-war over the forward passing rules. The 1926 Rules Committee, headed by E. K. Hall, added a rule penalizing teams five yards for throwing a second incompletion in a series and another five yards for throwing a third. As Hall explained:
...the indiscriminate heaving of a series of wild forward passes in the blind hope that one of them may possibly connect with some one, somewhere eligible to receive it is not good football; in fact, it is not football at all.
'Hall Explains Rule,' Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 24, 1926.
Those looking to restrict the forward pass met resistance from those who wanted to throw it more often and better. Many of the latter worked outside the rulebook by using bootleg footballs, which were thinner than regulation, making it easier for them to throw accurately downfield. New rules for 1929 reduced the size of the regulation ball, but the rules did not go as far as the bootleggers wanted, so some continued using bootleg balls.
A few years later, the tides of change overwhelmed the traditionalists, and the 1934 rule-makers eliminated the penalty for throwing a second or third incompletion in a series. They also further reduced the size of the football, bringing it close to the ball's current size. (Another minor size reduction came in 1982.)
Other rule changes followed to liberate the passing game, but after 1934, football never again viewed the forward pass as a threat to the game's very nature.
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