Today's Tidbit... St. Louis U's Ill-Fated Trip West

The 1906 St. Louis University team was the first to throw a legal forward pass in a regular-season game and threw the ball better and more often than any other team that season, leading to an 11-0 season. Most striking about the 1907 team was that they never had more than 16 players on the team -often only 13- so they could not scrimmage in practice.

It was a veteran squad, with most of the team returning from the 1906 team. Nine of the eleven starters and several substitutes were medical students, all of whom had previous playing experience in high school, prep school, or at another college, so Coach Cochems dispensed with much of the fundamental drilling many coaches relied on, allowing them to continue tossing the pea around the field and combine their passing game with a shifting, misdirection offense that ran many plays from one formation and the same play from many formations.

( St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 5, 1931.)

SLU blew through the first five teams on the schedule, allowing only six points but getting beat up in the process.