Today's Tidbit... The First Touchdown Pass Caught In The End Zone
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Football saw a host of rules changes in 1912, several of which loosened restrictions on the forward pass.
Teams had four downs rather than three to gain ten yards, making some more willing to try a risky forward pass. They eliminated the penalty for forward passes traveling 20 or more yards downfield, and they allowed the catching of forward passes thrown over the goal line for the first time in the newly created end zones.
The latter rule change is the focus of this story since it begs the obvious question: Which college football team or players threw and caught the first forward pass in the end zone?
Nearly two years ago, I discovered that the first forward pass did not occur in the 1906 St. Louis-Carroll game as widely believed. Instead, it came when New Hampshire threw an incomplete pass against Maine several days before the SLU-Carroll game.
As in the 1906 story, part of the challenge this time was identifying which teams played the earliest games of the 1912 season. Those came on September 21, 1912, a week before most teams started, with most of those games summarized by the scores listed in the following day’s newspaper.
Using this list as a starting point, I checked each game’s results for touchdown passes thrown into the end zone. The scoreless tie in the Norwich-New Hampshire game required no additional checking. The Bates-Maine Central Institute provided lots of opportunities for touchdown passes in the end zone. However, in a game against a neighboring prep school, Bates played straight football, throwing only one forward pass, which fell incomplete.
Rhode Island’s score in their 7-0 win over UMass came by run, so that game came off the list, as did Carlisle-Albright, which Carlisle dominated without resorting to trick plays. A detailed description of the RPI-Columbia Club game proved elusive, so it fell from consideration as well. The same applied to a game not on the list of scores above. Hampden-Sydney beat the Medical College of Virginia 12-0, with the first touchdown coming on a forward pass, but it is unclear on which side of the goal line the receiver caught the pass.
That leaves the Maine-Fort McKinley game, which Maine won 38-0. The Boston Globe’s coverage of the game provides a reasonable amount of detail and tells us:
“One touchdown was made under the new rules on a forward pass across the goal line, Bernheisel to Donohue.”
The box score lists Bernheisel as the right end and Donohue as the left end, so Bernheisel either completed the pass on the old end-around option pass, or he switched positions before the play. Either way, we have confirmation that Donohue legally caught a forward pass in the end zone during the game.
Maine went on to a 7-1 record that season, losing only the next game at Harvard 7-0, which is an impressive score since the Crimson are considered the 1912 national champions.
George Bernheisel and Norman Donuhue, both sophomores in 1912, played their junior and senior seasons at Maine. Bernheisel switched to halfback and quarterback in his junior and senior seasons, and neither appears to have been involved in football following graduation.
Though Bernheisel and Donohue did not affect the game in the long term, they are the answer to the seldom-asked, yet all-important question of who threw and caught the first forward pass legally caught behind the goal line.
Misters Bernheisel and Donohue, football trivia buffs across the world salute your accomplishment!
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Wait, so both the first forward pass and the first touchdown pass came at Maine?!
Thank you for another great story! The research you do is amazing!