WI the forward pass was never invented in American football?

Bit of a tangent.... during the mid-70's, I attended an Ohio State at Wisconsin game. Woodie Hayes was still the OSU coach then(he hadn't attempted to strangle an opposing player yet :) ); and the Badgers were gawd-awful. By the middle of the second quarter OSU was up by double digits - solely on the run game. The Badger student section was thoroughly inebriated and annoyed with the condition of the game; so they started chanting "Woodie's a pecker, Woodie's a pecker". That certainly helped inter-mural fan relations in the stands....
I'm taking a bit of a work break so I had to keep it under control--but I laughed (well, snickered given the circumstances) at this.

Seems to me Hayes' strangulation attempt came in 1977 or so, since I have vague memories of Earle Bruce as the OSU coach when I lived in suburban Cincinnati in the very late '70s. With Bruce instead of Hayes, OSU lost its villain status for me. But I digress.

I agree with Dr. Lessard above that the wishbone offense could be interesting in its own right--and I went to college at Delaware in the early '70s, when Tubby Raymond's wing-T was the offense (running over the likes of Temple, Rutgers, the Citadel, and Villanova). That too could be a model for a no-forward-pass version of what we know as football in the US.

Also, this makes me wonder: without the forward pass, could the US and Canadian games have pretty much been one and the same, say, with a larger field, present-day punt and scoring rules, and something like four or five downs to get 15 or 20? That could make for college football pitting, say, Maryland against McGill or Delaware against Saskatchewan.
 

Driftless

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Comparing the pace of Rugby(or Soccer Football) vs American Football - the first two have near non-stop action. American Football has variable lengths of inactivity between every play - even longer stretches with incomplete forward passes. That brings George Will's comment to mind:
Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings. George Will
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/georgewill134625.html
 

CalBear

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I'm taking a bit of a work break so I had to keep it under control--but I laughed (well, snickered given the circumstances) at this.

Seems to me Hayes' strangulation attempt came in 1977 or so, since I have vague memories of Earle Bruce as the OSU coach when I lived in suburban Cincinnati in the very late '70s. With Bruce instead of Hayes, OSU lost its villain status for me. But I digress.

I agree with Dr. Lessard above that the wishbone offense could be interesting in its own right--and I went to college at Delaware in the early '70s, when Tubby Raymond's wing-T was the offense (running over the likes of Temple, Rutgers, the Citadel, and Villanova). That too could be a model for a no-forward-pass version of what we know as football in the US.

Also, this makes me wonder: without the forward pass, could the US and Canadian games have pretty much been one and the same, say, with a larger field, present-day punt and scoring rules, and something like four or five downs to get 15 or 20? That could make for college football pitting, say, Maryland against McGill or Delaware against Saskatchewan.
The Wishbone works when there is a massive disparity in talent between the offensive team and the defensive team. Same goes for a pure running game. Both of those systems still work at the High School level because you continue to have massive disparity in talent (hell, there are schools that are still very successful running the Veer, De La Salle, a major California power school, runs the Veer to this day)

They worked when there were unlimited scholarships allowed in Division One and the "Big Programs" (like Ohio State, Nebraska, & Alabama) would have 150 players on full scholarship, as much to keep players from competing elsewhere and continued to work while athletes were more willing to be 7th on the Oklahoma depth chart rather than 2nd on Boise State's. That changed with the explosion of coverage on Cable TV and the ability of programs without PAC and Big in there conference name to get TV time and chances to play in one of the every increasing number of Bowl Games.

The wishbone doesn't work in the pros because everyone as more or less equal talent, it doesn't work in the FSB Division because the talent has been diluted to the point that you find 4 star recruits at Iowa State nearly as often as you find them at Nebraska. The pure running game doesn't work in the pros because, with effectively equal talent on both sides of the ball, it is boring as hell to watch a game that ends 6-3.
 
I think we're heading there with the CTE brain damage issue - it's just delayed the results. It's basic physics working against the hitting nature of the game. Guys are much bigger, and much, much faster than the previous generations - that's a big increase of impact energy(mass x acceleration). Even with modern materials science for protection at work, there's probably a practical limit in there.
I think, in the nearish future (say, 25 years) we're going to end up with professional Flag Football becoming a thing in place of actual football.
 
Canada went all the way until 1929 before adopting the forward pass. It would hilarious to see it banned in the United States but viable in Canada, and eventually sees a modest CFL expansion throughout the USA later in the century.
 
I think we're heading there with the CTE brain damage issue - it's just delayed the results. It's basic physics working against the hitting nature of the game. Guys are much bigger, and much, much faster than the previous generations - that's a big increase of impact energy(mass x acceleration). Even with modern materials science for protection at work, there's probably a practical limit in there.


There is possibly an argument to be made that the padding and materials have made the problem worse, by enabling/empowering the players to hit each other harder. At Super Rugby and International level there was a trend a while ago for some players (it was never mandatory) to wear light shoulder padding under their jerseys, but it seems to be out of fashion these days. One thing that is being taken more seriously is concussion in Rugby players. In the past couple of seasons especially it has become common for players to be removed from the game (again at Super and International level) for a Head Injury Assessment after a head knock in play, and if they fail that assessment they don't return to the field.
 
There is possibly an argument to be made that the padding and materials have made the problem worse, by enabling/empowering the players to hit each other harder. At Super Rugby and International level there was a trend a while ago for some players (it was never mandatory) to wear light shoulder padding under their jerseys, but it seems to be out of fashion these days. One thing that is being taken more seriously is concussion in Rugby players. In the past couple of seasons especially it has become common for players to be removed from the game (again at Super and International level) for a Head Injury Assessment after a head knock in play, and if they fail that assessment they don't return to the field.

Oh yeah, go back to leather helmets and no face masks and guys will stop leading with their heads real quick...
 
Bit of a tangent.... during the mid-70's, I attended an Ohio State at Wisconsin game. Woodie Hayes was still the OSU coach then(he hadn't attempted to strangle an opposing player yet :) ); and the Badgers were gawd-awful. By the middle of the second quarter OSU was up by double digits - solely on the run game. The Badger student section was thoroughly inebriated and annoyed with the condition of the game; so they started chanting "Woodie's a pecker, Woodie's a pecker". That certainly helped inter-mural fan relations in the stands....

Ha! That chant was not confined to Madison. I have an old maize and blue bumper sticker with that very saying on it. Souvenir of my first Michigan game circa 1976-77...
 
I think, in fact, that's the title of a history of Ohio State football. Back then, if either Michigan or Ohio State were on ABC's college game of the week, I wouldn't bother to watch--or root against either Michigan or Ohio State. Then again, at the time, the Big 10 schools pretty much played football as it was in the '20s or '30s: a wide-open game was one in which one team ran outside the tackles on more than a half-dozen plays. And it was out of control if one team got into double digits on passes.
I'm a Maryland fan so Big Ten football so far for me has been a story of our fat guys being smaller than the other teams fat guys. Playing Wisconsin makes this as clear as anything.

But hey, maybe one of these years we won't lose multiple QBs to ACL tears and actually have a chance.
 
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