Reiter's Role in Development of The Overhead Spiral Forward Pass
Reiter claimed to have invented the overhead spiral forward pass while playing professional football as a player-coach for Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics of the 1902 National Football League. While playing for the Athletics, Reiter was a teammate of Hawley Pierce, a former star for the Carlisle Indian School. Pierce, a Native American, taught Reiter to throw an underhand spiral pass, but Reiter had short arms and was unable to throw for distance from an underhand delivery. Accordingly, Reiter began working on an overhand spiral pass. Reiter recalled trying to imitate the motion of a baseball catcher throwing to second base. After practice and experimentation, Reiter "discovered he could get greater distance and accuracy throwing that way."
When Reiter took over as Wesleyan's football coach in 1903, the forward pass was not permitted under college football rules. However, when the rules changed for the 1906 season, Reiter was ready to introduce his overhand spiral forward pass technique. Reiter contended that the first modern forward pass in college football was thrown by Sammy Moore to Irwin van Tassel on October 3, 1906, in a game between Wesleyan and Yale in 1906. Van Tassel later described the historic play to the United Press:
"I was the right halfback, and on this formation played one yard back of our right tackle. The quarterback, Sam Moore, took the ball from center and faded eight or 10 yards back of our line. Our two ends angled down the field toward the sidelines as a decoy, and I slipped through the strong side of our line straight down the center and past the secondary defense. The pass worked perfectly. However, the quarterback coming up fast nailed me as I caught it. This brought the ball well into Yale territory, about the 20-yard line."
At the beginning of September 1907, Reiter announced his intention to build Wesleyan's entire offense around the spiral forward pass. A Massachusetts newspaper reported on Reiter's plans for the 1907 season: "Coach 'Bosey' Reiter of the Wesleyan football team announces that an endeavor will be made at Wesleyan this year to develop a fast eleven and one than can handle the spiral forward pass, as this will probably be the play most often used."
Upon taking over the Lehigh team in 1910, Reiter dedicated the summer training period to teach his players a new offensive scheme relying heavily on "new forward pass formations."
Reiter was regarded in his day as an innovator, and he was invited to teach a course in "The Theory and Practice of Football" at Harvard's summer school of physical education during the summers from 1907-1910. In 1910, Reiter's article, "Experiments in Football," was published in newspapers across the country. The article analyzed changes to the football rules, focusing especially on rule changes affecting the use of the forward pass.
In 1955, Reiter and van Tassel were honored in a ceremony in Middletown, Connecticut for their role in developing the forward pass.
In 2007, Sports Illustrated published an account of the invention of the forward pass. In that article, writer Sally Jenkins credited coach Eddie Cochems of Saint Louis University with calling the first forward pass in college football. Jenkins then wrote as follows with respect to the respective roles of Cochems and Reiter:
"The first downfield overhand spiral was completed on Sept. 5, 1906, when Saint Louis quarterback Bradbury Robinson threw to teammate Jack Schneider in a little-noticed game against Carroll College. A more notable pass was completed against Yale, by Wesleyan on Oct. 3, but Carlisle may deserve partial credit for that throw: Wesleyan's coach, Howard R. Reiter, claimed he learned how to throw a spiral from a Carlisle Indian in 1903 when Reiter coached the semipro Philadelphia Football Athletics and the Indian was on the team."
Read more about this topic: Howard R. Reiter
Famous quotes containing the words role, development, overhead, spiral and/or pass:
“But however the forms of family life have changed and the number expanded, the role of the family has remained constant and it continues to be the major institution through which children pass en route to adulthood.”
—Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)
“The Cairo conference ... is about a complicated web of education and employment, consumption and poverty, development and health care. It is also about whether governments will follow where women have so clearly led them, toward safe, simple and reliable choices in family planning. While Cairo crackles with conflict, in the homes of the world the orthodoxies have been duly heard, and roundly ignored.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“There’s something wonderfully exciting about the quiet sing song of an aeroplane overhead with all the guns in creation lighting out at it, and searchlights feeling their way across the sky like antennae, and the earth shaking snort of the bombs and the whimper of shrapnel pieces when they come down to patter on the roof.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“What is art,
But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral line
Of still expanding and ascending gyres,
It pushes toward the intense significance
Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?
Art’s life,—and where we live, we suffer and toil.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“Love’s secrets, being mysteries, ever pertain to the transcendent and the infinite; and so they are as airy bridges, by which our further shadows pass over into the regions of the golden mists and exhalations; whence all poetical, lovely thoughts are engendered, and drop into us, as though pearls should drop from rainbows.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)