Unveiling Football’s Pioneers: The Legacy of Peggy Parratt

Here just in time to talk about some great football history.

We're going to talk about an individual that has a few firsts in the professional game of football and a very interesting character indeed.

Almost sort of like a Forrest Gump of early pro football.

Coming up in just a moment.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history on a day to day basis.

Your host, Darrin Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

So as we come out of the tunnel of the Sports History Network, let's take the field and go no huddle through the portal of positive gridiron history with pigskindispatch.com.

This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear of your favorite sport.

You can learn more@sportshistorynetwork.com hello my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And welcome to another exciting edition where we get to go back in time and talk about a famous player from football history that helped shape the game and make football what it is today.

Today we're going to talk about a gentleman that ended up was born in actually in Canada, was raised in Cleveland, Ohio.

His name was George Watson Perrott, better known in history as Peggy Perrott.

He was a quarterback and he attended college at the Case School of Applied Sciences, which eventually in our day is known as Case Western University.

Sure.

I mean, anybody people listening to this podcast most likely know the name Peggy Parrott.

George Peggy Parrott.

About as big a name as it gets from that pre NFL known for the funny story of being outed when he played in college at Case University for.

For wearing the disguise on his face and.

And playing under the name Jimmy Murphy.

And.

But when.

When the reporters, he took off on this long touchdown run and people sort of figured out who he was, and he got called into the president's office and, you know, said, I understand you're playing professionally, you know, somewhere.

Is that true?

And he just said, abso, and I do it again.

And he was kicked out.

So.

So he went on to play for.

And forever he's been, you know, just accepted as.

As the quarterback.

You know, he threw the first.

First forward pass against Moundsville, Benwood from West Virginia, and, you know, Bullet Riley, whose real name was Paula Kowski, you know, because he was from Canton and didn't want to be known that he was playing for Maslin, caught the pass and.

But it never kind of, you know, as I'm writing it, it didn't add up that that was kind of about the fourth or fifth game of the season.

I'm, like, possible that, you know, the pass happened before that.

And in my research, developed a friendly relationship with Tim Heslop, who's a volunteer at the hall of Fame, and he would bounce ideas and fact check with me for various articles and projects he worked on over time.

And.

And he always joked me.

He said, I don't know about your great grandfather snapping the ball for the first board pass.

You know, one of these days we're going to prove that it was somebody else.

And I said, okay, you just.

He said, I'm working on this project now.

I said, well, let me know how that works out.

And so just about that time, actually a couple years before that, I'd been to Massillon and had a real treat by being taken into the archives of the Massillon Booster Club by some real old timers, you know, and guys named, like Gene Berner, I think, was the head of the club at that time, who's passed away since, and Ron Prunty, who's still with us.

Incredible, incredible Jack lalanne, very fit guy who still does the video for the Massillon High School games.

And he carries a camera video around with him almost everywhere he goes.

He's like doing candy camera.

I just saw him a couple weeks ago, and he came into the mess.

Let me see him with this video camera.

And the day I was in this old archive, this.

This Old middle school, where they kept, like, Paul Brown's hat and, you know, just amazing things.

Right.

And he actually went.

Had them laminated like the vision that they were important.

Well, before that, because he knew enough about football and that, you know, these games, that this.

They should be protected.

And I'm like, wait a minute.

This is.

Nobody ever.

I mean, seen these.

And so he was nice enough to make copies of them and, you know, at Kinko's and send me a big tube of these papers that sat in my office for a couple of years until I got to the part of the book I was ready to write about that season after writing about Pittsburgh era.

And I'm going through these papers sequentially and.

And, you know, there it is, you know, one day in, like, the second game of the season, it says, clear as a bell, you know, Tigers throw forward pass for the first time.

Moran, you know, worked the pass beautifully to Parrot for, you know, two touchdowns or something.

What?

Who?

Who?

Moran?

I mean, who.

How did that happen?

How was he the quarterback?

And what turned out was Blondie Wallace had stolen the.

The tight end, or they call it end.

At that time, a guy named Clark Schronce from Madison paid him more money so to go to the Bulldogs.

So they were short an end, and they took Parrot because he was a basketball player, had good hands, and they moved him up to end and.

And Charlie Moran had played a lot of quarterback at Tennessee or Vanderbilt, he played at some different Southern schools, and they.

They plugged him in there, and.

And that was their plan, you know, to go through the season.

And the first week, there was no forward passing.

It was a lot of mud.

And, you know, there was no evidence of a pass for them or.

Or the Canton team.

But, you know, it just couldn't have been more clear.

It was black and white.

So I called Tim up and I said, hey, Tim, how's that project going?

He's like, oh, Greg, you know, I got.

We got some bad news for you.

You know, we got on whatever data, October 15th or something, some other Shelby threw a forward pass on this Sunday, you know, and so on.

We don't know who the quarterback was, but it says there was a Pass.

And I said, what day was that?

And he says, octo, I think it was the 15th.

And I said, tim, I think I got you by a day.

And he says, what?

And I said, yeah, I got.

He said, how did you get that?

Gleaner?

Where?

Where did you get that?

You know, did you get it from the Masala Museum?

I said, no.

I said, I can't tell you.

I'd have to kill you until the book's done.

But he said, son of a gun.

I just wrote the article for the PFRA and submitted and it's gone to print after all these years.

I thought we had a scoop.

And I said, well, it looks like I'm gonna have to write the next one.

So he said, darn it, go for it.

But he was glad I did.

You know, we're sort of partners in research, but we were glad to be able to put a name with it and have something so definitive.

But in the end, I was even personally glad that yes, my great grandfather still did snap the ball for the first forecast, even though it was to a different quarterback.

Yeah, he couldn't disprove that part of his his gold, could he?

But sadly, Moran got hurt in that game and Parrot ended up coming back in as quarterback for the rest of the season.

And that's how he was, you know, through past couple of weeks later.

So.

So there you have it.

There's the history, some great research by Greg.

We thank him for sharing that out of his book Great Iron Legacy.

So Peggy Perrott, once upon a time was thought to have thrown the first forward pass in professional football.

Come to find out, he caught the first pass of in professional football from Moran just a few weeks earlier.

And then Greg told the rest of that story.

So, you know, just a definite.

An important figure in pro football history and actually college football history too, because by him getting kicked out of Case Western, he ended up being the first player that ended up being admittedly open to taking money, playing professionally and being in college as he got kicked out.

So he got sort of two different firsts in pro football history.

Three actually, because for a while he was the guy that threw the first forward pass.

Now he's the one that caught the first forward pass.

So really interesting guy, Peggy Parrattas.

Not the Franklin team I wrote about in Pennsylvania, but the Franklin and Cleveland Ohio team.

That's where he got in trouble.

He ended up being on four, four Ohio League championship teams.

And he ended up going and being a coach of the Cleveland Bulldogs when Mr.

And he he becomes part of the story that a book that's going to be out here in the next few weeks that our friend Jeff Payne and I are are writing on the possible Maroons.

He has a a special connection there.

I'll let you we'll get into more of that once the book comes out and we'll let you read it.

But very interestingly, he ended up being appointed to the NFL Rules Committee in helping to change some rules in how players from college could come into the NFL and end up being an NFL representative for the Intercollegiate Committee of Athletics to work with college football hand in hand with pro football back in a time when college football was king.

So very interesting guy Peggy Perrott we are or parrot as Greg Fasari says.

I'm not sure what the correct pronunciation is, but I always say Perrott.

Little bit of the French classes I had in high school, I guess, but very interesting guy indeed and one that we definitely want to remember here on Pigskin Dispatch.

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So till next time, everybody have a great gridiron day.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

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