The 1913 Football Season

Here is what happened in the History of football in the year of 1913, the champions, the rules revisions and major events in the game, all in your year by year look at the game of football, the Football History Rewind found only on Pigskin Dispatch.

The years of big changes in football rules had passed but still in 1913 coaches, players and strategists  had to tread carefully into the unknown and uncharted waters. The concepts were still so new that no one really knew what the potential of using the new rules was. The brave-hearted were starting to tinker though in the 1913 season and the sky was the limit.

The name “Statue of Liberty Play” started to be used as the play was finding itself pop up in a game or two in 1913. The concept had been around since 1898 but was used on a fake punt play. The reader should remember that the forward pass did not come to be until 1906. Even back then in the 19th century the play was designed and used by the legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg at the University of Chicago. The original punt version was inaugurated that year when Clarence Herschberger handed the ball back to Walter Kennedy. Stagg used a variation of the play again in 1908 and this time faked a pass. He had quarterback Wally Steffen drop back like he was about to throw a forward pass but instead the clever QB handed the ball off to Pat Page who was and end that ran behind the potential passer and took the ball. Neither of Stagg’s designed plays had the first man with the ball raise his arm or hand as if to pass.

The first time a quarterback raised their hand came in 1913. Stagg put in this little innovation to really sell the play as being a pass against Minnesota. The play worked as the defenders bit hard on the fake pass failing to defend the run very well as the Chicago squad ran the ball all the way down to near the goal line. Stagg had the quarterback hold the ball up so high and straight that it almost looked like he was holding up a torch, thus the gadget play got its name Statue of Liberty for its semblance to the arm position of the famous Lady Liberty.

A small school in north-central Indiana had a group of players that were honing their skill during the summer months. The players were from Notre Dame and were Gus Dorais and a guy that went by the name of Knute Rockne. What they did was spend most of the summer practicing the forward pass. No one threw more than a pass or two every once in awhile back in those days. It was unheard of to do so. The forward pass was still used as a gadget play. The mind set of offense then was to win the battle at the line of scrimmage and run it down your opponent’s throat. Irish coach Jesse Harper liked to think outside the box though, and had something different in mind for the forward pass.

The season started out with Notre Dame breezing through their first three games mixing some pass plays into their offensive possessions with success. The fourth game of the 1913 season was against the powerful Army team who boasted some real giants on their lines. The size difference worked too as Notre Dame could not produce a running attack against the Cadets.    The Irish decided to start dinking some short passes over the middle and this helped soften the Army line so that some runs up the middle were starting to find some yardage gains. This combination produced three first downs for the Irish who were slowly driving the ball against the powerful Eastern team. It was during one of these plays that the Army players noticed that Captain Rockne was limping a bit and appeared injured. The Cadet defensive back assigned to Rockne recognized this and decided to lay off the maimed player a bit to help stuff things up in the middle where the Irish were concentrating their attack. As soon as Rockne and Dorais saw this they knew that their trap had been sprung. Rockne was faking the injury and the next play he sprinted down field at full tilt and caught s thirty-five yard bullet from his quarterback and then stepped into the end zone and football immortality.

Army responded with a couple of powerful smash-mouth scoring drives of their own but missed the extra point on one of them. They lead the Irish 13-7 and had the Irish starting their next series at the ND fifteen yard-line. The Irish went to the air again and scored in just four plays to take the lead 14-13! The Irish performed the aerial assault to near perfection the rest of the game scoring almost at will on the juggernauts from West Point. Dorais finished the game with an unbelievable 14 of 17 passing performance for a total of 243 yards gained through the air! Notre Dame shocked the football world by beating a much bigger team by the score of 35-13. The passing game had officially become the weapon that men such as Walter Camp and John Heisman had dreamed it could be.

Once again the season ended with without an undisputed champion. Two schools officially announced that they were the top collegiate team in the game for the 1913 season as both Harvard (9-0) and the University of Chicago (7-0) declared that their team's undefeated seasons chartered the title. There was a third school that boasted an unblemished record and that being Auburn who sported a perfect 8-0-0 record for the year. Other considerations were that Notre Dame and Michigan International each went 7-0 on the season while Missiori and Colorado both went without losses and won their conferences as well but each only played four games.

I think I might lean towards the Maroons of Chicago as the champions because they were selected retroactively as the 1913 national champion by the Billingsley Report and as a co-national champion by Parke H. Davis. But Harvard could be the number one squad as they defeated the powerhouses of Princeton, Yale and Penn State on their rugged schedule.

At the professional level the Akron Indians went on to win their third state title by posting a 9-1-2 record. They tied the Canton Professionals 7-7 and split a pair of contests with the previous year's champion, the Elyria Athletic Club.

The banner photo is of Notre Dame football team with a toy mule, 1913.
Back Row: Assistant Coach Edwards, Emmett Keefe, Ray Eichenlaub, Albert King, Freeman (Fitz) Fitzgerald, Charles (Sam) Finegan, Coach Jesse Harper
Middle Row: Ralph (Zipper) Lathrop, Keith (Deak) Jones, Joe Pliska, Captain Knute Rockne, Gus Dorais, Fred (Gus) Gushurst, Al Feeney

Front Row: Allen (Mal) Elward, Alfred (Dutch) Bergman, Bill Cook, Art (Bunny) Larkin

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons and taken by an unknown.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites: On This Day Sports, the Sports Reference's family of website databases & Stathead.com