Football History on 19th of April

In this episode of the Football History Headlines, we discuss the man the invented both the spiral snap and the linebacker position, the 1944 NFL Draft and HOF players like Jack Pardee and Troy Polamalu as well as many more HOF Legendary stories.

Born April 19, 1883, in Fort Wayne, Indiana was the top notch University of Michigan center from 1904 to 1908, Germany Schulz was born. The National Football Foundation shares that Schulz who stood 6’-4’ tall and weighed in at 245 pounds unfortunately had to miss the 1906 season as he had dropped out of school because of financial reasons. But the passion he had for both his education as well as football drove Germany to work hard in a Fort Wayne steel mill to raise funds to pay for his final two years tuition at the University. This drive to succeed was seen on the gridiron as well he is credited with two innovations at his position.  Schulz invented the spiral snap as previously the long snappers always sent the ball end-over-end to the awaiting backs who really had to pay attention to the oncoming ball to field it cleanly, thus taking an extra moment off of their reaction time to start their momentum.  His other major contribution was that before Schulz, centers always played along the line on defense but the innovative Germany dropped back to become a roving center therefore creating football's first linebacker! The colorful newspaper journalist, Grantland Rice, painted a great picture of Germany Schulz when he proclaimed in 1928: "Schulz stands as the fastest giant who ever played football, a human bulwark fast enough to tackle at either end, as he brought down his man after the manner of a hawk snaring a quail." The College Football Hall of Fame proudly placed a display in honor of Germany Schulz into their legendary museum in 1951. After Schulz played his last collegiate down he served as assistant coach at Michigan, Wisconsin, Tulane, and Kansas State and in 1923 as head coach for one season at Detroit University.