Carlisle Indians Made It A Whole New Ballgame

Carlisle roared off to a 6-0 start. On Oct. 26, they went to Philadelphia to face unbeaten Pennsylvania, ranked fourth in the nation, at Franklin Field before a crowd of 22,800. No team all season had crossed Penn's goal line.

On just the second play of the game, Hauser whipped a 40-yard forward pass over the middle that Gardner caught on a dead run.

There are three or four signal moments in the evolution of football, and this was one of them. Imagine the excitement of the crowd that day -- and the confusion of the defenders -- if all they had ever seen was a densely packed, scrumlike game. Suddenly, the center snapped the ball three yards deep to a man who was a powerful runner, a deadeye passer and a great kicker. The play must have felt like an electric charge.

"It will be talked of often this year," the Philadelphia North American said. "No such puny little pass as Penn makes, but a lordly throw, a hurl that went farther than many a kick."

It was the sporting equivalent of the Wright brothers taking off at Kitty Hawk. And it utterly baffled the Quakers. From that moment on, the Indians threw all over the field.

"The forward pass was child's play," the New York Herald reported. "They tried it on the first down, on the second down, on the third down -- any down and in any emergency -- and it was seldom that they did not make something with it. . . . They wriggled out of tackles and made ten and fifteen yards when any ordinary football players would have been satisfied with one yard."

To the panicked Quakers, the Carlisle receivers came at them like a stampede. At the start of a play, every man shot downfield. Some decoyed the defensive backs and others hit the safeties. Penn's all-American fullback, William "Big Bill" Hollenback, described what it was like: "I'd see the ball sailing in my direction. And at the same time came the thundering of what appeared to be a tribe of Indians racing full tilt in my direction. When this gang hit you, they just simply wiped you out, and you lost all other interest in the football contest."

There was one other significant event that day: Thorpe's debut. In the first half, Carlisle's veteran starting halfback, Albert Payne, wrenched his knee. Thorpe finally had his chance, and he raced onto the field. He was so excited that the first time Carlisle called his number, he ran in the opposite direction from his blockers and was buried under a pile of tacklers. But on the next play, he ran 45 yards.

The Indians completed 8 of 16 passes -- even Thorpe threw one -- and outgained Penn by 402 yards to 76. The Quakers were so confused by the Indians' fakes and feints that they "finally reached a point where the players ran in circles emitting wild yawps," Warner remembered. Carlisle won, 26-6.

The ease of Carlisle's victory over Penn startled and discomfited football traditionalists. The New York Times reported that the Indians' explosive use of the pass "put all the coaches at the large universities at sea." Clearly, the Indians were miles ahead of any other team. Unsurprisingly, the competition did not congratulate them for it, but resented them. In the past, the Indians had been a novelty act, a plucky little team that played over their heads. But now they were a powerful and undefeated machine, and they had made an opponent look slow and stupid.

The Indians frustrated their opponents to the point of lashing out. At one point during Carlisle's unbeaten streak, Hauser had to be helped off the field. As he came to the sideline, Warner asked him what happened.

"Same old thing. They kneed me."

"Know who it was?" Warner demanded.

Hauser nodded. "Yep."

"Well, what did you do?" Warner said. "Didn't you say anything?"

"Sure, I said something," Hauser replied. "I said, 'Who's the savage now?' "

Adapted from the book "The Real All Americans" by Sally Jenkins, published by Doubleday, a division of Random House Inc. Reprinted with permission.

"The Real All Americans" By Sally Jenkins