October 27, 1906: The 1st Professional Forward Pass

October 25, 1906: For the 1st time, a legal forward pass is thrown in a professional football game. George Watson "Peggy" Parratt, a 23-year-old quarterback who had graduated from the Cleveland school now known as Case Western Reserve University, throws it to Bullet Riley (a good name for a receiver), for the Massillon Tigers in an Ohio League game against the Benwood-Moundsville team. Massillon won, 60-0, at the Hospital Grounds Stadium in Massillon.

Ironically, it would be by intercepting 2 passes in the championship game, against the Canton Bulldogs, that Parratt would be best remembered in his own time. He would help Massillon win the Ohio League title in 1906, 1911, 1913 and 1914. He later served on the NFL Rules Committee, and lived until 1959.

October 27, 1906 was a Saturday. Baseball season ended 13 days earlier, when the Chicago White Sox beat the Chicago Cubs in the World Series. Professional basketball didn't exist, and if professional hockey did, it was by paying players "under the table."

Records of pro football teams from this era are sketchy. Thankfully, the Massillon Tigers were better than most at it. But there is a list of college football games from the day available, including the following:

* Harvard beat Army, 5-0 on The Plain in West Point, New York.

* Navy and Bucknell played to a 0-0 tie at Worden Field in Annapolis, Maryland.

* Yale beat Amherst, 12-0 at Yale Field in New Haven, Connecticut. Yale went 9-0-1.

* Vanderbilt beat Texas, 45-0 at the original Dudley Field in Nashville. Vandy was the best team in the South that year, going 8-0-1.

* Wisconsin won the title in the Western Conference, the league that became the Big Ten, and went 5-0 on the season, but did not play this week.

* In New York City, New York University lost to Stevens Institute of Hoboken, New Jersey, 6-0 at Ohio Field in The Bronx.

* And among New Jersey teams, Rutgers lost to the University of Delaware, 4-0 in Newark, Delaware; and Princeton beat Cornell, 14-5 at University Field in Princeton. Princeton went 9-0-1.