College Football: Babes in Wonderland

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Necessity may be the mother of invention, but accident is the midwife. Take penicillin. Nobody could, if Alexander Fleming's staphylococcus culture hadn't spoiled. Crepes suzette would be only soggy pancakes if Chef Henri Charpentier's sauce had not caught fire. The X ray, vulcanized rubber, LSD—even America, for that matter—were all discovered by accident, and people might still be wondering why their feet are attached to the ground if an apple had not conked Isaac Newton on the head.

It was in that same grand tradition of scientific serendipity that a couple of Yale football players named Walter Camp and Oliver Thompson made their contribution to a better world on Nov. 30, 1876. Tackled by a Princeton defender, Camp did an utterly unprecedented thing: in desperation, he flung the football down the field. Thompson somehow grabbed it and scampered for a touchdown. "Foul! Foul!" screamed the outraged Princeton team. The bewildered referee settled the ensuing rhubarb the only way he could think of. He flipped a coin, Yale won the toss—and the forward pass was born.

Nothing looks beautiful at birth. Camp's pass to Thompson was airborne for maybe all of 5 or 6 yds. It was thrown underhand and wobbled precariously end over end—because the overhand spiral was the result of still another accident, which did not occur for 30 more years. Nobody knows for sure who happened onto it first. All at once, half a dozen players started throwing corkscrews, grasping the ball by its laces and rifling it through the air. But it took another 60 years and a horde of exceptional athletes to pull the cork completely out of the bottle.

Across the U.S. last week, it seemed to be raining footballs. No. 4-ranked Alabama scored three touchdowns on passes in a 42-6 pasting of Vanderbilt; the passing bug was so contagious that even a fullback tossed for a TD. Between them, Purdue and No. 2-ranked Michigan State put the ball in the air 51 times, and M.S.U. wound up with the ball game 41-20. Missouri, which was expected to run all over lowly Iowa State, needed a leaping touchdown catch in the final minutes to salvage a 10-10 tie. And Harvard, which had stuck to the ground so doggedly all season that it ranked first in the nation in rushing, pulled out a 19-14 victory over favored Dartmouth—by throwing the ball 23 times, including a ten-yarder for a TD. That was eleven times fewer than No. 7-ranked Nebraska had to pass to squeak past Colorado 21-19.