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We Trace Gus Dorais’ Journey from Quarterback to Coach · Sports History Network

• 1:44
  In 1913, the forward pass was legal, but it was almost useless.
• 1:48
  Then Gus Dure, a quarterback from Notre Dame, and Newt Rockney, a player at the time for the Fighting Irish, spent one summer on the beach and all was changed with that forward pass and became a valuable weapon for
• 2:02
  many in college football.
• 2:04
  For seven years, there was a weapon in football that people just don't know how to use.
• 2:08
  The forward pass was legalized in 1906 to break the mass momentum wedge and open up the game, but the rules still strangled it.
• 2:16
  It was not until 1912 that the ball could be thrown from behind the line four downs to gain ten and a hundred yard field, and that throwing became practical.
• 2:25
  Even then, almost no one threw very well.
• 2:28
  As Andy Nickel reminds us just a few weeks ago in an interview, early throwers threw the ball like a discus.
• 2:34
  What you needed was rare.
• 2:36
  What you needed to coach was willing to throw, and you needed a quarterback with a talent to do it.
• 2:41
  That coach was Jesse Harper and he was from Wabash from 1909 to 1912, throwing when others would not.
• 2:48
  And in 1913, he takes over at Notre Dame and inherits the senior quarterback Charles Gus Dure, roommate of end Newt Rockne.
• 2:58
  You needed a combination of coaches who were willing to throw the ball, could conceive of plays and blocking patterns and etc.
• 3:06
  To throw the ball.
• 3:08
  And you needed a guy with the talent to do it.
• 3:10
  That summer, Dray and Rockne took jobs as lifeguards in Sandusky, Ohio, at a resort called Cedar Point.
• 3:19
  Both went there to work for the summer as lifeguards along the beach, and they spent time working on the forward pass again with a moving end.
• 3:29
  And every free hour they had that summer, they threw the ball on the beach.
• 3:34
  Gus was the quarterback, but before then, the end of a football play would run down the field and wave his hands like, throw the ball to me.
• 3:43
  And they said, no, we're going to get.
• 3:45
  So we hit you on the move.
• 3:47
  And that was revolutionary at the time.
• 3:49
  And so they perfected it then.
• 3:51
  And that was the summer of 13, 1913.
• 3:56
  What was revolutionary was not just throwing, it was throwing to a moving target, a man on the move.
• 4:02
  Before that, as Andy notes, the end would run downfield, stop and wave his hands, throw me the ball.
• 4:08
  And Duran.
• 4:09
  Rockne did not wait.
• 4:10
  Rockne was on the move, he was an end.
• 4:13
  And Duray put it right where it had to be, right at the time it had to catch it.
• 4:18
  Drake didn't just throw it, he taught it.
• 4:20
  He wrote down the fundamentals.
• 4:22
  That sound elementary today, but he made them elementary at the time.
• 4:28
  Hands together, quarterback hidden behind the line, end in motion.
• 4:32
  He basically created much of the fundamentals of the passing game we know today.
• 4:38
  It was the first meeting ever between Notre Dame, coached by Jesse Harper, and the army team.
• 4:44
  It was on November 1, 1913, and the army held the size advantage on every snap of the line.
• 4:50
  Deray answered with precision, 4:14 completions and 17 attempts for 243 yards, again and again to Rockne, who was on the move.
• 4:59
  And when the dust settled, the scoreboard read Notre Dame 35, Army 13.
• 5:04
  It stunned the football world.
• 5:05
  It stunned New York and the people who covered the game because it was the offense nobody had expected.
• 5:12
  They have never seen it.
• 5:13
  The victory put Notre Dame on the map.
• 5:16
  South Bend was a football powerhouse.
• 5:19
  If you live for this era, when one game could change the whole complexion of history, then you're at the right place.
• 5:25
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• 5:32
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• 5:34
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• 5:40
  As Timothy Brown notes, the Eastern press noticed in the games that later that season reinforced on the east coast, the pass was no longer a trick, it was a strategy.
• 5:54
  Our first story does not end at West Point.
• 5:56
  The passer became the program builder.
• 5:59
  Gusta Ray becomes the head coach and athletic director at the University of Detroit from 1925 to 1942, 18 seasons in all.
• 6:08
  The college record of 150, 70 and 12 College Football hall of Fame in 1954 was where his induction landed.
• 6:17
  Gus Doray was the head coach at the University of Detroit at the time that the championship game was played, and he was in attendance at the game because they were playing it in his home stadium.
• 6:26
  Of course.
• 6:27
  He means December 15, 1935, the NFL championship game.
• 6:31
  The Lions versus the Giants played in its home stadium at the University of Detroit.
• 6:36
  Deray is there on the sideline to see Detroit Lions win their first National Football League championship.
• 6:43
  Dore would go on to become the Lions head coach for five seasons from 1943 to 1947, and he posted a 20, 31 and 2 record.
• 6:54
  Five hard war years of seasons in Detroit.
• 6:58
  But the arc matters.
• 6:59
  From roommates to lifeguards to revolution.
• 7:02
  DeRay was right there in Detroit when Detroit won the title and a few years later they asked him to lead the Lions and he said yes.
• 7:10
  He was a roommate of Newt Rockne at Notre Dame in the early 1900s and he was the best man at Knute Rockne's wedding when Newt Rockney married Bonnie Skiles in Sandusky, Ohio in 1914.
• 7:24
  So those two guys were really, really close.
• 7:27
  Dray didn't invent that rule.
• 7:29
  From 1906 he perfected the use of hands together, the quarterback hidden ball behind the line and every end was in motion and you'd hit him in stride as he was running down the field.
• 7:41
  14 completions on a November afternoon that forced all of football to learn how to throw and also how to defend the passing game.
• 7:49
  He threw the pass that made Notre Dame and then he spent nearly two decades of Detroit teaching the game how to play it.
• 7:55
  The deacon is gone, but the forward pass remains his internal gospel.
• 8:00
  Thanks for joining us today.
• 8:01
  We hope you join us back for more great football history.
• 8:04
  Till next time, everybody have a great gridiron day.
• 8:07
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