Edward Bulwer Cochems (; February 4, 1877 – April 9, 1953) was an American football player and coach. He played football for the University of Wisconsin from 1898 to 1901 and was the head football coach at North Dakota Agricultural College—now known as North Dakota State University (1902–1903), Clemson University (1905), Saint Louis University (1906–1908), and the University of Maine (1914). During his three years at Saint Louis, he was the first football coach to build an offense around the forward pass, which became a legal play in the 1906 college football season. Using the forward pass, Cochems' 1906 team compiled an undefeated 11–0 record, led the nation in scoring, and outscored opponents by a combined score of 407 to 11. He is considered by some to be the "father of the forward pass" in American football.
Early life Cochems was born in 1877 at Sturgeon Bay, the county seat of Door County on Wisconsin's Door Peninsula. He was one of 11 children, and "the smallest of seven brothers." His older brother, Henry Cochems, preceded him at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was a star football player and shot putter. Cochems also had a twin brother, Carl Cochems (1877–1954), who became a noted opera singer.(feature story on career of Carl Cochems)
Athlete at Wisconsin Cochems attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he competed for the Badgers in football, baseball and track. He was the captain of the 1901 Wisconsin baseball team,"Captains of the Baseball Nines of the Colleges Composing the 'Big Nine'",Chicago Tribune, page 19, March 31, 1901 but he gained his greatest acclaim as a football player. Cochems began playing at the left end position, but was moved to the left halfback position for the 1900 and 1901 seasons. (Archived November 2, 2012) The Badgers football team posted a 35–4–1 record during his four seasons of play. Together with Norsky Larson and Keg Driver, Cochems reportedly made up "the most feared backfield trio in the middle west."
Max Loeb, a classmate, remembered Cochems as "one of the most spectacular men of my time ... [w]onderfully built, handsome and affable ..." After Cochem's death, another classmate, O.G. Erickson, wrote:
While well muscled and compactly built, Cochems never weighed more than 165 pounds, but I never saw another player who made better use of his poundage. He played four years of 70-minute football (a game then consisted of two 35-minute halves), and I don't remember him ever being taken out of a game because of injuries.
After Cochems helped the Badgers to a 50–0 win over Kansas in 1901, the Chicago Daily Tribune reported, "Larson and Cochems again and again skirted the Kansas ends for gains of forty, fifty, sixty and seventy yards. Nothing approaching the play of the Badgers trio of backs, Larson, Driver and Cochems, has ever been seen on Randall Field."
On November 28, 1901, in his final game as a Wisconsin football player, Cochems ran back a kickoff for a touchdown against Amos Alonzo Stagg's Chicago Maroons. According to a contemporaneous press account, the touchdown run came late in the game with Wisconsin already leading 29 to 0: "The Maroons appeared to be demoralized, and on the kick-off Cochems caught the ball on his own twelve-yard line and ran ninety-eight yards for a touchdown, the Chicago players making little or no effort to stop him." Twelve years later, football historian and former University of Wisconsin coach Parke H. Davis described the same run more colorfully, reporting that Cochems "dashed and dodged, plunged and writhed through all opponents for a touch-down... Cochem's great flight presented all of the features of speed, skill, and chance which must combine to, make possible the full-field run... he boldly laid his course against the very center of Chicago's oncoming forwards, bursting their central bastion, and then cleverly sprinting and dodging the secondary defenders."Davis, Parke H., "The Full-Field Run", St. Nicholas Magazine, November 1913 According to Cochems' obituary in the Wisconsin alumnus, his kickoff return against Chicago in 1901 "brought him undying fame as a gridder."
Cochems also scored two touchdowns in a 39–5 victory over Chicago in November 1900, and has been credited with four touchdowns in a 54–0 win against Notre Dame in 1900.
Cochems was also a bicycling enthusiast who gained attention for a 1900 bicycle trip across Europe with classmate George Mowry. The pair left Wisconsin on August 1, 1900, and rode through England, Scotland, Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain. Their cyclometers were stolen after they had completed 1,500 miles, and they had no record of the full distance they covered. The entire trip cost each of the two $125. On their return to Wisconsin, they were dressed in "well-worn knickerbockers" that "gave plain evidence of much exposure to variable weather and of hard riding."
Early coaching career In 1902, Cochems at age 25 was hired as the head football coach at North Dakota Agricultural College (now North Dakota State University) at Fargo. He led the North Dakota Aggies to an undefeated and unscored upon record in 1902, outscoring opponents by a combined 168 to 0. His 1903 team at North Dakota Agricultural College finished with five wins and one loss.
In January 1904, the University of Wisconsin athletic board voted to select Cochems to serve as the school's assistant football coach at a salary of $800. Cochems returned to Madison in 1904 as both assistant football coach and assistant athletic director.
In December 1904, the selection of a new head coach at Wisconsin was put to a straw vote with Cochems running against Phil King and two other candidates. King received 215 of the 325 votes cast.
Having lost his bid for the head coaching job, Cochems signed in February 1905 to become the head football coach at Clemson. In the 1905 football season, Cochems led Clemson to shutout wins over Georgia (35–0), Alabama (25–0), and Auburn (6–0), but closed the season with consecutive losses to Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech, for a 3–2–1 record.
St. Louis University Preparation to play under the new rules In February 1906, Cochems was hired as the head football coach at St. Louis University. (Archived November 2, 2012) The 1906 college football season was played with new rules, which included legalizing the forward pass. (Archived March 16, 2013) Cochems had reportedly long been an enthusiast of the forward pass.
At St. Louis, Cochems rejoined fellow Wisconsiner and former Badger halfback Bradbury Robinson. They had met in the pre-season of 1905 when Robinson, who had already transferred to St. Louis, was working out with his former Wisconsin teammates. Cochems was an assistant coach with the Badgers that year.
Like Cochems, Robinson was fascinated by the potential of the forward pass. Robinson was introduced to the forward pass in 1904 by Wisconsin teammate, H.P. Savage, who threw the ball overhand almost as far as Robinson was punting it to him. Savage taught Robinson how to throw a spiral pass, and the forward pass thereafter became Robinson's "football hobby."
To prepare for the first season under the new rules, Cochems convinced the university to allow him to take his team to a Jesuit sanctuary at Lake Beulah in southern Wisconsin for "the sole purpose of studying and developing the pass."(Gregorian reports that the summer practice at Lake Beulah lasted two months rather than two weeks. The 1944 Harold Keith article states that the session lasted two weeks during the month of August.) Newbery Medal winning author Harold Keith wrote in Esquire magazine that it was at Lake Beulah in August 1906 that "the first, forward pass system ever devised" was born.
Football's first legal forward pass
On September 5, 1906, in the first game of the 1906 season, St. Louis faced Carroll College, and it was in that game that Robinson threw football's first legal forward pass to Jack Schneider.Creighton University School of Law, Creighton University, The Creighton Brief, page 92, 1909 William J. Schneider came to St. Louis with Cochems from Wisconsin and later became athletic director at Creighton.In his history of the game, Nelson concluded that the first forward passes were thrown on Christmas Day 1905 in a match between two small colleges in Kansas: "Although Cochems was the premier passing coach during the first year of the rule, the first forward passes were thrown at the end of the 1905 season in a game between Fairmount and Washburn colleges in Kansas." According to Nelson, Washburn completed three passes, and Fairmount completed two. See Nelson, at p. 129.
Cochems reportedly did not start calling pass plays in the Carroll game until after he had grown frustrated with the failure of his offense to move the ball on the ground. After an initial pass attempt from Robinson to Schneider fell incomplete (resulting in a turnover to Carroll under the 1906 rules), Cochems called for his team to again execute the play he called the "air attack" or the "projectile pass." Robinson threw the fat, rugby-style ball for a 20-yard touchdown pass to Schneider. St. Louis won the game by a score of 22–0.
1906 season St. Louis completed the 1906 season undefeated (11–0) and led the nation in scoring, having outscored opponents by a combined 407 to 11. During the 1906 season, the forward pass was a key element in the St. Louis offense. Bradbury Robinson threw a 67-yard pass, and Jack Schneider threw a 65-yard pass. In his book on the history of the sport, David Nelson wrote, "Considering the size, shape and weight of the ball, these were extraordinary passes."
The highlight of the 1906 season was St. Louis' 39–0 win against Iowa. St. Louis completed eight of ten pass attempts (for an average of 20 yards) against Iowa, and four of the passes resulted in touchdowns. On the last play of the game, St. Louis threw a final pass 25 yards in the air to a receiver who caught the ball "on the dead run" for a touchdown. Cochems said that Iowa's poor showing in the game "resulted from its use of the old style play and its failure to effectively use the forward pass", as Iowa attempted only "two basketball-style forward passes."
The 1906 Iowa game was refereed by one of the top football officials in the country, West Point's Lt. Horatio B. "Stuffy" Hackett,McCormick, Bart E. (editor), The Wisconsin alumni magazine, Volume 28, Number 3, pages 108–109, January 1927 who became a member of the American Intercollegiate Football Rules Committee in December 1907.American Gymnasia and Athletic Record, Volume IV, No. 5, Whole Number 41, Page 62, January 1908 Hackett later told a reporter, "It was the most perfect exhibition... of the new rules ... that I have seen all season and much better than that of Yale and Harvard. St. Louis' style of pass differs entirely from that in use in the east. ... The St. Louis university players shoot the ball hard and accurately to the man who is to receive it ... The fast throw by St. Louis enables the receiving player to dodge the opposing players, and it struck me as being all but perfect."
Hackett's analysis was reprinted in newspapers across the country, and when it appeared in The Washington Post, the headline read: "FORWARD PASS IN WEST – Lieut. Hackett Says St. Louis University Has Peer of Them All. – Says that Mound City Champions Showed Nearest Approach to Perfect Pass He Has Seen This Year.""FORWARD PASS IN WEST – Lieut. Hackett Says St. Louis University Has Peer of Them All. – Says that Mound City Champions Showed Nearest Approach to Perfect Pass He Has Seen This Year.", The Washington Post (District of Columbia), page 55, Dec 2, 1906
Knute Rockne biographer, Ray Robinson, wrote, "The St. Louis style of forward pass, as implemented by Cochems, was different from the pass being thrown by eastern players. Cochems did not protect his receiver by surrounding him with teammates, as was the case in the East."