On September 22, 1906, Bates College completed the first legal forward pass in college football history against a Portland military team on Garcelon Field. It was a seminal moment that ushered in a new era.

But it was a moment that history forgot—or never recognized. The men who threw and caught the historic pass, and the coach who called it, went to their graves unaware of their rightful places in history. Only this June was a longstanding claim for the first forward pass debunked, and Bates at last recognized, 120 years later.

So today when Patrick Mahomes throws to Travis Kelce, or when Drake Maye tosses a highlight-reel bomb to A.J. Brown, know that it all began at Bates College, on Garcelon Field, in Lewiston. The revolution began here, and today’s NFL heroes stand atop the shoulders of forgotten giants named Cobb, Cummings, and Purinton.

But even without their due acclaim, the three Bates men lived noteworthy lives. The quarterback graduated from Harvard Medical, served in two World Wars, became County Medical Examiner, and has a stadium named for him. The receiver married his college sweetheart and managed a business that evolved from making horse carriages to selling automobiles. The coach, at 40, left behind a family, and his beloved Bates job, to volunteer in World War I, and died a hero.

But today, on the 120th anniversary of the first pass, they are forgotten no more, and Bates claims its rightful place in history. For the first time, here is the story.

In 1905, The Chicago Tribune reported 18 football-related deaths and 149 serious injuries, mostly due to a brutal style of play, the “flying wedge,” that had offenses slamming full speed, like battering rams, into stationary defenses. At the summons of President Teddy Roosevelt, on December 28, 1905, 62 colleges gathered in New York to make the game safer. One rule change doubled the first down distance from five to ten yards; another legalized the forward pass, forbidden since the first game in 1869 when Rutgers defeated Princeton.

Bates was not on that committee, a forerunner of the NCAA. But coach and Athletic Director Royce Purinton, Class of 1900, was well-qualified to implement the new rules. A four-year starter at quarterback, he had led Bates to two (of three in history) undefeated seasons.

After his last game, The Bates Student wrote: “For four years, he has been the moving spirit of the team…he has practically run the team for two years.”

In 1904, Purinton led Bates to a 5-3-1 record. That team was led by two backs, Harry Lord and Bob Messenger, who both later played Major League Baseball, and were among the fastest players in the American League. The following season, Bates went 4-2-2. In 1906, before the rules went into effect, the coach penned an essay “Bates And The Football Situation,” in The Student:  

“The new rules, if successful…will practically eliminate brutality, mass play, the catapulting of men through the line…in other words, open the game. Bates should have nothing to fear in the supplanting of beef by speed and muscle.”

A week before the opener, Purinton hinted that the new rules “will furnish a lot of surprise.” That pre-season, he replaced the previous year’s starting quarterback with untested sophomore Stephen Cobb, son of a steamboat man from Gardiner (Maine). Promising freshman Ralph Cummings, son of a sheriff, from Edward Little High School in Auburn, started at right end. Both were small. Cobb (front row, third from left in the team photo) weighed between 138-145 pounds; Cummings (front row, fourth from left) between 133-145.   

Bates played Portland Artillery in the season-opener, a team of soldiers comprising “the best players from Forts Preble, Williams and McKinley.” The Artillery team “represented by far the strongest aggregate that ever represented Uncle Sam in this state.” The soldiers “outweighed the local team almost to a man,” noted The Lewiston Evening Journal.

At 3:00, on September 22, the game kicked off, and a pattern emerged: “The Artillery plugged away at the old-fashioned line plays with an occasional end run, while Bates endeavored to work out plays which were made possible under the new rules.”

Early in the first half, to the bewilderment of spectators, this play occurred, as described in the Lewiston Evening Journal:

Quarter Back Cobb sprung…The men were piling up in the scrimmage same as usual. Little Cobb arose out of the bunch as high as his short body would take him. Looking around to get his bearing, he quickly threw the ball over the heads of the squirming men.

 A few of the players saw it as it sailed over and to the soldiers it looked as big as a balloon. Just above the heads of the tallest men it sailed for the college entrance to the field.

 “A fumble,” shouted the man who had not read the rules.

 “The new forward pass,” politely informed his neighbor.

 “Will there be anyone there to catch it?” thought the majority of the rooters.

 All of a sudden there appeared the wily form of Cummings, the freshman. He had wormed himself clear of the firing line and was ready to catch the ball.

 Young Cummings seized the pig skin securely.

Cummings was tackled immediately, but not before a legend was born: “The play brought Cummings into the front as a grid iron hero.” Soon he would be dubbed “Sheriff,” owing no doubt to his father’s job, but also to his own play.

None of the 150 fans in attendance had ever witnessed anything like it. 

In “The New For-Ward Pass, Bates Tried It Successfully Against Fort Preble,” the Evening Journal called the play “extremely difficult…The quarterback has to be a skilful passer and the end man to be a sure catcher.”

Holding the soldiers to two first downs, Bates “repeatedly tried the pass during the game. The Artillery did not know how to meet it, and the play only failed through a fumble.” Alas, the game ended, 0-0.

But posterity never recognized that historic moment; laurels for the first pass were awarded elsewhere. 

“For decades, nearly everyone agreed that St. Louis University threw the first forward pass against Carroll on September 25, 1906,” football historian Timothy P. Brown said on the latest episode of the Bates Bobcast. “In fact, the date is often listed as September 5, 1906, but that is a typo.” 

Through research conducted via contemporary accounts, and utilizing AI (in this case Claude, which can comb websites like newspapers.com faster than humans), Brown recently debunked the claim. He found that five games had been played earlier, on September 22, and in three of those games (involving Penn State, Pitt and Rochester) no passes were reported thrown. In the fourth, New Hampshire threw precisely one incomplete pass at Maine. That left the Bates-Artillery game. Brown published his findings this June in a Substack post (The First Forward Pass Revisited, Again), which credits Bates with the first legal forward pass completion in college football history.

The startling discovery abruptly ended a joke Brown often told: “As a graduate of Carroll, I used to claim that my school invented pass defense.”

Two weeks later, on October 6, 1906, in an 11-0 win over Hebron, Bates again went to the air. “Several times the forward pass was used for good gains. Cummings, the right end, doing a nice trick of catching the ball and advancing it, after he made a safe catch,” The Lewiston Daily Sun reported. Cobb later threw a 35-yard pass to Cummings (“one of the prettiest plays of the game.”)    

Next up, “Bates To Play Harvard Today – Both Will Use Forward Pass,” a Boston Globe headline trumpeted: “Bates has a light, fast team that is said to have perfected the forward pass, to a dangerous degree, and the prospect of seeing the new wrinkle is adding interest to today’s game.”

Harvard, winner of four national championships, played a few small schools each season. Invariably, those were lopsided shutouts—but not against Bates, before 4,500 fans.

“For the second year in succession, the Bates football eleven scored on Harvard in the annual game between the two colleges on Soldier’s Field, establishing a record for small colleges,” The Globe wrote. “To score on a big college eleven is the equivalent almost of a victory to a small college.”

The key play came on third down when Cobb executed a surprise quarterback kick from midfield that Cummings scooped up and ran to the four-yard line. Cobb then threw behind the line (not a forward pass) to 179-pound lineman Schumacher, a former state football champion from Ansonia (Conn.), who scored.

“The forward pass was used six times, four times by Bates and twice by Harvard. The Maine boys failed to make distance on it once,” The Globe said, singling out two players:

“The individual star of the game was Cobb, the featherweight quarterback of the Bates team. This little fellow handled the punts to the queen’s tastes.”

And also: “Cummings, Bates’ right end, was always on the alert, and his good play made his team’s touchdown possible.”

Harvard finished 10-1, losing to Yale. 

Bates entered the last half of the season with rivalry games against Colby, Bowdoin and Maine, with the state championship on the line. All that week Bates and Colby practiced in secret. On October 20, a train left Lewiston to much fanfare. The Evening Journal reported:

“It was half past two when the Bates College special train pulled into the station at Waterville, lined up with a boom-a-lacka and headed by the band across the muddy streets to the Colby campus. Prominent in the crowd of men upon the Bates team was little Cummings, the freshman wonder whose play has been a sensation.”

The muddy field slowed down the passing attack, but Cobb tossed a 10-yarder to Cummings, and Bates eventually scored. Cummings kicked the point, as Bates won, 6-0. (Note: a touchdown was five points.) Next week, heavy rains soaked the field in Brunswick, but Bates defeated Bowdoin, 6-0, before 2,000 fans.

Bates returned home to play New Hampshire, and again “the field was a sea of mud, yet forward passes, short kicks, line shifts and long runs were frequent.” With the first half scoreless, “Cobb and Cummings worked their passes well,” and Bates scored twice on runs, winning 11-0.

In the finale against Maine, the bad weather continued: “The snow fall of the previous night was removed early by a large number of (Bates) students.” Bates dominated field position, but missed two field goals, and the game ended scoreless. But after Bowdoin beat Maine next week, Bates was crowned state champion—and raucous celebrations ensued. The Student reported:

“After supper, between 100-150 of the boys clad in white nightshirts and headed by the band marched downtown. On arriving at Haymarket Square they had a war dance...After, a big bonfire was built on Mount David and the noise kept up till after midnight.”

When the All-Maine team was named, “Two shining lights appeared on the Bates team this season. They were Cobb, quarter and Cummings end—men who stood head and shoulders above any other men in Maine playing similar positions.” But no newspaper ever marked the milestone of the historic pass that had ushered in a new era.

It was as if the “shot heard ’round the world” that started the revolution in Lexington and Concord had not been celebrated—only here it was a pass fired in Lewiston, on Garcelon, that started a football revolution, and no one commemorated it. Today the men and teams are all forgotten, the field, too.

A year later, on September 21, 1907, Bates threw its first touchdown pass, Cobb to Cummings, in a 34-0 rout of Fort McKinley. By now, the papers dubbed Cummings “The Sheriff.” Remarkably, that Bates eleven had three players who later had stadiums named for them: Cobb, Frank Keaney (University of Rhode Island), and Eugene Lovely (Andover High).

Cobb also played three years of Bates baseball, then graduated Harvard Medical School. Settling in Sanford, with wife Ruby and daughter Helen, he established a general medicine and surgery practice for 54 years—interrupted only by two World Wars.

Enlisting in World War I, he served as a medical officer in a base hospital in Mesves, France. After he returned home, Governor Milliken, a Bates alum, appointed him York County Medical Examiner. 

In World War II, Cobb,  now 47, served as Executive Medical Officer taking charge of the 67th General Hospital in Taunton, Somerset England. After three years overseas, he was promoted to Colonel in the Army Medical Reserves.  

Cobb became deeply involved in local Sanford football as both team doctor and supporter. 

“Many of the husky gridders had the breath of life spanked into them by Dr. Steve,” The Portland Press-Herald wrote. Placing his hands a foot apart, he joked that he knew all the players “since they were so high” and raced from the team bench “like a shot” if they were injured. Hailed a “Sanford institution,” the high school stadium was named for him in 1954.

Ralph Cummings was a three-sport athlete, playing four years of baseball and indoor track at Bates. Graduating in 1910, he married his college sweetheart Ethel Dunton that August, and had two daughters, Beatrice and Virginia. He went to work for his wife’s family business, Wade & Dunton, a manufacturer of high-end horse-drawn carriages before evolving to automobile sales, including Studebakers and Cadillacs. The company held substantial real estate, including nine large buildings in Lewiston.

Royce Purinton coached until 1918, compiling records of 50-52-13 in football and 103-82-3 in baseball. A respected national leader, he published widely in the “American Physical Education Review.”

With Word War I raging, at age 40, he volunteered with the YMCA to train the troops, leaving behind his wife (Rena Dresser, Class of 1900) and two young children. Crossing the Atlantic in sub-infested waters without a convoy, he directed the recreation of 22,000 soldiers in France, assisted by professional athletes.

Seeking permission to serve on the front lines, Purinton spoke only reluctantly of the experience, witnessing 1,800 deaths while manning stretchers for the dying. Dr. Cobb stood nearby at the ready, at the army hospital in Mesves, France. 

Upon Purinton’s triumphant return in January 1919, The Student was euphoric: “PURRY BACK FROM FRANCE.”

But he was not the same man. His daughter Frances, 10, had died in the flu pandemic while he was overseas. Sent to a sanitarium, he died, two months later, at 41, never witnessing his son Royce Jr., Class of 1935, tie a world record (5.8 secs) in the 45-yard high hurdles at Bates’ Gray Cage. He never saw any of the four generations of his family who graduated from Bates, including Nate Purinton ’06.

The Bates Chapel was overflowing for his memorial service. There was no talk of records, nor passes—only of sacrifice, character and duty: “The simple faith and devotion to his ideals carried him across the seas to do his part in the cause of mankind. To say he was the guide and mentor to many a wayward boy would state the case mildly,” the Student wrote.

He was buried near campus at Riverside Cemetery. The stone is visible today, just behind a linked fence on Riverside Street, before the main entrance. 48 years later, his little right end Ralph Cummings, 79, joined him at Riverside. The following year, 1968, his little quarterback Stephen Cobb, 80 was laid to rest in Sanford. Together they took their secret to the grave.

But today, it can now be proclaimed that men like Brady, Moss, and Belichick stand on the shoulders of these giants: Stephen Aratus Cobb, Ralph Burtram Cummings, and Royce Davis Purinton—the three Bates men who completed the first legal forward pass. The three men who started the revolution that made football America’s most popular sport.

The New York Times regularly prints a series “Overlooked No More” with newly-written obituaries of noteworthy people whose deaths, beginning in 1851 when the paper was founded, were never reported there. It seems appropriate today, on the 120th anniversary of their signal achievement, that the three men might one day have their obits printed there, too. For today, they are overlooked no more.

A path forward was blazed here. The revolution began in Lewiston, Maine at Bates College, on Garcelon Field.

 A Dedication and Thanks: The author dedicates this research to his late brother Michael Muldoon, a 35-year sportswriter at the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, winner of the Massachusetts High School Football Coaches media award; and to his late uncle Warren Muldoon, called “The Sage of Lowell” by President of the Massachusetts Senate William Bulger. He also thanks former Andover High football coach EJ Perry III for his research help. Perry, the uncle of Timmy Perry ’24 and last year’s Bates quarterback Jack Perry ’26, is the father of EJ Perry IV, former quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars. The author’s other Bates athletic histories are here. He hopes that one day Bates will recognize this historic achievement on campus, perhaps with a marker at Garcelon Field, or a well-deserved spot in the college’s Athletics Hall of Fame. Email muldoonra@gmail.com.