First Football Forward Pass

Bill Donaldson, a 150-pound end on the 1906 UT 20-man football team, received UT’s first forward pass in a game against American University in Harriman, Tennessee. Donaldson discussed the events that followed in an article in the November 2, 1968, Daily Beacon. He said that American University fans, who had never seen a forward pass, were so outraged at Tennessee’s “dirty-playing” that a major confrontation ensued, and the UT football team ended up in the Harriman jail. Donaldson indicated that he and his teammates gained their freedom by promising not to say anything to the Knoxville newspapers about the incident.