Portal:Sports/Selected article/September 2008

 Homer Woodson "Bill" Hargiss was a college football, basketball, and track coach. He was an early innovator in football and was known to be one of the first coaches to use the forward pass and the huddle.

Oregon State was one of the very first schools nationally to use the huddle formation in a game. It happened against the University of Washington in Seattle in 1918. Beaver Head Coach Hargiss instructed the starters that once they returned to the field, they were to stand 10 yards behind the ball before the beginning of each play and whisper to one another what they were going to do next.

An eyewitness to the game was veteran Seattle sports columnist Royal Brougham, whose stories of the contest give testimony today to OSU's early use of this pioneering new formation.

While coaching at the College of Emporia, Hargiss would regularly use the forward pass and records show that it was used as early as 1910, three years before Knute Rockne began to regularly call the play. Hargiss also ran the option pass play (possibly the first of all time) at the College of Emporia in 1910. The "option pass" play was a sweep to the end with halfbacks that would either pass or run depending on how the defensive play would develop.

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