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The date: November 17, 1906
The matchup: Chicago (2-1) vs. Illinois (0-2-1)
The stakes: In-state bragging rights, basically.
The back story: The 1906 season was college football’s first after the legalization of the forward pass, and Amos Alonzo Stagg was one of the first coaches to truly embrace it.
After easy wins over Purdue and Indiana to start the season, Stagg intended to deploy his newly-conceived passing game in the game of the year against Minnesota on November 10. Only, the weather forbade it. It was cold and wet and sloppy, and Chicago lost an old-school slop fest, 4-2.
The next week, then, became Stagg’s first opportunity to show off his offense. And Illinois was the innocent bystander.
The game:
Chicago Finds Illinois Easy
Stagg's Eleven Simply Annihilates Team of Sucker State University.
CHICAGO, Nov. 17 -- Chicago's football eleven gave Illinois the worst drubbing it ever received this afternoon, the Maroons running up 62 points and keeping Illinois from crosing their own goal line on the one lonesome chance the State institution players had to score. Ten touchdowns were made by Chicago, nine of the goals being kicked, while Eckersall helped along the slaughter by dropping a field goal from the 20-yard line.
Illinois, badly crippled from the absence of Captain Carrithers, and with a number of other players in poor condition, sent in substitute after substitute as the regular men were injured or exhausted, but could not stop the scoring, and in the latter part of the second half the game was almost a farce. Chicago used the forward pass a dozen times, generally with success.
The box score: This was evidently too far back for box scores. You can find newspapers that listed the lineup, but that’s about it.
For more on Stagg, start here.
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