The secret to Vandy’s success in the first two decades of the 20th century, head coach Dan McGugin, was a favorite subject of southern sports writers. Columnists adored him, coaches wanted to be him. Arriving in Nashville in 1904, McGugin was a Michigan man, a devoted offensive disciple of his former coach (and eventual brother-in-law), Wolverine legend Fielding “Hurry Up” Yost.

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Dubbed the Wizard by the press, McGugin’s spell book was crammed with befuddling formations and trick plays and, once the forward pass was legalized, an aerial attack the likes of which few teams below (and even above) the Mason-Dixon line had ever seen. That, almost more than anything, is what made Vanderbilt’s offense the stuff of defensive nightmares every year, at least according to Bob Blake. And of all the folks trying to plumb the depths of the mystical McGugin system, Blake should know.

Blake was a star end at Vandy in McGugin’s first years on the job, and the Commodore captain in 1907.That was the second year of the (legal) forward pass, which Eastern coaches initially derided for turning football into, in Blake’s words, “a species of basketball.” McGugin, however, was using it to turn football into a species of baseball. At least at practice.

“Every man on the Vanderbilt team is a trained receiver of passes,” Blake wrote in a column for the Atlanta Georgian in 1912, “and practically all of them are trained in passing the ball.”

But not shuffle passes, not shot putting, nothing underhand, no glorified laterals.

“The long, straight shot pass is McGugin’s own specialty, and he has taught his men the trick of the thing.”

McGugin’s Vanderbilt teams produced 13 undefeated seasons during his tenure. (Vanderbilt)

McGugin, in other words, wanted bullets. And he got them on the baseball diamond. “Sometimes in the early part of the season the entire squad will quit playing football and have a great game of baseball with a football for the ball,” Blake wrote.

Because, you know, what better to teach a quick release for a “long, straight shot” than a quarterback having to beat the left halfback to first?

Footbaseball wasn’t just good for your throwing technique, though. Apparently shagging prolate spheroids launched wildly from a Louisville Slugger was was also a perfect way to practice securing the ball. According to Blake, “that kind of practice makes them (players) sure in the handling of the most difficult passes” — like Blake’s conference championship-clinching 30-yard strike to Stein Stone in the final minute of the 1907 Sewanee game that capped a crazy trick play that 30-years-later Grantland Rice was still calling the most thrilling thing he’d ever seen in football.

(All thanks to baseball.)

Jeremy Henderson is a writer and historian. He edits The War Eagle Reader and hosts a weekly “guerrilla Auburn history” radio program called It’s Pronounced Jordan. Follow him on Twitter: @wareaglereader.