1907 Carlisle Indians football team

The 1907 Carlisle Indians football team represented the Carlisle Indians football team of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School during the 1907 college football season. The Indians were coached by Pop Warner in his sixth year as head coach, last coaching the school in 1903. The team compiled a record of 10–1 and outscored opponents 267 to 62.

Jim Thorpe, undersized even for the Indians, persuaded Warner to allow him to try out for the team. Thorpe immediately impressed his coach and secured a starting position on the team.

End Albert Exendine was a consensus All-American. In the game against Chicago, fullback Pete Hauser threw a 40-yard pass to Exendine, who ran out of bounds, around spectators and players, and back on the field for the catch.

Hauser became a star during the 1907 season. In an early game, he scored a touchdown and kicked a field goal in a 10–0 victory over Villanova. In October 1907, Hauser ran for a touchdown and kicked to goals after touchdown, scoring eight points, in Carlisle's 14–6 victory over the team from Syracuse University. In November 1907, The New York Times wrote that Hauser handled kicking duties for Carlisle, returned punts, and was also "the mainstay of the defense." That same month, Carlise defeated the Harvard football team, then one of the top teams in the country, by a 23–15 score in front of a crowd of 30,000 spectators in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The New York Times wrote that Hauser's end runs were "marvels" and that he was able to circle the Harvard ends "at will." Carlisle's 1907 season ended with an 18–4 victory over Amos Alonzo Stagg's Chicago Maroons football team. Hauser was described as "a one-man wrecking crew" against Chicago, as he kicked two field goals and an extra point and threw a 50-yard touchdown pass as well.

On October 26, 1907, Carlisle beat a Penn team that had won every other game and was declared national champion. The "national champions" lost 26–6, before an overflow crowd of 20,000 at Franklin Field. Hauser's most historic moment in this game. At a time when forward passes were generally short tosses, Hauser threw a pass 40 yards, hitting his receiver in stride. In her history of Native Americans in football, Sally Jenkins called Hauser's long, 40-yard spiral pass against Penn one of the "three or four signal moments in the evolution of football" and "the sporting equivalent of the Wright brothers taking off at Kitty Hawk." The Philadelphia North American compared it to the "puny" passes of the day, called it "a lordly throw, a hurl that went farther than many a kick," and predicted that Hauser's throw would be "talked of often this year." Hauser's secret was throwing the ball in a spiral, allowing it to travel farther downfield. Carlisle head coach, Pop Warner, said that Hauser was credited as the first football player to throw a spiral pass and could "hit his ends on the dead run with uncanny accuracy."