1st intercollegiate football game

Among those playing that day were future clergymen, a state senator, a future chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, Confederate and Union Civil War veterans, and a finalist in the first U. Open Tennis Tournament. Both teams agreed that they would play based on the rules used by the home team, Rutgers. Though Rutgers won the coin toss, Princeton got the ball and kicked it to the side, where Rutgers players surrounded it. Within five minutes, Rutgers scored the first goal. According to the rules, each goal was considered a game, and they would play a total of 10 games.

There was the same headlong running, wild shouting, and frantic kicking. In every game the cool goaltenders saved the Rutgers goal half a dozen times; in every game the heavy charger of the Princeton side overthrew everything he came in contact with. After the eighth goal the game was tied, but then Rutgers scored the ninth and tenth, winning the game 6 to 4. Immediately after their victory, the Rutgers men ran the Princeton players out of town.

A week later the two teams met again, this time at Princeton. For this game they followed the rules of the Princeton field. This enabled the Princeton team to win the second game 8 to 0. Years later, both teams were awarded a shared honor for the tied college football national championship for the season.

Herbert gave this detailed account of the play in the first game: "Though smaller on the average, the Rutgers players, as it developed, had ample speed and fine football sense. Receiving the ball, our men formed a perfect interference around it and with short, skillful kicks and dribbles drove it down the field.

Taken by surprise, the Princeton men fought valiantly, but in five minutes we had gotten the ball through to our captains on the enemy's goal and S. Gano, '71 and G. Dixon, '73, neatly kicked it over. None thought of it, so far as I know, but we had without previous plan or thought evolved the play that became famous a few years later as 'the flying wedge'. Herbert then related that his teammates failed to note a conference the Princeton's captain was holding with the giant of the Tiger team, J.

Michael, '71, known to his mates as "Big Mike. It was our turn for surprise. The Princeton battering ram made no attempt to reach the ball but, forerunner of the interference-breaking ends of today, threw himself into our mass play, bursting us apart, and bowing us over.

Time and again Rutgers formed the wedge and charged; as often Big Mike broke it up. And finally on one of these incredible break-ups a Princeton bulldog with a long accurate, perhaps lucky kick, sent the ball between the posts for the second score. He had a trick of kicking the ball with his heel. All the game he had been a puzzle to the Princetonians.

The ball would be rolling toward the Rutgers goal, and, running ahead of it instead of taking time to turn, he would heel it back. He made several such plays, greatly encouraging his team. Then he capped all this by one tremendous lucky backward drive directly to Dixon, standing squarely before Princeton's goal Dixon easily scored, giving us a one-goal lead.

Big Mike again rose, however, in a berserk endeavor, and, getting the ball, he called the Princeton men into a flying wedge of their own and straight-away they took the ball right down the field and put it over.

It was at this point that a Rutgers professor could stand it no longer. On this day years ago, Wofford and Furman played the first intercollegiate football game in the state of South Carolina. The account of the game, written by a Wofford student journalist in The Wofford College Journal and published in January , is reprinted below. On Saturday morning, December 14, , the foot ball teams of Furman University and Wofford College played a very interesting and exciting game at the Encampment Grounds, Spartanburg, S.

Substitutes: Wilkins, Scott, and Sirrine. Wofford— Bruce, Bearden, Clyde S. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you.

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