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THANKSGIVING TOUCHDOWN! continued

A very crude game of ball-kicking was being played at East Coast colleges, such as Harvard and Yale, in the 1840s or before.   Most colleges outlawed the game in the early 1860s – the tensions that eventually led to the Civil War were causing divisions on campus and a game like football, very physical and almost totally without rules, could easily erupt into violence.  Perhaps because of that very physicality and flexibility, however, football remained popular with college men.  

After the Civil War, football officially returned to college campuses.  The first intercollegiate game was played in 1869 between Princeton and Rutgers.  There were 25 players to a side and the ball could be kicked or head-butted - but not carried.  Rutgers won that first game 6 to 4; a rematch one week later was won by Princeton, 8 to 0.   

By 1872, Columbia, Yale and Harvard men were also playing football as an official, college-sanctioned sport.  Harvard’s rules were so unique, however, that it couldn’t play against the other college teams – its games were intramural.   In 1874, however, Harvard agreed to play against the Canadian university, McGill.  McGill’s rules were similar to those being used at Harvard but included an innovation that Harvard agreed to accept – players were permitted to run with the ball.  This technique created great enthusiasm and Harvard challenged Yale to a game using the new rules.  

The first Harvard-Yale game was played in 1875 before a crowd of 2000 spectators who had paid $0.50 apiece.  The next year, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Princeton and Pennsylvania formed the Intercollegiate Football Association.  The Association agreed to use the Harvard rules - and agreed that the two strongest teams would meet each year on Thanksgiving Day in New York City in a game that would determine the championship.   

The first Thanksgiving championship game, played in 1876, was between Yale and Princeton.  Yale won.  The Thanksgiving Day game soon became the prominent athletic contest of the college season, linking the middle class (with their hunger for higher education) with intercollegiate sports (and its ideals of fair play and good sportsmanship) and a national American holiday, Thanksgiving.  

That connection has never been broken.