A burning need for revenge might linger for quite some time. It’s a valid justification for why Princeton and Rutgers teamed together to play the inaugural collegiate football game on November 6.
Princeton’s baseball team had previously beaten Rutgers by a score of 40-2 three years prior. The students at Rutgers University in New Jersey, led by the pastor of a Dutch Reformed Church in New Brunswick named the Reverend C.D. Hartranft, had created a football club in the meantime. It turned out that Princeton had done the same thing.
Players for Rutgers thought it was time to issue a challenge to Princeton, another of the original colonial colleges. Rutgers selected William J. Leggett as their captain; he issued a challenge through a letter that stipulated a best-of-three football series. William S. Gummere, captain for Princeton, didn’t waste any time reacting. Game on!
The two teams’ captains had no idea they were about to start a sports craze that would sweep the nation’s college campuses and pave the way for a multibillion-dollar professional collegiate football league.
The Rutgers team greeted the Princeton team at the train station and provided some pre-game entertainment by touring the Princeton players around New Brunswick’s attractions (a billiards hall was particularly appreciated). The two leaders met to discuss the game’s rules, which, in their early iterations, were more similar to soccer than the modern version of football. Twenty-five players were set aside for each squad, and it was decided that both hands and feet would be legal for batting. The field was 360 by 225 feet, and both ends had 24-foot-wide goalposts. No holding or tripping of opponents was permitted. The winning team would be the first to accumulate six “games,” or points.
As an audience of about a hundred gathered behind the College Avenue Gymnasium at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, the “bulldogs,” “fielders,” and “captains of the opponent’s goal” of both teams stripped off their outerwear. They took their respective positions on the field. The Rutgers team took the field in style, donning scarlet kerchiefs and turbans made from scarves; the Princeton team, which had not yet established orange and black as school colors, wore a mishmash of street clothes and an approximation of athletic wear. Neither group had any safety equipment to use.
A chilly November day’s three o’clock kickoff quickly descended into chaos as the cunning Rutgers squad had to use delicacy and cunning to counter their more combative opponents. The latter were using an early kind of smashmouth football. There was “wild shouting, headlong running, and frantic kicking,” as the Targum put it. When George Dixon and Stephen Gano combined to score the opening point of college football by kicking the ball into Princeton’s goal, Rutgers became the first team to score a point. Reaction from Princeton.
When the dust settled, Rutgers had a 4-2 lead. This time, Princeton’s score was tied. Following Leggett’s instruction to “keep your kicks short and low,” Rutgers scored two more goals and took the game by a score of 6-4. A historic first college football game was played and won. After a “beautiful meal” and singing, the two teams celebrated their victories together, with Rutgers playing the role of gracious host and Princeton playing the role of brave losers, with the latter boarding the train “thirsting to beat us next time, if they can,” as reported by the Targum.
The teams played again the next week, this time in Princeton on what had previously been a cow meadow but was now being used as a football field. Princeton defeated Rutgers 8-0, taking advantage of its home field advantage and noisy sideline rooters. The teams shared a hearty dinner after the game. The Targum reporter echoed the squad’s feeling when they wrote, “If we must be vanquished, we are pleased to have such victors.”
The rubber match was never played in the third game between Rutgers and Princeton. Despite both teams having identical 1-1 records, Princeton was crowned the 1869 national football champion since they had beaten Rutgers 12-6 throughout the two games. In football terms, this was the seed that would grow into a rivalry that would continue through 1980.
