1880's Game Of The Season

Yale vs Princeton at the old Polo Grounds

1880's Game Of The Season

The Thanksgiving football tradition goes back a long, long way.

Yale and Princeton met at the old Polo Grounds in New York City on November 25, 1880, to play the final game of the season. Both teams were undefeated.

From The Sun (New York), November 25, 1880, page 3

As you can tell from these articles, there was quite a bit of hype surrounding this match.

From The Sun (New York), November 25, 1880, page 2

From The New York Times, November 25, 1880, page 5

And the game wound up being big news. The weather didn’t hold up, but the teams played anyway — and the final game wound up being a front page story.

From The Sun (New York), November 26, 1880, page 1

This truly was the original snow game. The newly revised rules worked quite well despite the frozen and awful conditions. Amazingly, 4,000 people managed to show up for the game — and I’m sure they were frustrated in the end by the inability of either team to score.

From The New York Times, November 26, 1880, page 2

Yale and Princeton didn’t wind up meeting again that season. Yale claimed the championship based on their superior number of goals scored. And you might also notice that the number of games played not only does not add up right, but that it isn’t consistent with the record of games played in 1880 that you can find online.

From New-York Daily Tribune, November 26, 1880, page 8

You’ll notice, by the way, that both teams seemed more eager to score safeties against themselves than to try to advance the ball. Like touchdowns, safeties did not count in the scoring in those days, which gave teams an incentive to use it as a strategy to gain a free kick when deep in their own territory.

My, how times have changed.