The 1883 Championship Game

Yale vs Princeton

The 1883 Championship Game

Though we generally think of Yale vs Harvard as the great old football rivalry, the truth is that Yale and Princeton had a much more meaningful and active rivalry back in the 1880s.

In 1883, both teams entered the November 24th game at the Polo Grounds in New York City undefeated. And, interestingly enough, there was actually quite a bit of build up for this game:

From New-York Tribune, November 24, 1883, page 2

From The Sun (New York), November 24, 1883, page 3

From New-York Tribune, November 24, 1883, page 7

As you can see from the above excerpts, the real story of the day was a controversial decision by Harvard to withdraw its school from football competition. We’ll talk more about that one tomorrow.

Interestingly, it seems that by this time Walter Camp’s new scoring system had taken hold. You can see that in this Brooklyn Eagle summary of the game:

From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 25, 1883, page 12

As I understand it, the touchdown Yale scored was worth 4 points, and the conversion that came afterwards was worth another 2.

Here’s how The New-York Tribune described it:

From New-York Tribune, November 25, 1883, page 5

However, The New York Times winds up with the award for best description of this game:

From The New York Times, November 25 1883, page 13

Though its overall sports coverage was spotty, The New York Times generally had better football coverage in the early 1880s than any of the other New York papers.