The Second Season

Harvard football in 1881

The Second Season

Though football had technically been played at Harvard for years before this, 1881 marked the second season of the sport under the Walter Camp inspired rules.

The college game featured an explosion in teams in 1881. At least 22 schools fielded college football teams, though, unfortunately, original newspaper accounts for many of them are hard to find:

It’s fascinating that MIT had a team this early, for example. Sadly, I can’t find any information about that team from the original newspapers I have access to.

However, there are accounts of the games that feature the big Ivy League schools.

Harvard’s season began on October 20th with a game against the Montreal Football Club:

From The Boston Globe, October 20, 1881, page 4

I’m not entirely certain what rules the Montreal team was used to playing under. Based on the description of the game, it seems obvious that the American college rules were used:

From The Boston Globe, October 21, 1881, page 5

A crowd of 400 was actually pretty good in those days. Remember that this was the first version of South End Grounds, which probably looked something like this:

Note in the description of the game the language specifying that goals only came after touchdowns were scored. In other words, Harvard’s 2-0 victory signifies that they kicked two successful goals after touchdowns, since the touchdowns themselves were worth nothing.

Sadly, neither of the two major English language Montreal newspapers carried much news about the game.

From The Gazette (Montreal), October 21, 1881, page 3

From The Montreal Star, October 21, 1881, page 3

By the way — Harvard also beat Ottawa on October 22, 9-1.