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Sunday 8 June 2014

College Sport

Rutgers College established football rules in 1867, and its location a short distance from Princeton led the two schools into what has been called the first intercollegiate football game. The match took place at New Brunswick, New Jersey, on November 6, 1869 in front of about 100 spectators.  Each team had 25 men on the field and Rutgers won that historic game, 6 goals to 4.

The game was actually more like soccer. The inflated rubber ball could be kicked or batted with the head, but no one was permitted to carry or run with it.

Many of the Rutgers students, to distinguish their team, donned scarlet jerseys or caps, the forerunners of the "uniform."

The Rutgers College football team in 1882.

In 1876 Yale, Princeton, Harvard, and Columbia established the Intercollegiate Football Association, which set the size of the field at 140 by 70 yards and the number of players on a team at 15.

A group of Eastern colleges put on the nation's first college track meet in 1876 after forming the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America.

President Theodore Roosevelt came close to banning college football in 1905 after a season in which 18 players died and 149 more received serious injuries.

Sources Europress Encyclopedia, Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc.

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