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History: 1875-The First Game

In 1875 came an event that contributed greatly to the shape of football as it developed in the United States. Harvard challenged Yale to a game under "Concessionary Rules" and thus inaugurated one of the most celebrated of all U.S. football rivalries. 

The game was played in November 1875 at New Haven, Connecticut, and was part rugby and part soccer. The two teams played with 15 players on a side instead of 11 as Yale would have preferred, and Harvard won by 4 goals and 4 tries, or touchdowns, to none. 

Despite its decisive defeat, Yale was so taken with rugby that it became a convert and adopted the rules. Observers from Princeton who saw the game also were won over to rugby, and in 1876 representatives of Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and Columbia organized the Intercollegiate Football  Association. They adopted the code of the Rugby Football Union with a change in the scoring rule--instead of a match being decided by a majority of goals alone, it was decided by a majority of touchdowns. The egg-shaped leather ball replaced the round rubber ball of soccer. Rugby thus became the American college football game and the rest, as they say, is history.
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