Fifty years ago this month the first intercollegiate football game in this country was played at New Brunswick, N. J., between Rutgers and Princeton.

The press of Princeton and Rutgers, founders of football, accorded the event only an incidental line or two, and then passed on to more customary news. The players, however, elated by the fun in their venture, arranged another game two weeks later, and in the following year another series, and so unconsciously became the fathers of that mighty institution of American sport, intercollegiate football.

Football Oldest Organized Sport

Football is the oldest of our organized games. The first we know of it is that it was played by the Spartans, and their style of play amazes us by its similarity to the game of today. Football, too, was a sport common to all village greens in in America following the Revolutionary War. The traditions of the older colleges of America are laden with stories of campus football.

The sport here, however, was without organization, without elaborate rules, and without formal competition, until William S. Gummere of Princeton and William J. Leggett of Rutgers arranged the Princeton-Rutgers game of 1869, and drafted a special set of rules to govern its play. Those rules, either unconsciously or by design, followed the "association" style of play, for soccer, even in these early days, was an established institution.

In 1870 Princeton and Rutgers were joined by Columbia, but in 1871 intercollegiate football temporarily lapsed. At Yale in the fall of 1872 were a number of young football players with a capacity for constructive leadership, and these men, with their associates, organized themselves into the Yale Football Association. Having drafted a code of playing, they challenged Columbia, and the latter accepted.

Grant '73 Establishes "Harvard Football Association."

While these basic events in football history were being enacted at Yale, similar activity characterized undergraduate life at Harvard. Stimulated by the leadership of Robert R. Grant '73, the football leaders in 1872 established the Harvard Football Club. The code of rules drawn up by these pioneers at Cambridge combined both the Association and Rugby codes, thus preventing the University's advent as an intercollegiate competitor for two more years, limiting their games in the interim to class and club contests.

At Princeton the game was rapidly progressing, and in 1873 they assembled an intercollegiate conference between Columbia, Princeton, Rutgers, and Yale. Harvard also was invited to attend this conference but declined. This original football committee drafted a common code of playing rules, still clinging to the principles of "Association" play.

These rules were short-lived, but they served the purpose of making possible the original Princeton-Yale game, the oldest of all present-day football classics. This game was played at New Haven November 15, 1873, and Princeton won.

McGill Introduces Rugby Game.

The year 1874 is a memorable, one, for in it occurred the event which led directly to the establishment of the present type of intercollegiate football. This event was an invasion of the United States by the Rugby football fifteen of McGill University of Montreal. The ambitious young Canadians played only one game at their style of play, but that was at Harvard. The complex, brilliant features of Rugby instantly captured the imagination, and Harvard abandoned its curious code and adopted that of the visitors.

The second step, a challenge to Yale, followed in 1875, and Yale accepted. The game was played at New Haven with Harvard the victor. The result of this game was the assembling of a second convention, attended by Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia, in 1876, which formed the Intercollegiate Football Association, and adopted with a few modifications the Rugby Union rules. They also arranged a mutual schedule of games.

The association thus formed was destined to endure amid stress and storm for two decades. The rules there adopted, although annually amended and extended, are nevertheless basically the rules that regulate play today, and the three great series of football contests thus founded--Harvard-Princeton, Princeton-Yale, and Harvard-Yale--today are the classic centres around which a hundred others thrive.

Kicks Field Goals on the Run.

In the first year, 1876, Yale emerged the champion. It is interesting to note that in these games Yale's fullback, O. D. Thompson, defeated both Harvard and Princeton by a goal from the field, executed while running at full speed, a feat unseen in the 40 years since. It was on this early team that Walter Camp, football's great personality, played halfback for Yale.

It was in the first of two games that fall against the University of Pennsylvania that Princeton first appeared in jerseys of alternate orange and black stripes, thereby suggesting the Tigers, the name they have proudly born decade after decade.

Woodrow Wilson in Football.

Among the coaches selected at Princeton in 1877 was a young Junior whose name appears in the college press of that period as T. W. Wilson, who later was appointed head of the Board of Football Directors. Years afterward, when academic and literary honors began to multiply upon the shoulders of that young Princeton football coach, the name of T. W. Wilson expanded into Woodrow Wilson.

Although the collegians in 1876 took over the Rugby style of play intact, the American genius for invention soon began to work amazing changes in the game which their English comrades had left substantially alone for 40 years. The British fashion of continually kicking the ball abated, and in its place rushing and passing became more predominant features.

In 1880, among a series of less important changes, the intercollegiate convention limited the number of players to eleven. Here football came by the number which so evenly balances offense and defense, and which has grown to be a magical word in the nomenclature of the sport.

Princeton Forces Introduction of "Downs"

Where before it had been in doubt as to which side would emerge with the ball after a play, this convention also arranged that if the team in possesison elected not to kick and did not fumble it might retain the ball indefinitely. Princeton early showed the fallacy of this rule by clinging to the ball through the entire game, thus forcing a draw. A later ruling brought with it the modern system of downs.

In these years terminates the monopoly of Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale in football interest, for a number of colleges in this period sent their first teams afield. Among these early aristocrats of the sport are Brown, Dartmouth, Lawrenceville, Lafayette, Lehigh, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, and Williams. An important feature of the sport which made its advent in the early '80's was signals. Originally these were words and sentences, later single numbers, and finally the complex signal systems that have prevailed for 30 years. A strange occurrence in this time was that Harvard's Faculty unexpectedly abolished football in 1885, and in 1886, as unexpectedly, restored it.

Lowering of Tackling Eliminates Open Game.

The open game of much passing, running and kicking was prevalent in these days, and its effacement was unintentionally caused by the lowering of the tackling limit from the waist to the knees. With this change dodging backs no longer could make continuous gains in an open field. This introduced the element of interference, common in our day, but mystifying to the teams it was first used against.

A quarrel over the eligibility rules broke up the old Intercollegiate Association in 1890, and terminated this formerly happy union. Several attempts were made to reconstruct this association in different forms, but all failed.

In 1892 the flying wedge was introduced at the Harvard-Yale game of that year, and, although it is now abolished, it remains one of the most striking plays ever devised. Old fashions of the game still tarried on, and the long hair supposedly necessary for all players is one of the most picturesque. In these years the major games evolved almost to present dimensions, and great circling stands rose around the fields.

The season of 1896 brought with it a return to parliamentary football peace. A Rules Committee had been formed, whose authority was acceptable to the colleges of the country, and this body soon legislated out of existence the momentum mass plays.

The necessity for reformation of the football rules has regularly arisen during the annals of the sport at intervals of approximately ten years. In 1906 the public forced a revision of the rules to eliminate the more unsavory elements. Out of this strife came an enlarged Rules Committee, an altered code, and an improved game. With the abolition of mass formation, the forward pass came into prominence, and a large number of minor improvements were added to the code.

In 1910 came the changes which required the offense to gain 10 yards instead of the customary five, and the time-honored halves were replaced by 15-minute quarters. Under these later rules have been waged the conflicts of the past few years