"My end is my beginning."--T.S. Eliot

On a breezy autumn afternoon in 1876, a motley crew of nervous Harvard freshmen lined up opposite their Yale counterparts in the first-ever freshman intercollegiate football game.

The game, played without much fanfare, was seen largely as a quaint sideshow to the one-year-old varsity rivalry between the two schools.

In many respects, the contest represented football in its purest sense, fully removed from today's overarching emphasis on money and winning.

It was simply a game for fun and education, but it began to catch on at schools across the country.

More and more colleges formed freshman teams to let their first-years mash it out on the gridiron with their counterparts from other schools.

By the middle of this century, virtually every major college with a football program--from Harvard to Kansas State to USC--was fielding a team of first-years.

Then, however, the sport's momentum took a 180-degree turn.

The opportunity to bring talented freshman directly to the varsity squads led many colleges and conferences to eliminate their prohibitions against freshman eligibility.

And as first-years started to contribute to varsity teams, the need for separate freshman teams--an expensive investment for budget-constrained athletic departments--started to wane.

More and more schools cancelled their freshman programs until, at the start of this season, only the Ivy League--where tradition dies about as easily as crab grass--still prohibited freshmen from playing on the varsity squads.

Earlier this fall, however, even the Ivy League succumbed to the trend. Urged on by coaches, athletic directors and even some admissions personnel, the Council of Presidents ratified a proposal to allow freshmen to play varsity football.

As expected, six of the Ivy League's teams--Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown, Pennsylvania and Cornell--immediately announced their intentions to drop their freshman squads.

Although Harvard will continue to sponsor a freshman team, the dynamics of Ivy League competition is expected to be changed significantly.

"The idea had been banging around the league since last year," Harvard Freshman Coach Edward Schluntz said. "A few coaches initiated the idea and then it just gained steam."