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The Beginnings of Football in America

America got into football early. Colonists kicked and threw inflated bladders or sawdust-filled leather balls around long before they decided to fire on the whites of the redcoats' blue eyes. Understandably, games played a minor part in the lives of people more concerned with clearing trees and Indians off the land, but, by the latter part of the 18th Century, football had found its way onto the college campuses. Infrequent matches joined fisticuffs, wrestling, and drinking bouts as popular ways to relieve the severe mental discipline of college life. Some students were relieved right onto probation or worse.

Much as had happened on English campuses, each American school developed its own form of the sport. At Princeton, they were playing a version called "ballown" by 1820. Harvard, Yale, and others each had individual variations. However, if the diverse development echoed Britannia early-1800's, the American style of play resembled circa medieval. The only thing missing was the Dane's head. The young gentlemen attacked each other in most ungentlemanly ways. The New York EVENING POST was moved to observe that one such game would "make the same impression on the public mind as a bull fight. Boys and young men knocked each other down, tore off each other's clothing. Eyes were bunged, faces blacked and bloody, and shirts and coats torn to rags."

The usual excuse for a game was the "class rush", a joyous custom in which the sophomores demonstrated the benefit of an additional year's education by trampling the freshmen into the campus sod. The frosh proved their worthiness among halls of ivy by attempting to fertilize the sod with sophomores. Although a ball of some sort was involved, no one really kept score so long as a sufficient number of opponents were mangled.

At Harvard, "Bloody Monday" took place on the first Monday of each new college year, starting in 1827. The two lower classes vied with each other so lethally that, as a modern historian put it, "Had 15-yard penalties been handed out, it is conceivable they would have reached California." Apparently, the freshmen kicked the ball well, but the sophomores kept missing the ball and kicking the freshmen. The game, according to another account, "consisted of kicking, pushing, slugging and getting angry."

At Yale, the interclass conflict took on a more definite form. The upper classmen supervised the freshmen who were herded into a huge phalanx with the ball carrier in the center. Then the sophomores attacked this mob and tried to push, kick, throw, or otherwise coerce the ball over the goal. Meanwhile, the upper classmen stood off to one side and clucked about school spirit and sportsmanship while occasionally wiping off spatters of blood.

The faculties and administrations alternately approved and condemned football playing. On the plus side, the game revved up school spirit and decreased class sizes. But, on the other hand, there was altogether too much destruction of school property to be tolerated.

In 1860 when the destruction began to spread into the town, New Haven officials complained to Yale authorities, and the game was abolished. Harvard banned football playing the same year. The school authorities may have been echoing all those English kings, but there was one new note -- the bans stuck. Harvard students reacted with an elaborate funeral for "Football Fightum". As they interred the game, one student read an eloquent eulogy while a chorus of mourners solemnly chanted:

Beneath this sod we lay you down, This sign of glorious fight; With dismal groans and yells we'll drown Your mournful burial rite!