Rutgers University and its neighbor, Princeton, played the first game of intercollegiate football on Nov. 6, 1869, on a plot of ground where the present-day Rutgers gymnasium now stands in New Brunswick, N.J. Rutgers won that first game, 6-4.



The game, which bore little resemblance to its modern-day counterpart, was played with two teams of 25 men each under rugby-like rules, but like modern football, it was “replete with surprise, strategy, prodigies of determination, and physical prowess,” to use the words of one of the Rutgers players.



William J. Leggett, captain of the Rutgers team who later became a distinguished clergyman of the Dutch Reformed Church, suggested that rules for the contest be adopted from those of the London Football Association. Leggett's proposal was accepted by Captain William Gunmere of Princeton, who later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey.



At 3 pm on that memorable afternoon, the 50 combatants and about 100 spectators gathered on the field. Most of the assemblage sat on a low wooden fence and watched the athletes doff hats, coats and vests and use suspenders as belts. To distinguish themselves from the bareheaded visitors, 50 Rutgers students, including players, donned scarlet-colored scarfs which they converted into turbans.



The teams lined up with two members of each team remaining more or less stationary near the opponent’s goal in the hopes of being able to slip over and score from unguarded positions. Thus, the present day “sleeper” was conceived. The remaining 23 players were divided into groups of 11 and 12. While the 11 “fielders” lined up in their own territory as defenders, the 12 “bulldogs” carried the battle.



Each score counted as a “game” and 10 games completed the contest. Following each score, the teams changed direction. The ball could be advanced only by kicking or batting it with the feet, hands, heads or sides.Events leading up to the game were described by John W. Herbert, Rutgers ’72, who was one of the players: “To appreciate this game to the full you must know something of its background,” Herbert wrote in 1933. “The two colleges were, and still are, of course, about 20 miles apart. The rivalry between them was intense. For years each had striven for possession of an old Revolutionary cannon, making night forays and lugging it back and forth time and again. Not long before the first football game, the canny Princetonians had settled this competition in their own favor by ignominiously sinking the gun in several feet of concrete. In addition to this, I regret to report, Princeton had beaten Rutgers in baseball by the harrowing score of 40-2. Rutgers longed for a chance to square things.”



A challenge for the game was issued by Rutgers. Three games were to be played that year. The first played at New Brunswick and won by Rutgers. Princeton won the second game, but cries of “over-emphasis” prevented the third game in football's first year when faculties of both institutions protested on the grounds that the games were interfering with student studies.



Herbert gave this detailed account of the play in the first game: “Though smaller on the average, the Rutgers players, as it developed, had ample speed and fine football sense. Receiving the ball, our men formed a perfect interference around it and with short, skillful kicks and dribbles drove it down the field. Taken by surprise, the Princeton men fought valiantly, but in five minutes we had gotten the ball through to our captains on the enemy's goal and S.G. Gano, ’71 and G.R. Dixon, ’73, neatly kicked it over. None thought of it, so far as I know, but we had without previous plan or thought evolved the play that became famous a few years later as ‘the flying wedge’.”



Herbert then related that his teammates failed to note a conference the Princeton's captain was holding with the giant of the Tiger team, J.E. Michael, ’71, known to his mates as “Big Mike.”



“Next period Rutgers bucked, or received the ball, hoping to repeat the flying wedge,” Herbert's account continues. “But the first time we formed it Big Mike came charging full upon us. It was our turn for surprise. The Princeton battering ram made no attempt to reach the ball but, forerunner of the interference-breaking ends of today, threw himself into our mass play, bursting us apart, and bowing us over. Time and again Rutgers formed the wedge and charged; as often Big Mike broke it up. And finally on one of these incredible break-ups a Princeton bulldog with a long accurate, perhaps lucky kick, sent the ball between the posts for the second score.



“The flying wedge thus checkmated, Rutgers might have been in a bad spot had not Madison Ball, ’73, come through. He had a trick of kicking the ball with his heel. All the game he had been a puzzle to the Princetonians. The ball would be rolling toward the Rutgers goal, and, running ahead of it instead of taking time to turn, he would heel it back. He made several such plays, greatly encouraging his team. Then he capped all this by one tremendous lucky backward drive directly to Dixon, standing squarely before Princeton's goal...Dixon easily scored, giving us a one-goal lead. Big Mike again rose, however, in a berserk endeavor, and, getting the ball, he called the Princeton men into a flying wedge of their own and straight-away they took the ball right down the field and put it over.”