1882 Yale-Princeton, Football’s First Championship Game
The FBS championship will be determined tonight, making it a good time to look back on college football’s first official championship game. That game occurred on November 30, 1882, the result of an April 1882 Intercollegiate Football Association resolution:
…providing that the first and second teams in a season’s championship series should be permitted to play their game the following year in New York on Thanksgiving.”
Davis, 1911
It may seem odd that they based the 1882 championship game on team records from the 1881 season. However, the game was the final game scheduled among the members of the Intercollegiate Football Association, which included Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia. In most years, the teams with the best records the previous year also had the best records the following year. Plus, the idea of a postseason game would have been inconceivable to them.
During the season, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton each beat Columbia, while Yale beat Harvard 1-0 and Harvard beat Princeton 2-1. That meant that if Princeton beat Yale, all three would have 2-1 records and would tie for the 1882 season championship, though Yale would retain the title; their 1881 championship carrying over. Of course, if Yale beat Princeton, the Elis would be the undisputed champions.
We now view the 1882 season as notable since it was the last played before football adopted a points-based scoring system. In 1882, teams scored only by kicking goals, whether from contested kicks on the field or a free kick after a touchdown. Both counted the same. The 1883 points-based system would count field goals as 5 points, goals after touchdowns as 4, touchdowns as 2, and safeties as 1, but for now, teams only scored by kicking goals.
The day before the game, New York City experienced heavy snow. Despite the conditions, the game carried on, as one reporter predicted the morning of the game.
The game will be called at half past 2 o’clock, and will be played in spite of snow, rain, hail, thunder and lightning, or any other trifling thing. All day yesterday fifty men in the employ of the managers of the Polo Grounds were at work with wheelbarrows and carts, shovels, pickaxes and brooms, removing the snow which has recently fallen. If the united efforts of these men prove futile in clearing the grounds of snow, the football game will be played, “even if the snow is twenty-five feet high and the players have to be hoisted into the grounds with derricks.
‘The Football Championship,’ New York Tribune, November 30, 1882.
Thursday morning, the wind was blowing a hooley, traveling west to east, and since the field at the Polo Grounds also ran east-west, it impacted the kicking game all contest long, north-south runners not being desirable.
Shortly before the game started, the teams selected Edward T. Cabot as referee, Cabot having captained the Harvard eleven that year. The turn of the copper resulted in Yale defending the east goal and Princeton the west. It was a back-and-forth game with many punts, often coming after fair catches. Both teams scored in the first half, with Princeton’s boot traveling 65 yards, aided by the wind.
The key moment of the game came in the second half when Tompkins of Yale carried the ball across the Princeton goal as numerous players hung on his back. Back then, teams did not earn a touchdown until the ball carrier physically touched the ball to the ground, so Princeton and Yale battled in a “maul-in” for five minutes. The Yale players tried to force Tompkins to the ground, while the Tigers wanted to keep him upright. It went on long enough that fans left the stands to participate in the mess.
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Eventually, Tompkins touched down, and despite Princeton’s protests over the crowd’s involvement, Cabot ruled in favor of Yale. It took the police five minutes to clear the crowd from the field, but once they succeeded, Tompkins lay on his stomach and held the ball for Richards, who booted the ball through the uprights for a Yale goal. The kick gave Yale a 2-1 lead, and since neither team scored again, Yale earned the 1882 championship.
We may have an equally exciting game tonight, though we will not witness a maul-in since teams now score when the ball breaks the plane of the goal line. However, if the game comes down to a Tush Push or two, I’m picking the Hoosiers.
Enjoy the game.
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