Celebrating 145 Years of Thanksgiving Day Football

Gridiron football emerged from a primordial ooze of soccer and rugby. The Rutgers-Princeton game of 1869, considered the first college football game, had twenty-five players per side and used a round ball and soccer-like rules. Other schools began playing rugby, and the inconsistency led Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia to form the Intercollegiate Football Association on Thursday, November 23, 1876. They adopted a slightly tweaked version of rugby as their common game, with the first game played under those rules coming one week later when Yale and Princeton met at the St. George Cricket Club in Hoboken. Played the last Thursday of November, the match was football's first Thanksgiving Day game, which means Thanksgiving 2021 is the 150th anniversary of Thanksgiving Day football. To honor this glorious occasion, we will review how the pigskin and turkey became a thing.

Returning to 1876, Yale had the advantage over Princeton since Yale was among the teams that had played under rugby rules for several years. The soccer-playing Princeton was playing its first match under the rugby rules. It showed. Yale won two goals to zero, and the Princetonians were left only with the hope of avenging the loss the following year. (Princeton waited two years for the next Thanksgiving game and six years for their first Turkey Day win.)

Princeton's 1876 football team dressed for a soccer match. (Princeton University Historical Photograph Collection, Campus Life Series (AC112), Box LP36, Image No. 2525)

Yale's 1976 team played three games, beating Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia to claim their championship. Walter Camp stands third from right. (Public domain)

Less important than what happened in the first game is the tradition that followed. For thirteen of the next eighteen years, the Yale-Princeton game on Thanksgiving Day in New York City marked the end of the football season and the effective national championship game. Newspapers across the country filled most of their pages with syndicated feeds -including reports on Eastern college football- leading football enthusiasts at high schools and colleges nationwide to mirror Yale and Princeton by scheduling rivalry games on Thanksgiving. Despite lectures from puritanical clergymen who warn that Thanksgiving should be a day for somber reflection and church attendance, football games were more entertaining, and the celebratory version of Thanksgiving took hold.