Keeping Crowds Behind the Ropes

While many histories of early football have written about the large crowds attending the Yale-Princeton games played at Manhattan Field or the Polo Grounds in the 1880s and 1890s, most pre-WWI football games occurred before sparse crowds in facilities with little or no permanent seating. For every Harvard Stadium, Yale Field, Michigan’s Ferry Field, or Chicago’s Marshall Field seating twenty thousand or more, another hundred college fields lacked sufficient seating, so most attendees watched the game while standing on the sidelines. Wealthy or lucky fans watched from their horse-drawn carriages or automobiles lining parts of the field.

The 1902 Michigan-Stanford game in Pasadena, now considered the first Rose Bowl, had horse-drawn carriages lining several sides of the field. (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan)

Spectators stand in their cars while behind others standing along the sideline at the 1914 Florida-Sewanee game at Barrs Field in Tampa. The baseball grandstand is in the upper right. (1915 Florida yearbook)