Postseason Football and the 1896 Yale Consolidated Team

(XX'Yale vs. N.A.C.,' Nashville Banner, December 24, 1896.)

From the beginning, postseason football involved a combination of the joy of sports, the opportunity to travel, good sports, and the chance to make a few bucks. Some things never change.

The Yale Consolidated team of 1896 was among the first to gain nationwide publicity for their postseason play. It was the brainchild of George Foster Sanford, who played for Yale in the early 1890s, graduated from Yale Law in 1896, and coached Cornell that year. He later had stints at Columbia and Virginia before an 11-year tenure at Rutgers, during which he volunteered.

Sanford's original vision involved a Southern barnstorming trip with current and recently graduated Yale players who were amateurs. However, Sanford planned to play himself, and the rules of amateur play were stricter then. Since Cornell paid him to coach, he was considered a professional, and any player involved in a game in which Sanford appeared lost their amateur status.

Sanford's team included players from Yale, Wesleyan Brown, and other schools. However, some doubted their true identities, and many Yalies preferred that the team not associate itself with Yale, regardless of the players' identities. Still, the name's value for promotional purposes meant the Yale Consolidated team remained in use.

News of the trip and potential games emerged the Friday after Thanksgiving. A game against the Nashville Athletic Club on Christmas Day was scheduled. The Southern Athletic Club, or Tulane's varsity, was reportedly a New Year's Day game in New Orleans, and other games were possible.

After Yale Consolidated announced a slate of five games, the team faced opposition from several fronts. Caspar Whitney, the writer who named the first All-American team, wrote a column criticizing the team for its commercialization of the game. Meanwhile, the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the SEC, ACC, and Southern Conference's forerunner forbade member schools from playing Yale Consolidated. (The same meeting saw the ban athletes from playing under assumed names and swearing on the field of play.) The Harvard Crimson suggested the Yale Consolidated tour likely would not take place due to the Yale, Brown, and Cornell elevens banning team members from participating.