The 1874 Harvard-McGill Games and the American Ball

This story is fact-based and ends with speculation. It concerns the games played by students from Harvard and McGill universities 150 years ago yesterday and today that were critical to the development of gridiron football in North America. Had McGill not introduced rugby to Harvard and Harvard not adopted rugby as a result, the gridiron game we know today likely would not have developed. McGill's challenge was an important milestone in football's evolution. Yet, the only thing we know about the ball they used in those games was that it was round.

Background

Students at American universities in the 1860s and 1870s generally played "football" kicking games with rules that varied from campus to campus. They played a similar stew of games in England but began formalizing them in the 1860s into what is now soccer (the Association game) and rugby. The games played in American colleges were soccer-like, but Harvard was an exception. They enjoyed a local Boston game that allowed players to carry the ball.

University students in Canada played rugby, leading the ruffians at McGill in Montreal to challenge Harvard to play two games: one using the Boston rules and the other using the Rugby Football Union rules. They met in May 1874, playing the first game under Boston rules using a round ball, and planned to play rugby the following day using a rugby ball. Rugby balls at the time were plum or melon-shaped with a 30-inch circumference or slightly larger than today's basketball. Unfortunately, the McGill team forgot to bring a rugby ball with them, and they could not find one in Boston, so they used the same ball they had used the previous day. The question is, what type of ball did they use in those games?

The ball sits on the ground before the referees as Harvard and McGill prepare for America’s first intercollegiate game of rugby football. Jarvis Field, Cambridge, May 15, 1874. (Davis, 1911)

Inflated Balls in the 1870s

The various inflated balls used in sports worldwide originated as inflated bladders. A pig or sometimes sheep bladder did the trick and is the likely reason we refer to footballs as pigskins. They tied off the inflated bladder like a balloon, but the bladders’ lack of durability led to encasing them in leather. Pigs and their bladders are not uniform in size and shape, so the footballs made with those bladders were not either. They also were problematic since the pig bladders were inflated by mouth, and those who did the inflating risked acquiring infectious diseases from inhaling air from inside the bladder.

Things began changing when Charles Goodyear developed the vulcanization process and his vulcanized rubber ball in 1855. His ball and those that followed it were round and constructed of rubberized canvas. They became known as the American ball.

Meanwhile, Richard Lindon, a cobbler in Rugby, England, was the first to use vulcanized rubber to produce rubber bladders. His bladders were more robust, eliminated the need for animal bladders, and allowed balls to be manufactured in uniform sizes and shapes. Rubber bladders quickly became the universal innards for leather-covered rugby and soccer balls.

Early rugby and soccer balls often had leather buttons on either end, as seen in this rugby puntabout button ball. (Richard Lindon & Co.)