The 1902 All Oregon-Multnomah Christmas Game

During the 2024 football season, a social media account reviewed each college conference and its members' oddest historical opponents. The list included many amusing opponents. While many names are entertaining, the lists also show that teams of different stripes intermingled in football days past. Today, football has boundaries that keep high school, college, and professional teams from playing one another. The NFL no longer plays the CFL, town teams, athletic clubs, or semi-pro teams. Few military bases and ships have teams that play outside competition.

TV and radio weren't available back in the day, and transportation challenges limited the number of nearby teams for vast swaths of the country. So, football remained a participation sport after high school more than today. Teams of all sorts played other teams of all kinds at varying levels of seriousness. We don't have the same mix and gradations today.

On Christmas Day 1899, Carlisle met Cal in Berkeley, becoming the second football team to travel toward the setting sun and cross the Rockies. Further north, the Multnomah Athletic Club of Portland, Oregon, played Willamette the same day.

There weren't many college teams in the Northwest then, so Willamette and other college teams often played athletic clubs like Multnomah, which fielded strong teams with former college players for several decades. The athletic club boys defeated the college boys that day and were nice enough to host Willamette for an evening performance of the play Shenandoah.

Multnomah enjoyed the Christmas game in 1899 and arranged to play another game against Oregon three years later. This was 122 years before Oregon became the #1 seed in the college football playoffs.