Today's Tidbit... And The Band Played On

Wisconsin played at Northwestern on Saturday, exiting Northwestern's temporary stadium with a 23-3 win. Northwestern will use the on-campus temporary stadium this year and next while building a replacement for Dyche Stadium. Although the temporary stadiette seats only 12,000+, at least the stands remain standing before, during, and after the game.

That was not always the case with college football stadiums. I reviewed examples of bleacher collapses and other tragedies that made the news in the past, most of them occurring before WWI. Still, I wanted to return to the first disaster mentioned in that article, the case of the collapsing bleachers at the 1890 Princeton-Yale game at Eastern Park in Brooklyn.

Collapsing bleachers were more common in the past for several reasons. One was that schools sometimes installed temporary stands to accommodate the crowds for big games. The temporary stands were sometimes rented wooden stands used by traveling circuses; other times, they were built from scratch. Either way, some had rotted wood or lacked proper support. Inadequate maintenance led to similar problems with permanent stands on occasion.

The Thanksgiving Day game featured the 10-0-1 Princeton Tigers and the 12-1 Yale Bulldogs, who were coming off a loss to Harvard. Neither team could match Harvard's unblemished record and claim to supremacy. Still, it was the top football game of the year, especially among society folks.

('Yale's Football Team,' Evening World (New York), November 27, 1890.)