Today's Tidbit... College Football and Money in 1880

Princeton’s 1880 football team (Wiki)

Among the most important years for rule changes in college football history was 1880. That year, football began using eleven players per side instead of fifteen and switched from the rugby scrummage to the football scrimmage, with one team possessing the ball for a series of downs. Two years later, they added a rule requiring teams to gain five yards in three downs or give up possession of the ball.

While football was in its infancy, and few played it, a snowy Thanksgiving Day game between two undefeated teams -Yale and Princeton- drew more than 4,000 people to the Polo Grounds in Manhattan.