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James L. Gilbert's avatar

I always thought that was a weird "claim" for UNC.

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James L. Gilbert's avatar

I've been revisiting odds and ends and the "first" game under the IFA rules has led me on a quest to find map representation of St. George's Cricket Grounds. A one-off #ForgottenFields quest. While the Hoboken Museum has publications that claim the first forward pass, they don't claim the first game. But boy, do they claim a lot of firsts: baseball, Oreos, public air conditioning, etc. (More recently you stated this pass was CC Camp, not Walter.)

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Football Archaeology's avatar

I don't think there is a way to know when the first illegal forward pass in football occurred. I wrote an article about the first touchdown, but an illegal forward pass could easily have occurred in an earlier game than Camp's and not have been reported on since it was just another foul. Most game reports were quite short as it is.

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James L. Gilbert's avatar

I like your demarcation of the 1876 Yale-Princeton game as the first American football game, thus making everything in that game the “first”. Interesting note in the Columbia-Stevens game the day before played under College Association rules with a string at 10’ for goals to be kicked over.

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