Today's Tidbit... Old and New Football: Harvard-Yale of 1906

The 1906 Harvard-Yale game included numerous elements of old-school football, but the game's sole touchdown came following two plays enabled by the 1906 rule changes. One involved an onside kick from scrimmage and the other a forward pass.

Both teams entered the game undefeated. Yale was 9-0-1, having tied Princeton 0-0 the week before, while Harvard was 10-0, partly due to their refusing to play Princeton between 1897 and 1910.

As always, the game attracted a capacity crowd to Yale Field. The crowd was immortalized the following day when the New York Times published the first known reference to fans enjoying a pre-game football picnic, a practice known as tailgating since the 1950s.

The train crowd came principally about noon. ….Each trainload as it reached the station quickly hurried away down Church Street to the campus in a mad rush to get cars to make the journey to the field. …Few were able to get luncheon on the way, and these gazed with envious eyes as they neared the field at small parties of automobilists eating tempting viands that had been brought in hampers spread out in picnic fashion on a table cloth laid upon the ground.

‘A Football-Mad Throng,’ New York Times, November 25, 1906.