The 150th Anniversary of Princeton Football

Princeton vs. Dartmouth • Nov. 9, 2019 • Yankee Stadium

Could the 25 players on each side for the then-College of New Jersey and Rutgers have envisioned what college football looks like 150 years later?

The game played on Rutgers' campus on Nov. 6, 1869 may have looked more like soccer or rugby than football as we have known it for decades now, but the history of the game that will celebrate its 150th anniversary this fall traces its history back to that November day.

The first decade or so of the now-Princeton football team saw between one and four games a year according to records, with the team playing a nine-game schedule first in 1881. The scoring system evolved closer to what we know today in 1883, and football's popularity grew so much that it was the subject of a reforms summit at the White House with President Teddy Roosevelt in 1905, with representatives from Harvard, Yale and Princeton there. Three decades before that, representatives from Princeton, Yale, Columbia and Harvard met to standardize the rules of the game, first at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York in 1873 and then at the Massasoit House in Springfield, Mass., three years later, shaping the rules that drew presidential attention after the dawn of the next century.

A year after Roosevelt's intervention, a rule change that would revolutionize the game – the forward pass – came to be in college football, leading today to a Princeton record book that shows 11 players with 3,000 or more yards passing in their careers, none of whom played at Princeton earlier than 1973.

The game's popularity led Princeton to build Palmer Stadium, constructed over four months in 1914 and lasting for 82 years, seating as many as 45,000-plus and serving as the inspiration for the shape of Princeton Stadium, which stands today.

It also led to the formation of the Ivy League that we know today, and the championships for which hundreds of Princeton athletes now compete every year across 33 Ivy League sports. In 1945, the league's presidents formed the Ivy Group Agreement, which then applied only to football and in the next decade grew beyond that, formally creating the Ivy League in 1954. Heading into the 2019 season, Princeton has won 12 of those Ivy League football championships, running the table with a perfect 7-0 Ivy record in 1964 and again in 2018.

It has led to the creation of national honors like the Heisman Trophy, which Dick Kazmaier '52 won in 1951 and has become both a title that connotes excellence within the game and a trophy every sports fan knows, with players striking the stiff-arm pose. One of those trophies, thanks to Kazmaier, is on display in the lobby of Jadwin Gym.

It has led to traditions that have spread across the sport, with other colleges and countless high schools sporting the winged helmet that returned to Princeton with the opening of Princeton Stadium and began with Herbert "Fritz" Crisler in 1935.

It has spawned the career aspirations of many players who've worn the Orange and Black to play and work in football as a profession, with kicker Charlie Gogolak '66 taken sixth overall in the NFL Draft in 1966 and Princeton players hearing their names called as recently as Seth DeValve '16 in 2016. Speaking of iconic designs in sports, the head coach of the star-helmeted Dallas Cowboys, Jason Garrett '89, is the second-winningest coach of one of the NFL's most recognizable brands. Detroit Lions vice chairman William Clay Ford Jr. '79, whose family has endowed the Ford Family Director of Athletics at Princeton, Minnesota Vikings president Mark Wilf '84, and Atlanta Falcons president and CEO Rich McKay '81 are among those Princeton alumni who are guiding organizations in the NFL.

And for fans, it has developed decades and generations of traditions, from tailgates to rivalries, from the band to cheerleaders, and countless more within families, some with many Princeton ties, some with split alma mater loyalties, all coalescing around an annual meeting in a game whose roots began to take hold 150 years ago this fall.

Championships. Careers. Awards. Stadiums. Traditions. Could the 25 Princetonians who made the trip to New Brunswick in 1869 have envisioned any of it?

Calendar

Upcoming Events

Recent Results

Players Mentioned

Seth DeValve

Upcoming Events

Recent Results

Princeton University Athletics