On November 6th, 1869, on a grassy field in New Brunswick, New Jersey, two groups of college students gathered for a game no one had ever seen before.
There were no helmets. No pads. No forward passes.
Just 25 players on each side, one round leather ball, and a new set of rules that borrowed from soccer and rugby — but would soon evolve into something entirely different.
That afternoon, Rutgers University defeated Princeton, 6 to 4, in what’s now recognized as the first college football game ever played.
It was the birth of a sport that would grow from a quirky campus experiment into a national obsession.
Learn more about how it all began — on this episode of Sports History Daily.
