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Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sport
Patrick Andres

When Was the First College Football Game? A Look at the Start of a Fall Institution

Football Rutgers Princeton The Scarlet Knights Tigers

Anyone who's taken Latin (or Latin-adjacent subjects like philosophy and logic) in an American college in the past 156 years knows that ex nihilo nihil fit—nothing comes from nothing.

Fans watching college football's titanic early-season clashes this year—Texas-Ohio State! Notre Dame-Miami! Alabama-Florida State!—may find it hard to draw a through-line between today's game and the leather-helmet era, which recedes further into history every fall. Modern college football (a thoroughly professional endeavor) is televised, analyzed, streamed and beamed into homes across North American and the world.

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