Throwback Thursday: First Football Team

from the eye-popping book Football Nation:

Amid the turmoil, however, a group of young civilians playing on Boston Common beginning in 1862 proved to be an unwittingly influential teenage outfit, recognized years later as the first organized football team in the United States. Drawn from several private high schools, they called their team the Oneida Football Club, with a nod to a New York lake favored by team founder and captain Gerrit "Gat" Smith Miller and perhaps associating themselves with Indian warrior prowess. According to original team member Winthrop Saltonstall Scudder, their only "distinctive uniform" consisted of a "red silk handkerchief-tied around the head, pirate fashion." In combining their preferred elements of kicking games and rugby to customize their own game (known as the "Boston Game"), the Oneidas employed both field goal kicking and limited ball carrying. The team went undefeated against temporarily assembled opponents and drew a bit of bemused news coverage. Years after the Oneidas left Boston Common far behind, their rules were still in use at many New England schools. The Oneidas' significance would later emerge when several of its former players matriculated to Harvard, where they promoted their hybrid game over Association-style football (soccer). 

There is something romantic about a bunch of Boston kids playing a significant role in the evolution of football. It was their game, the Boston Game. Across the pond in England, rugby and soccer had made their distinct split and evolved into their own games. In the United States, no particular form of football was dominant. Among American schools, some preferred a kicking game, others preferred a running game. The absence of any consistency in rules made intercollegiate football competition difficult. In what is considered the first intercollegiate football game, Princeton and Rutgers played a game primarily under Rutgers's rules. 25 men to a side, "batting with hands, feet, head, sideways, backwards, any way to get the ball along." Rutgers won 6-4. The two teams met the following week at Princeton using the host's rules. This game "emphasized a long-ball game, free catches, and free kicks." Princeton won 8-0.

In 1872, the Oneida's Boston Game returned. Harvard's fondness for this game proved significant a year later when delegates from Princeton, Rutgers, and Yale met at a Fifth Avenue Hotel to hammer out some standard rules. Among those rules was one that kept Harvard from attending. The football could not be carried or thrown. Their Boston Game was not compatible. With no one in the area to compete against, Harvard invited Montreal's McGill University to Cambrige for a two-match contest. Harvard easily won the first match under their rules. The second, using McGill's rugby rules, ended in a scoreless tie. Harvard was impressed with McGill's game and their easier to handle "egg-shpaed" ball. McGill also introduced the "try" to Harvard. The Boston Game took another few steps toward "our" football game. It didn't take long for Harvard's fellow American colleges to gain an appreciation for this new game. The first Harvard-Yale football game was played in 1875. They played under what came to be called the Concessionary Rules. Rugby rules with certain changes that Yale requested. Princeton was the last to come around as they had experienced success with their kicking game but they finally did join the rest. On November 23, 1876, delegates from Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton met at Massasoit House in Springfield, Massachusetts. They produced a new football code, based on rugby rules but containing various agreed-upon modifications. The teams operated as part of the Intercollegiate Football Association for the next two decades. It was a loose forerunner of the Ivy League.

1876 was the year that American football got it's greatest kick. The Massasoit Convention marked the first official split from soccer and rugby. It was also the year that Walter Camp arrived on the Yale campus. Football has been a constantly evolving sport ever since. For example, the game was played for thirty years before a forward pass could be legally thrown. There have been many important steps in the nearly 140 years of evolution. Those kids playing their own game on Boston Common in 1862 was a step as important as any. They took that game to Harvard and the school embraced it. They embraced it enough to isolate themselves from their soccer-playing neighbors. The Oneida Football Club. They were significant in the evolution of football. They were significant as the first football team.