Extract from Chapter 4: ‘Pigskin pioneers’ | American football spreads in the 1880s and 90s
Although American football’s best-known teams were college-based, it became hugely popular in the 1880s and early 1890s. The annual championship-deciding games, held in New York on Thanksgiving Day, drew particularly large crowds, on a par with the attendances at contemporary English FA Cup finals. There were 24,000 spectators at the 1887 Harvard–Princeton game, and 40,000 saw Yale meet Princeton six years later.
The region’s press, particularly the New York World, started giving football generous coverage. The high-society excesses of the Ivy League scene already gave popular newspapers plenty of gossip fodder, and college football allowed them to tie this in with their sports coverage. Meanwhile, the game was becoming a lucrative sideline for the universities: the 1893 Princeton–Yale championship game, for example, made a net profit of $30,000.
College football was spreading far beyond the Northeast, with the Los Angeles-based University of Southern California taking it up in 1888, and several teams springing up in Midwestern and other central states soon afterwards. But it was the ‘Big Four’ – Harvard, Princeton, Yale and rising power Pennsylvania – who dominated this period. In 1888, their first season with a coach (inevitably Walter Camp), Yale won all of their 13 games, outscoring opponents by a total of 694–0. The next year, when Camp named the first All-American team, judged to be the best college players of the year, all 11 were from Harvard, Princeton or Yale.
In 1890, the Big Four won 41 of their 42 games against other opponents. Yale’s 1888 team was bursting with outstanding players and characters. At one end of the forward line was Amos Alonzo Stagg, also a talented baseball player, and soon to play an important role in basketball’s early development. Stagg would go on to become one of the great names in college football history, with a coaching career that continued until he was 96 years old, spawning a host of tactical innovations along the way.
At left guard was 6ft 3in powerhouse William Walter ‘Pudge’ Heffelfinger, a farmboy from Minnesota, later to be named regularly in the All-Time All-American selection. Their captain was centre William ‘Pa’ Corbin, whose sideburns and bushy moustache could be a handicap in a sport where players would impede opponents by grabbing anything they could get their hands on. During a game in 1887 he turned to referee Walter Camp (so well respected that he was accepted as a referee in his own college’s games) several times to complain: ‘Mr Referee, this Harvard man is pulling my whiskers!’
The region’s press, particularly the New York World, started giving football generous coverage. The high-society excesses of the Ivy League scene already gave popular newspapers plenty of gossip fodder, and college football allowed them to tie this in with their sports coverage. Meanwhile, the game was becoming a lucrative sideline for the universities: the 1893 Princeton–Yale championship game, for example, made a net profit of $30,000.
College football was spreading far beyond the Northeast, with the Los Angeles-based University of Southern California taking it up in 1888, and several teams springing up in Midwestern and other central states soon afterwards. But it was the ‘Big Four’ – Harvard, Princeton, Yale and rising power Pennsylvania – who dominated this period. In 1888, their first season with a coach (inevitably Walter Camp), Yale won all of their 13 games, outscoring opponents by a total of 694–0. The next year, when Camp named the first All-American team, judged to be the best college players of the year, all 11 were from Harvard, Princeton or Yale.
In 1890, the Big Four won 41 of their 42 games against other opponents. Yale’s 1888 team was bursting with outstanding players and characters. At one end of the forward line was Amos Alonzo Stagg, also a talented baseball player, and soon to play an important role in basketball’s early development. Stagg would go on to become one of the great names in college football history, with a coaching career that continued until he was 96 years old, spawning a host of tactical innovations along the way.
At left guard was 6ft 3in powerhouse William Walter ‘Pudge’ Heffelfinger, a farmboy from Minnesota, later to be named regularly in the All-Time All-American selection. Their captain was centre William ‘Pa’ Corbin, whose sideburns and bushy moustache could be a handicap in a sport where players would impede opponents by grabbing anything they could get their hands on. During a game in 1887 he turned to referee Walter Camp (so well respected that he was accepted as a referee in his own college’s games) several times to complain: ‘Mr Referee, this Harvard man is pulling my whiskers!’