College Football

College football evolved in the late 1800s from the merger of English Rules Football (a.k.a. 'soccer') and the more violent game of Rugby. The first college football face-off occurred in November 1869 between Princeton University and Rutgers University. The final score was six to four in Rutgers favor--the low score an indicator of how dissimilar the first college game was in comparison to the popular sport of today.American college football truly emerged after Harvard University faced-off against McGill University from Canada. These two teams came onto the field with different ideas about how to play and arrived at an interesting compromise. Other teams began to adopt the rules from this compromise, and the sport quickly became popular across American and Canadian campuses.During the early days of college football, the sport was wickedly violent. As a result of a spate of player deaths, President Roosevelt actually threatened to dissolve the game altogether. Part of the problem was that players didn't have great protective equipment. Another problem was that formations, such as the 'flying wedge,' often led to the trampling deaths of players right on the field.In the ensuing years, as teams implemented safety measures, the sport matured. One of the greatest rivalries in the sport is the legendary Harvard-Yale game, which pits the two most well known Ivy League colleges against one another in a contest held near Thanksgiving weekend. Yale holds the overall victory record, but Harvard has a better recent record in the contest. In 2004, Yale fans tricked Harvard fans into holding up a massive sign reading 'We Suck!'