Walter Camp: A Very Brief History Of Collegiate Sports

On the day of November 6th, 1869 the first game regarded as a game of football was played. The two collegiate teams participating in the game were Rutgers and Princeton, two Ivy League rivals trying to revolutionize collegiate sports (www.nfl.com). Although if a person were to have watched this game they would have a hard time believing this was football at all. This is because the game played on that day very closely resembled the game of rugby. Teams still consisted of 20 players on each side, but this is still considered the first official football game ever to be played between two teams.
As years went on more and more Ivy League schools began creating their own teams to participate in the growing sport. In 1873 four teams: Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton, and Yale Universities all met in New York City to discuss the establishment of the first collegiate football league (www.nfl.com). At this meeting they also established the …show more content…
Walter Camp made additions like the down system where each team would have three downs to obtain 5 yards (History.com). He also extended the playing field to one hundred and ten total yards length wise.
But it wasn’t until 1892 that football teams and rivalries were truly created. By this time the game of football had extended and several new clubs had been created for players to play in. During this year there was a heated rivalry between two different clubs the Allegheny Athletic Association (AAA) and Pittsburgh Athletic Club (PAC) was arisen (History.com). It was during this year that William Heffelfinger became the first player ever to be paid to play in a game for a team. This makes him regarded as the first professional player to ever play for the AAA and has been marked in history as a major