| 1870 college football season | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total No. of teams | 3 | |||
| Regular season | November 5–12, 1870 | |||
| Champion | Princeton | |||
| ||||
The1870 college football season is regarded as the secondUnited Statesintercollegiate football season. The season involved only three teams and two known games which took place in November 1870. As in 1869, the season's two games occurred about fifteen miles apart inNew Brunswick and inPrinceton,New Jersey.
A year after thefirst intercollegiate football games occurred betweenRutgers College (nowRutgers University) andCollege of New Jersey (nowPrinceton University), a third team –Columbia College (nowColumbia University) – joined them.
The rules at this time were based on thefootball rules published by theLondon Football Association in 1863. These rules were the precursor to the modern rules offootball (soccer), but they included elements similar torugby football that would be important in the evolution ofAmerican football.
Teams scored “goals” by kicking a round ball between two goal posts on a goal line. The ball was advanced by kicking it, although passes to players in front of the ball werenot permitted.
Under the 1863 Association rules, any player could catch a ball that had been kicked or had bounced only one time but could not run with the ball. Following such a catch, that player could pass the ball to another player or have a free kick from that spot. If a ball passed the goal line without going between the posts, the team whose player touched it first was awarded a free kick. If that team was the defending team, the free kick was taken from the point on the goal line closest to where the defending team touched the ball. If that team was the attacking team, it took the free kick from the spot that was 15 yards from the point on the goal line closest to where the attacking team touched the ball.
The Association rules left certain fundamental rules of the game unspecified. The rules did not specify the size of each team, the duration of a game or whether play would be subject to breaks. These and other matters were agreed by teams (or stipulated by the home team) prior to each game. As such, the Association rules introduced a certain uniformity to the rules of football, but much like football played in English public schools at the time, the actual rules applied varied somewhat game-to-game.
On Saturday November 5,Rutgers beatColumbia 6–3 on the Rutgers’ campus inNew Brunswick, New Jersey. A week later, on November 12,Princeton defeated Rutgers 6–2 on the Princeton campus inPrinceton, New Jersey, in a rematch of 1869's two-game series.[1]
Princeton was the only one of the three teams that did not suffer a defeat in 1870 and is thus able to claim to have had the first undefeated season, albeit having played only one game. Although it would be several decades before the idea of a “national champion” would take hold, theNCAA has recognized three poll selectors – theBillingsley Report, theNational Championship Foundation, andParke H. Davis – that retroactively awarded Princeton the 1870 college football national championship.[2]
Although only three teams participated in intercollegiate football in 1870, football was played, as it had been for many years and with varying degrees of acceptance, at other schools in the north-eastern United States. AtVermont, the annual football game between the freshman and sophomore classes was held on 5 October.[3] AtDartmouth, the faculty initially banned the sport in autumn 1870,[4] but reversed course in late October. On October 29, the faculty permitted a football match to be held, for which the school furnished the balls, made the regulations and appointed an umpire.[5]
Other schools, such asYale[6] andHarvard,[7] banned the game outright. On 31 October, a Yale student was arrested after a group of sophomores were caught playing football onNew Haven Green.[8] Following the arrest, a group of 200 students gathered outside the police station and one student, Arthur Watson, was seriously injured after being clubbed over the head by a policeman (Officer Kelly). A committee of students complained to the Police Commissioners who split 2–2 (the Mayor abstained) on bringing charges against the officers.[9]
| Team | Former conference | New conference |
|---|---|---|
| Columbia | Program established | Independent |
| Conf. | Overall | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Team | W | L | T | W | L | T | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Princeton | – | 1 | – | 0 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rutgers | – | 1 | – | 1 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Columbia | – | 0 | – | 1 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
