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Rowing: The First Intercollegiate Sport
By 1844, students at Harvard and Yale had formed informal rowing clubs. The first intercollegiate match was held in 1852, but it was not that serious.
Reports of the Oxford-Cambridge race led students at schools such as Harbard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, and Columbia to become more serious about races. -
Baseball: The First Intercoollegiate Game
The first recorded Intercollegiate baseball game was between Amherst and Williams. Baseball soon became the most widely played sport on college campuses throughtout the 19th century. -
Track and Field
By the 1860s, American students began to devote a day to running, jumping, and throwing contests.
In 1876 the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletics of America was fomed. Annual games were held at the New York Athletic Club at Mott Haven.
In 1882 Harvard hired a general trainer and prohibited association with athletes and professional coaches, demonstrating one of the earliest instances of control. -
Football: The Beginning
The first football games were used as initiation for incoming college freshman. In the 1860s and '70s, two types of football started. One was similar to soccer, while the other one more closely resembled rugby. The latter was popular in the Boston area with schools such as Harvard.
In 1876, students from Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and Harvard founded the Intercollegiate Football Association. -
Rowing: Oxford vs. Harvard
The race between Harvard and Oxford in 1869 was the race that indicated the seriousness of the competitions that had developed as wll as the growing public attention. It led to the formation of the Rowing Association of America in 1870, which included sixteen northeastern colleges. By the 1870s and 1880s, clubs began hiring professional trainers and coaches in order to win. -
Football: Moving Toward the Modern Game
Walter C. Camp was responsible for several rule changes in the 1880s. Camp got the rules committee to change the way the ball was put into play from a scrum, like in rugby, to having a line of scrimmage to seperate the offense from the defense and allowed the offense to retain possession of the ball unless it was kicked to the opposition or fumbled.
A year later, Camp introduced the idea of having three attempts to gain five yards or be forced to give up the ball. -
Football: Moving Toward the Modern Game Continued
Camp later introduced tackling below the waist.
He was also instrumental in starting the practice of having coaches. He became an advisor to the Yale team and would meet with the team to go over strategies at night. Eventually, other schools began modeling their programs after his system.
