November 30, 1876 the First Thanksgiving Day Football Game: How New Jersey Helped Create an American Tradition

 November 30, 1876, Thanksgiving Day, is cold and wet in northern New Jersey.  Temperatures in Hoboken that early afternoon are near freezing, and an icy sleet is falling.

About 1,000 fans have gathered outside on what is called the St. George’s Cricket Ground on this Thanksgiving Day to watch twenty-two collegiate athletes, eleven students from Princeton and eleven from Yale, faceoff in the first ever Thanksgiving Day American gridiron football game.

Some sources say the game was played, like modern American football by teams of eleven-on-eleven, though others say that there may have been as many as fifteen players per side, but whatever the number, the game played on that cricket ground that day was unique enough to be considered something entirely different from other collegiate sports that were popular at the time such as rugby or soccer.

Most who gathered at the local cricket grounds in Hoboken, New Jersey that day, were former alumni or simply curious spectators who braved the elements to witness the spectacle of this newborn sport called American football.

St. George's Cricket Grounds pictured in 1870 hosting a cricket match

The New York Times reported that, “The friends of both colleges mustered in good force…several carriages carrying ladies were on the grounds and a goodly number of alumni were there to cheer the contestants.”

Needless to say, field conditions weren’t exactly optimal for gridiron football on that Thanksgiving Day.  On the Friday after Thanksgiving the New York Herald Tribune said of the playing surface that, “The ground was so hard that terrific thumps and bruises were the rule, not the exception.”

The game these Ivy League athletes played on that Thanksgiving Day in New Jersey way back in 1876 little resembled the sport of American football that so many of us in America have come to consider just as much a part of our Thanksgiving celebration each year as turkey and pumpkin pie.

In an article published in November of 2014 the Princeton Alumni Weekly referred to the first ever Thanksgiving Day American football game as something that, “[C]ould best be described as an 11-on-11 form of rugby.”

In fact, what is considered to be the first ever American gridiron football game had been played only seven years prior, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, between Rutgers University and Princeton.  Most probably, for the majority of the thousand or so spectators in attendance at the game on Thanksgiving Day in 1876 it was the first time they had ever actually seen a game of the novel new sport called American football.

Artist's Rendering of the First American Football Game 1869

Even the football used by Princeton and Yale on that Thanksgiving Day in 1876 was something heavy and leather covered that was rounded in shape and more akin to a modern-day rugby ball or even a medicine ball than a truly spherical football.

There was no forward pass.  

Each team had three downs to move the ball a total of five yards to achieve a first down as opposed to modern American football’s rule of four downs (plays) to move the ball a total of ten yards.

There were no pads or helmets.  Though the Princeton team did take to the field wearing baggy brown pants and black sweaters adorned with an orange letter P on the front, a logo that has stood the test of time and remains the primary logo of the Princeton Tigers to this day.

The team from Yale, on the other hand, took to the frozen field that day wearing bright blue skull caps or beanies and tight white pants and sweaters. 

The 1876 Princeton University Football Team

There was much commentary in the contemporary press about the contrasting stylishness, or lack thereof, in the uniforms of the two opposing teams.  And although blue and white still remain Yale’s official school colors to this day, something tells me that this initial Thanksgiving Day uniform look was probably quickly retired given the fact that it makes the players who wore the uniform resemble what could best be described as human condoms.  (See picture below.)

1876 Yale Football Team (Note the rather unique uniforms)

On that day there were  probably eleven but definitely no more than fifteen players  on each side.  Players at that time played both offense and defense. 

There were no huddles, per se, but the ball was snapped and positions were roughly analogous to those used in American football today, absent the position of wide receiver, which would have been anachronistic anyway in a game without the forward pass.

There were uprights, somewhat like in today’s game, located at opposing goal lines about one-hundred yards apart.  In 1876 the game was simply played as a sporting test of courage between collegiate athletes in the Fall and early Winter, and no one was really too particular or exact when it came to ground rules.

Scoring was also somewhat different.  At that time a so called touchdown, running with the ball across the opposing team’s goal line, was worth about three points (give or take a point based on the venue of play) there was no extra-point, or field goal as we know it today, though much like in Australian rules football a player running with the ball could at anytime, dropkick the ball through the uprights, and score a single point for his team.

After four quarters of riveting play in the freezing cold rain on Thanksgiving Day 1876, Princeton defeated Yale by a score of 2-0 based on what I’m led to believe were two single point dropkicks through the Yale uprights, though it could have been a 2-0 victory on a safety, which is something that either may, or may not, have existed at the time according to the fluid ever-changing rules of early American gridiron football.

Still, despite all of the kinks yet to be worked out, and despite the awkward and ever-evolving nature of the early rules of American gridiron football, this first Thanksgiving Day game was such a success that yearly Thanksgiving contests between the two Ivy League football powerhouses of Yale and Princeton became a tradition.

Eventually, the annual Thanksgiving Day football game became so popular that it was forced to move from its initial home at the cricket grounds in Hoboken, New Jersey, to even larger fields and stadiums in New York City.

In just over fifteen years, by 1893, the annual Thanksgiving Day football game between Princeton and Yale drew a crowd of over 40,000 fans and was reported on by newspapers across the United States.

The 1893 Yale/Princeton Thanksgiving Football Game 

That 1893 Thanksgiving Day game, a 6-0 victory by Princeton while on their way to an undefeated season that year, despite its popularity with fans across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut would be the last played by the two teams on Thanksgiving Day. 

After the game in 1893 Yale’s faculty voted against playing football on Thanksgiving, considering it immoral and irreligious, to hold any sporting contests on a day like Thanksgiving that was supposed to be set aside for giving thanks to God.

However, despite the moral objections of some conservative faculties across America, the tradition of playing football on Thanksgiving that was born in the freezing rain in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1876, was here to stay for good.

Over the course of the past 156 years America, like American football itself, has undergone many challenges and many great changes.  In fact, given the brutality of the sport, by the turn of the 20th century many vocal critics in the United States were calling for football to be banned in colleges and universities across the country.  See Creative History’s article “The Homicidal Pastime” from November 2020:  https://creativehistorystories.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-homicidal-pastime-how-teddy.html 

But the sport of American gridiron football, just like America itself, not only survived but even grew and prospered with the passage of time.  And today, thanks in large part to the great Garden State of New Jersey, which hosted the first Turkey Day contest way back in 1876, football each Thanksgiving is just as American as turkey dinner, pumpkin pie and family togetherness.