PDA

View Full Version : Yale vs. Princeton - 1903 Video


Bogus Megapardus
March 6th, 2012, 02:25 PM
I saw this on the Ivy Board. Apparently this is the oldest surviving video of an American football game. It was played on November 14, 1903 in New Haven at Yale Field, prior to the construction of the Yale Bowl. Princeton won the game, 11-6.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHBNu-qzGNE




Yale Field, 1910 - One can visualize the need for the construction of the Yale Bowl, which was built four years later:


http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/8118/799pxyalefield1910600.jpg
Cleets
March 6th, 2012, 02:37 PM
I think Yale is still running that offense..?
chattownmocs
March 6th, 2012, 03:07 PM
PBS IMO
Bogus Megapardus
March 6th, 2012, 03:14 PM
I think Yale is still running that offense..?

Just not quite as well, though. xrolleyesx
bojeta
March 6th, 2012, 05:20 PM
Thank you for posting this! One of my goals is to compile all remaining Cal Poly football 16mm film archives into a DVD which could be sold to raise money for the program. That crowd, btw, was good by FCS standards today! Talk about your "hurry up offense" lol...
ursus arctos horribilis
March 6th, 2012, 05:35 PM
Wow man that is awesome. Thanks for posting it. I'm pretty sure I saw Grizo on one of the sideline shots.
jmufan999
March 6th, 2012, 08:34 PM
Talk about your "hurry up offense" lol...

Exactly what I was going to say. Eat your heart out, Chip Kelly!
bulldog10jw
March 6th, 2012, 09:46 PM
That was the first year I had season tickets.
FormerPokeCenter
March 7th, 2012, 10:27 AM
I think it's cool as hell that that the videographer was Thomas A. Edison. That's pretty effin amazing ;)
clenz
March 7th, 2012, 10:56 AM
Amazing video.

It's pretty clear with the very early video the connection American football had to rugby at the start.
kdinva
March 7th, 2012, 11:24 AM
That's a nice find!

by the way, did Beano Cook staff that game for the paper? :D
Bogus Megapardus
March 7th, 2012, 11:36 AM
1903 was the height of the first "Hurry Up" offenses installed by Fielding Yost at Michigan. Look at the records - Michigan was beating opponents with scores like 72-0, or worse. I am speculating, of course, but it could be that word of Yost's approach found its way back east to Princeton and Yale.

Michigan claims several national championships during Yost's initial years, and its record and margins of victory would seem to bear that out. But the top football schools still were in the east, and Yost wasn't playing those teams at first. When Yost finally brought his powerhouse Wolverines to face some Ivy competition - particularly against Penn - it was a different story. After shutting out Michigan State (46-0) and Ohio State (22-0) in 1907, Michigan was shut out by Penn. In 1908, Michigan clobbered Ohio State, Notre Dame and Vanderbilt, and shut out Kentucky, 62-0. Penn then beat Yost's Wolverines in Ann Arbor, 29-0.
carney2
March 7th, 2012, 01:57 PM
Watching them get up and scrum, get up and scrum, get up and... makes you wonder how football ever achieved wide recognition and popularity.
ngineer
March 7th, 2012, 02:32 PM
Literally 3 yards and a cloud of dust!
BEAR
March 7th, 2012, 03:24 PM
First off, why does Laurel and Hardy keep walking by the camera? Sound sucks too. High Def. was not in the budget? I thought you said it was the first football game, not the first recorded rugby game. At the 0:25 mark you see a graduation ceremony trying to happen also. Talk about multitasking on a field..also at the 3:03 mark the kicker gets hit AFTER he kicks away... xlolx