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The first game of "football" was played between the freshman and sophomore classes at Harvard. The form of rugby was played on the first Monday of the semester, and became known as "Bloody Monday."

The "Bloody Monday" game became a yearly tradition, until 1860, when the Harvard faculty put an end to the event because it usually disintegrated into all-out mayhem.

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I remember I was up in Cambridge, Massachusetts visiting my great Uncle Augustus Postosties, who was a blacksmith up that way.

Well, I accidentally dropped a red coal down the front of Uncle Augustus' overalls, which caused him to lose hold of the gelding he was shoeing. The gelding took off up the street and we gave chase. When we finally caught him, he was grazing the grass in the Harvard campus green.

Well, there was a group of boys just a beating away on each other and flipping around this ball that looked like a giant rabbit pellet. They was playing some kind of a game. Me and Augustus stood there and watched, and I said to him, "Them smaller boys is gonna lose." Any fool could see that in the game they was playing size was the most important advantage

Well, it turns out I was right. I guess this was the first time I ever picked a pigskin loser.

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Princeton and Rutgers play the first intercollegiate football game. These two colleges expressed their rivalry for one another by stealing and re-stealing a Revolutionary War cannon back and forth. Finally, Princeton put an end to the cannon stealing by sinking the gun in a block of concrete.

They then decided to express their rivalry through the game of football. In this early form of the game, the ball could only be advanced with the foot or the head, as in soccer. But there was an exception: The ball could be caught on the fly or on one bounce, then placed in the ground. Teams scored by kicking the ball across the other team's goal between two posts that were 25 feet apart.

This game sounds more like soccer than it does American football, but there was one notable difference that was created on this day: When a Princeton player dribbled the ball soccer-style, his teammates ran along in front of him, and pushed and shoved the Rutgers players out of the way.

The Rutgers players wouldn't stand for this, and they pushed and shoved right back. This was the beginning of "blocking." When the defenders stopped the ball from advancing, it was kicked toward the opposition's goal.

If the ball didn't make it across the goal line, play was resumed in the other direction. Princeton lost 6 - 3.

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I remember me and the missus was heading to Niagara Falls for a little vacation. We made an overnight stop in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

There was a park across the field from the inn where we were staying, and there was a group of young men playing a game that looked like one that had caught my eye some years before, so I went over to have a look-see. Low and behold it was the same game, but different.

This time around, it looked like some boys were trying to make a wall of humanity around the boy with the ball, as a way to keep the other team from getting to him. I got to tell you, these boys were giving it to each other good, back and forth and back and forth.

The Rutgers boys had red scarves tied around their heads, and they looked like they could move a little faster than the Princeton boys. Well, I said to the missus, I said, "Looks to me like them Princeton boys ain't got speed enough for those Rutgers boys, and I think they're gonna lose." Sure enough, the Princeton boys lost 6 - 3.

That's when I started to wondering if maybe I had a knack for the loser picking business.

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The McGill University Rugby team of Montreal, Canada challenged Harvard to a series of football games. It was decided that both games would be played Cambridge, the first game would be played according to Harvard's rules, and second game would be played according to McGill's rules.

McGill played a style more similar to rugby, and used an elongated ball. Harvard won the first game 3 - 0, and the second game ended in a 0 - 0 tie. Still, the Harvard men agreed that the game was more fun when playing the McGill style.

They liked the hard hitting, the lateral passes, and the way that the elongated ball bounced unpredictably. Also, when a ball carrier busted through and crossed the goal line, he was awarded a "touchdown."

The Harvard players agreed to practice the McGill style and meat them again in the fall. This time Harvard beat McGill at their own
game 3-0.

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In 1874, McGill was challenged by Harvard to the first international football match. Harvard was capable of fielding 15 players, but McGill could only field 11. So the Boston team agreed to use 11 athletes -- the number fielded today in American football.

Harvard won the first game 3-0 and the second game was a scoreless draw, but the US team liked the Canadian way of playing (touchdowns, field goals, and tackling) so much, they adopted what are now called the McGill Rules. They laid the template for the present day rules used in the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the National Football League (NFL).

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Harvard plays Yale for the first time. Both teams wore uniforms, also a first in college football. The game was publicized and some 2,000 spectators paid fifty cents each to see the game. Yale lost 4 - 0.

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I saw Harvard take on Yale that first time. I'd traveled up to Cambridge for my Aunt Belle Postosties 75th birthday. Aunt Belle was Uncle Augustus' wife.

After we had a slice of cake, Uncle Augustus pulled me aside and said that they were playing that game over at the campus green, and did I want to sneak off and watch. He told me the game was called, "Football."

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They were charging money to see that game, 50 cents. So, me and Uncle Augustus climbed a tree.

We sat there watching all these boys banging into each other, and it looked to me like the Yale boys were getting pushed around pretty good. I told Augustus that I thought them Yalies were gonna lose, and sure enough they went down 4 - 0.

The first college football game is played in the south in Lexington, Kentucky between Centre College and Kentucky University (Transylvania).

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I remember the game was played in the City Park, and there were about 500 folks, some of them women, standing around and watching these boys butting heads like Spanish Bulls.

Kentucky University beat Centre College 13 ¾ to 0. I remember the Kentucky team had a squad of short and stocky boys and the Centre team was made up of long stringy boys. I knew them long stringy boys wasn't gonna be able to hang with them short stocky boys, and I was right.

I recollect that one of the boys came out of the pile with his hand sliced open on a piece of glass. Apparently they'd been using the park for glass ball shooting.

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Yale completes the first perfect season in history, going 13 - 0 without giving up a point.

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Them Yalies was led by one of the toughest pigskin warriors in the history of the game. His name was Pudge Heffelfinger, and you didn't make fun of his name or he'd hammer you into the ground like a railroad spike.

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Yale plays Harvard in what Yale great Pudge Heffelfnger calls the roughest game he ever played in.

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I was talking to Pudge one afternoon about the Harvard/Yale series and he told me about one of the rougher games he played in.

"We went out there and murdered each other for an hour. One of the Harvards had a broken collarbone, and a Yale teammate was nearly blinded in one eye. All of us were bleeding, and another one of our players was unconscious for five hours after the game. I can still remember him being carried off the field and they just dumped him in a pile of blankets and returned to the game."

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After skipping 1893, The Red Clay Hounds and East Alabama Plainsmen have played every season since, with Auburn leading the series 50 - 46 - 8.

These team's pigskin fortunes are tied up pretty tight. Vince Dooley, an Auburn man, coached the Drool Dawgs to the 1980 National Championship, and most fans of the SEC pigskin game will tell you that the two best players the ever saw were Georgia's Herschel Walker and Auburn's Bo Jackson.

On November 11, Alabama plays its first football game in Birmingham against a group of Birmingham high schoolers. Alabama won 56 - 0.

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Can you believe that Alabama's first pigskin win came against a bunch of high school boys?

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Auburn hadn't been playing much football, so they needed some help figuring out how to beat Alabama.

Well, they hired a Penn State player names F.M. Balliet to coach 'em up for that one game against Alabama. Balliet got them the win, then hopped on the first train back to Happy Valley, and wasn't ever heard from again in the little village on the plains.

No one would ever tell me how much they paid Balliet, but no matter how high the price, I'm sure it was worth it to them Auburn folks.

November 25 , 1893 Tulane and LSU play in New Orleans. Admission was .50 cents.

On the eve of the game, the Times-Democrat explains the game to its readers:

"Football consists of eleven players on a side, seven of whom stand in a line, a yard apart, across from the rival team. This line is called the rush line. It is used to rush or crush against the opposing line, and by surrounding and assisting the man with the ball and interfering and tackling the opposing team, they attempt to move the ball forward.

The quarterback has the job of taking the ball from the center rush, around which all the struggling and tackling takes place, and throwing it to the halfback, fullback, or even a lineman, at which time the whole lass rushes, crushes, and jams forward, opposed by the other side."

The game drew 1,500 spectators. Two 45 minute halves were played, and Tulane won 34 to 0.

Thus football was born in one of the most football-crazed states in the country.1893

Tulane was tough in those days. I remember watching one game between Tulane and Mississippi - in 1896 I think it was - when it had to be stopped eighteen times for players to be carried off the field. Next day, the New Orleans Picayune published a casualty report:

One Tulane player had wind knocked out of him; another Tulane man kicked in face; Mississippi player unconscious, kicked in stomach; Tulane man fainted when roughly tackled; water required to revive Mississippian.

Ten minute delay to stop Ole Miss player's bloody nose; Ole Miss man kicked in head; Tulane man sidelined with wrenched ankle; Tulane man out with arm fracture; breath knocked out of Mississippi player; three black water boys rush to rescue Mississippi man who fainted; sponges, cold water needed to stop nosebleed of Ole Miss player.

Tulane man winded and revived by hard rubbing; an injured ankle; a hurt leg; a busted head; a sick stomach and a kayoed ball carried accounted for five more players being packed off to the bench.

Ole Miss had a player named Garland Mordecai Jones who darted around like water bug when he ran.

Well on one of the first plays of the game, Jones ran over here, then ran over there, then ran over here again and found an opening and bolted 25 yards for a touchdown.

Ole Miss ended up winning the game 56 - 0. Southwest Baptist never turned into much of a pigskin power.

Also, Georgia and Georgia Tech meet for the first time. The Engineers win 28 - 0.

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I remember that game like it happened yesterday. There was a bunch of Bulldog fans waiting at the train depot for the Tech team to show up. When they did, the Georgia people pinched their noses, and threw rocks, and spit, and I even saw a few knife blades flash in the sunlight.

Well, after the Engineers beat the Bulldogs, they ended up having to take the first coal car out of town under cover of darkness. It was a dreary day in Athens.

The next day the Atlanta Journal newspaper warned the Georgia Tech team to take armed security next time they went to Athens.

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On December 22, representatives from the seven southern schools form the Southeastern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SIAA).

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Western Pennsylvania towns Greensburg and Latrobe begin a heated football rivalry, when Greensburg Athletic Club announces it intends to crush all of its opponents. As the football season approaches, Latrobe, still without a quarterback, decides to pay high schooler Johnny Brallier $10 plus expenses.

Brallier is believed to be the first professional football player, and leads Latrobe to a 12 - 0 win over nearby Jeanette. A few weeks later, the Dusquesne Country and Athletic Club begins hiring players.

These hired players attract so many spectators to the games, that the team makes a reported $4,000 profit.

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There you have it folks! The pro pigskin game is born, and Johnny Brallier, a skinny kid with a crooked nose from Latrobe, Pennsylvania, was the first play-for-pay man.

Take a look at the long line of pro pigskin players who've come behind little Johnny - so many great players we couldn't begin to name them all. But every one of them owes their fame and fortune to schoolboy Johnny Brallier.

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On October 30, Georgia's Richard Vonalbade Gammon dies from injuries sustained in a football game against Virginia.

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I remember after that boy died the Georgia State Legislature passed a bill that would've outlawed the pigskin game. But the boy's momma wrote a letter to Governor W.Y. Atkinson begging him not to sign the bill, and saying how much her boy loved the gridiron game.

Well, the Governor read her words and refused to sign the bill. So, football in Georgia was saved by the heartbroken momma of Richard Vonalbade Gammon.

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The University of South (Sewanee) completed the most amazing road trip in college pigskin history, when it traveled 3,000 miles and won five games in five days by a score of 91 - 0.

It defeated Texas, Texas A&M, Tulane, LSU, and Mississippi. Sewanee ended the season 12 - 0. They ended up outscoring their opponents 322 - 10.

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I was riding a train through Mississippi when it stopped in Oxford, and on jumped that great Sewanee pigskin team - maybe the greatest team ever.

They'd just won their fifth game in six days by beating Ole Miss 34 - 0. Those boys were a sight to behold. Not one of them weighted over 170 pounds, and they looked exhausted.

Their trainer Cal Burrows was carrying a big laundry bag that stunk to high heaven. The team was coached by Billy Suter.

Well, Suter opened a newspaper and read to his boys: "Their slashing style of running - hit and scoot, hit and scoot - reminds some of the Little Bighorn. After being beaten by the great Sewanee team, the Baton Rouge Bengals vowed to swear off all intoxicating liquors, tobacco, pasteries, coffee, between meal snacks, and sexual intercourse."

After Suter finished reading, those boys started whooping and hollering, and one of them yelled out, "You play Sewanee and you find religion!"

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Heisman didn't like fowl language and he made his players take cold showers after practice - the hot water was saved for game day, though only the Lord knows why. He coached for 16 years at Tech and was 102 - 29 - 7.

He had to quit coaching at Georgia Tech, after he got divorced and the divorce decree said he wasn't allowed to live in the same city with his wife, "to avoid social embarrassment." Well, his wife wanted to stay in Atlanta, so old John Heisman hightailed it up north to Penn.

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Pop Warner, coach of the Carlisle Pennsylvania Indian School football team, sees Jim Thorpe playing around with some other boys on the track. Warner invites Thorpe to watch football practice.

After a few minutes, Thorpe tells Warner that he can't be tackled. Thorpe takes the ball and begins running up and down the field, knocking some would be tacklers over, and leaving others in his dust.

A Native American member of Oklahoma's Sac and Fox Tribe, Thorpe transforms the nothing school into one of the country's football juggernauts. Thorpe can do everything on the football field better than any player ever has.

Even though Carlisle defeated such football powers as Harvard, Penn, Lehigh, and Army, it is never ranked in the college football polls because of its status as a vocational school rather than a college.

Thorpe went on to lead the Canton Bulldogs to the 1916 pro football championship.

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Thorpe made every other player look like a fool. I saw him play his first game against the University of Pennsylvania. I don't know how many yards Thorpe gained that day, but I remember on one 85 yarder, he broke seven tackles and the spirits of the whole Penn team.

After he glided into the end zone, three Penn tacklers had to be helped off the field and didn't play for the rest of the game.

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Eighteen college football deaths are reported, and President Teddy Roosevelt calls on representatives from Yale, Harvard, and Princeton at mid-season and tells them he will abolish the sport if it doesn't become safer.

Under the leadership of Walter Camp, the teams establish new rules to open the game up. A neutral zone is established, linemen have to play on the line, games are shortened from 70 to 60 minutes, and another official is added. Also, the forward pass is legalized.

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Teddy Roosevelt didn't want to outlaw the pigskin game. After all, he was one of our roughest, toughest presidents.

Probably our best pigskin playing president was Gerald Ford, who was an All-American guard at Michigan. Other political leaders who were gridiron greats include Jesse Jackson and Supreme Court Justice Byron "Whizzer" White.

Jackson went to Illinois on a pigskin scholarship, but left for North Carolina A&T after he found out he wouldn't get a shot to play quarterback for the Illini. White was a spectacular player for Colorado and was a consensus All-American in 1937.

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St. Louis University coach Eddie Cochems teaches halfback Brad Snyder the art of throwing the watermelon-shaped ball, and teammate Jack Schneider the art of receiving it.

St. Louis uses its passing play to beat the mighty Iowa Hawkeyes 39 - 0. St. Louis goes on to an undefeated season during which they outscored their opponents 402 -11.

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There were about 2,000 people at that Iowa game, and when Snyder tossed that ball, the place went so quiet, you could hear the leaves fallin' off the trees.

Then Schneider caught the ball like it was a baby dropped out of a burning building. And we all just looked at each other with our chins on our chests, and I remember thinking, "Anything is possible in this pigskin game - this beautiful damned game."

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Auburn and Alabama play to a 6 - 6 tie. Because of a disagreement over travel expenses, the two schools do not play again until 1948.

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The Iron Bowl wasn't played from 1907 to 1948 on account of a argument over $34 in the game contract.

In late September 1908, Auburn agreed to a compromise on the contract and Alabama agreed to meet Auburn's demands on the players' per diem, but then they couldn't get together on a date to play, so they called the dadgum thing off.

They tried to get the thing started again in 1911, then again in 1923. In 1923, Auburn president Spright Dowell denied Bama's request to play, saying, "such a game would make other games, contests and events subservient to the one supreme event of the year.''

Alabama went on to be a national power under Wallace Wade, and Auburn, except for a few years, took a slide into the deep end. Auburn still tried to get the thing going again in 1944, but this time Alabama told them climb a tree. Apparently the Alabama board of trustees though the rivalry would lead to the pigskin game getting too important and an increase in the hatred between the two schools.

Then in 1948, the game started again thanks to a conversation between the schools' presidents, Ralph B. Draughon of Auburn and John M. Gallalee of Alabama.

They were at a meeting in Birmingham when Gallalee said ``there's no reason in the world why Alabama and Auburn can't play one another.". Draughon agreed, and a meeting was set up at the Ann Jordan Farm near Kellyton, just off U.S. 280 near Alexander City, Alabama.

The meeting took place in April. In December 1948, the big game was played at Birmingham's Legion Field. Alabama had earned a national reputation with trips to the Rose and Sugar bowls, kicked some Tiger tail, 55-0.

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I remember the Vols were coached by former Penn player George Levene, and Georgia was coached by Branch Bocock. Well, the Bulldogs were threatening from the Tennessee one yard line. They tried to run the ball up the middle, but they didn't make it.

Before the next play, this great big mountain of a man standing near the end zone put his hand on his gun and said, "First man to cross that goal line's gonna get a bullet in his head." On the next play, Georgia fumbled. I believe it was fullback Hugh Bostwich who dropped the ball. Well, who the heck could blame him?

Texas A&M's Vincent "Choc" Kelley receives the hike on his own 45 yard line and crosses the field five times before spotting daylight and running for a touchdown.

Kelley carried the ball an estimated 245 yards on that one play, believed the be the longest touchdown run in Texas A&M history, and the longest touchdown ever given up by LSU.

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One of the damndest plays I ever saw. Ol' Choc Kelley went back and forth and back and forth across the field, and none of us could understand what was happening.

Well, he got those LSU boys so fowled up that they started tripping all over like someone had tied their shoelaces together. Then he just picked a hole and took off into the end zone, where he kneeled and blessed himself.

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Vanderbilt plays Yale in New Haven. Coach Dan McGugin tells his players, "In some of the northern military cemeteries lay your grandfathers, and out there on the field are the grandsons of the damn Yankees who put them there."

McGugin himself was born in Iowa, attended Michigan, and his father, a Union soldier, had followed Sherman to the sea. The game ended in a tie.

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Now Knute Rockne's "Win One For the Gipper," locker room speech has fooled most people as the greatest speech of its kind ever given, but I disagree strongly.

The greatest locker room speech ever was given my McGugin in 1924 before Vanderbilt's contest against Minnesota. McGugin looked his players in the eye and said, "With each one of you boys there was a time when you were two months old, or five months, when your mother looked at you in the cradle, and she wondered just what kind of heart beat in that little body.

She wondered how this boy, as he grew into a man, would meet his first real test of courage: whether when that time came she could feel the pride that only a mother can feel for a son who is courageous - and fearless - or whether there might, perhaps, have to be a different feeling. She knew that such a day, such a time would come. Today… she may still be wondering.

"Now I got to tell you, if I was a young buck getting ready for a gridiron battle, and I'd heard that speech, I might've run through a wall and eaten and anvil, my blood would be boiling so. By the way, Vandy beat the Gilded Rodents 16 - 0.

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Notre Dame, with Jess Harper as coach and Knute Rockne as a player, used the forward pass to beat a highly-favored Army squad. Rocke caught a 40 yard pass for the game's first touchdown. Notre Dame won 35 - 14.

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After Eddie Cochems threw that pass to Brad Snyder back in '06, and St. Louis slayed the Hawkeye giant, a lot of high school coaches started experimenting with passing the ball.

The colleges still weren't doing it much on account that in those days an incomplete pass wasn't nothing more than a fumble, and that was a high risk to take. But not when Jess Harper's Fighting Irish team had players like Rockne and his roommate Chuck Dorias, who'd learned how to pass and catch in high school.

In June 1913, Rockne and Dorias quit their life-guarding job and spent the summer tossing the ball around. When the pigskin season came, Harper handed them a play book chock full of passing plays. Well, in their first three games the Irish scored 169 points. Rockne was the first receiver to run pass routes with sharp corners and cuts.

He found seams in the defense and he changed pace in the middle of a pass route, and he came back for the ball - all the stuff that teams do today. It was a sight to see.

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