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# Did You Know? The First College Football Game Was Rutgers vs. Princeton in New Brunswick, 1869
- URL: https://www.stateoflaughs.com/did-you-know-first-college-football-game/
- Published: 2026-10-19T21:35:37.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-21T01:53:51.000Z
- Description: Rutgers 6, Princeton 4, New Brunswick, Nov. 6, 1869: widely recognized as college football's very first game. Two Jersey schools invented a sport by arguing. Of course they did.
- Author: Mike McGinn
- Tags: Only in Jersey, Sports & Fun, #new-jersey, Did You Know

*Did You Know?*

On Nov. 6, 1869, in New Brunswick, Rutgers hosted Princeton, which at the time still officially went by the College of New Jersey. It's widely recognized as the first college football game ever played, and Rutgers won it, 6-4.

Wait. College football? The whole thing? The bands, the tailgates, the rivalries, the entire Saturday? It started in New Brunswick, between two New Jersey schools? What is happening?

Actually, once I thought about it, it made total sense. Here's the rule: in Jersey, two neighbors can't just play a game. They have to win it. Give two Jersey neighbors a ball and a lawn, and by Tuesday they'll have a rulebook, a grudge and a rematch on the calendar.

So the way I see it, college football was born as two Jersey siblings arguing in the backyard, and the rest of the country just pulled up a chair.

Start with the headcount. According to Rutgers, each side had 25 players on the field at once. Twenty-five! Fifty college men chasing one ball on one patch of grass. At that size you don't pick a team. You wave in every cousin, every neighbor and the guy who came to fix the gutters. It must have looked like someone dropped a twenty at a packed block party. Then the next street heard the yelling and joined. By the end, half of Middlesex County is in a pile, and nobody remembers whose twenty it was.

Then the rules, such as they were. You could kick the ball or swat it with your hands. No holding, no tripping. Honestly, it sounds a lot closer to soccer than anything you'd see on a Saturday broadcast. And Rutgers says maybe 100 people came out to watch. No luxury boxes, no big screen, no $14 nachos. Just a crowd on the grass, the way an entire family ends up on the back steps when the siblings start getting loud. The school paper, the Targum, described it as "headlong running, wild shouting, and frantic kicking." I've read that five times, and I still can't tell if it's a football game or the last ten minutes of a wedding reception.

Then, naturally, the rematch at the other kid's house. A week later they played at Princeton, under Princeton's rules, and both schools agree Princeton won 8-0\. Every sibling knows this one. Your house, your rules. Rutgers went from inventing the sport to scoring zero points in seven days, which is like building a treehouse and getting locked out of it before you've hung the sign.

And then the parents stepped in. A third game was supposed to settle it. According to Princeton's archives, faculty at both schools thought football was eating into study time, so it never happened. Two schools invent a sport, and they get sent to their rooms. No tiebreaker, no dessert, go do your homework. Try telling a stadium today that the big game is off because there's a paper due Monday.

So here's the recap. The first game was played where the College Avenue Gym stands now, on Rutgers' New Brunswick campus. Twenty-five a side, about 100 fans, a 6-4 Rutgers win, an 8-0 Princeton answer, and a third game grounded by the faculty. Every fall Saturday in America runs on a backyard argument from Middlesex County.

And now I'm unbearable about it. Somebody mentions a bowl game and I'm already clearing my throat: "You know, the first one was in New Brunswick." Nobody asked. At the next cookout I'll be laying out 25-man teams with salt shakers. When I run out of salt shakers, I'll move on to the ketchup bottles, then the paper plates, then somebody's flip-flops, and I'll be demonstrating "frantic kicking" with a bag of rolls. As far as I'm concerned, the 1869 tiebreaker is still pending, and I would like both schools to know I'm available to referee. I don't know the rules. I'll bring the salt shakers.

**Sources**

- [Rutgers University, "The Birthplace of College Football"](https://www.rutgers.edu/news/birthplace-college-football?ref=stateoflaughs.com)
- [Rutgers Athletics, "The First Game: Nov. 6, 1869"](https://scarletknights.com/sports/2022/7/25/sports-m-footbl-archive-first-game-html?ref=stateoflaughs.com)
- [Princeton University Archives, "This Week in Princeton History for November 13-19"](https://universityarchives.princeton.edu/2017/11/this-week-in-princeton-history-for-november-13-19/?ref=stateoflaughs.com)
- [Princeton University Archives, "When Did the College of New Jersey Change to Princeton University?"](https://universityarchives.princeton.edu/2015/07/when-did-the-college-of-new-jersey-change-to-princeton-university/?ref=stateoflaughs.com)
- [Sports-Reference, Princeton at Rutgers box score, Nov. 6, 1869](https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/boxscores/1869-11-06-rutgers.html?ref=stateoflaughs.com)
- [Wikipedia, "1869 Princeton vs. Rutgers football game" (cross-check only)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1869%5FPrinceton%5Fvs.%5FRutgers%5Ffootball%5Fgame?ref=stateoflaughs.com)