Another 'Pass' At History

Citing convincing evidence, former athletic director Rocky Carzo says the start of U.S. college football actually began with a Tufts victory.

Medford/Somerville, Mass. [09.27.04] Rocky Carzo will be the first to tell you about the small wooden plaque hanging in the gym that commemorates the first U.S. college football game. The only problem is, it’s located on the wrong campus. Citing research he’s amassed over four decades, the former Tufts athletic director says an 1875 Tufts-Harvard match-up was the first true college football game – not the oft-cited Rutgers-Princeton game. His findings, say college football experts, are very convincing.

“From our perspective, it’s indisputable: Tufts and Harvard played the first intercollegiate football game in America,” Carzo told The Boston Globe, which recently published a lengthy story about his research. “I know some people are going to take shots at us for saying it, but that’s good. That’s OK.”

Some of those shots will likely come from Rutgers and Princeton alumni, who have long-claimed their 1869 match-up was the sport’s first.

Carzo doesn’t deny the Rutgers-Princeton game was played first. “Look, the whole Princeton-Rutgers thing, it makes sense. Obviously, it was documented that it was a game between two schools,” he told the Newark Star Ledger. “Our only contention is, they played soccer.”

He points to numerous accounts of the 1869 game describing the rules and equipment.

“By Carzo’s research, as well as a detailed description of the ’69 game on the Rutgers website, the rules governing the game that day were vastly different than the so-called ‘Boston Rules’ employed less than six years later between Tufts and Harvard,” reported the Globe. “The ’69 game, with 50 men on the field (25 a side), its ball smaller and rounder and its play similar to rugby, ‘bore little resemblance to its modern-day counterpart.”

The 1875 Tufts game, however, had a distinctly football-like feel.

“A major difference between the two periods, noted National Football Foundation College Hall of Fame President Bob Casciola, is that the ’69 game only allowed kicking the ball,” reported the Globe. “Most significantly, he said, picking up the ball and running with it to advance the offensive play [which was not allowed in ‘69] was central to the ’75 game.”

Likening the Rutgers-Princeton game to European soccer, Casciola told the Globe that the 1875 Tufts-Harvard game was the “real McCoy.”

The historic match-up – which Carzo emphasizes was won by Tufts – was covered by Boston newspapers and recounted in an extremely detailed letter written by Eugene Bowen, an eye witness to the event.

“Bowen wrote a letter to our football coach in 1949 detailing the game, how we prepared for the game and how the game was conducted,” Carzo said in an appearance last week on ESPN2’s morning show Cold Pizza.

After sitting unnoticed in the athletic department’s files, the letter was rediscovered in the 1960s by Paul Rich, the University’s sports information director.

“I remember going through the files, including the Bowen letter, and thinking, ‘My God, what a great history,’” Rich, now 67-years-old, told the Globe. “No question, the ’69 game was more a soccer game. And, you know, it’s been written about over the years. I know it made its way into the press when I was sports information director, but it never really caught on, really, except on campus. Maybe we’re at fault, because we didn’t push it enough.”

Rich isn’t the only one who’s been convinced by Carzo’s research – which will be published in his upcoming book “Jumbo Footprints: A History of Tufts Athletics.”

“I think it’s somewhat a matter of re-education, and I think it’s definitely worth getting into,” Casciola, who heads the National Football Foundation College Hall of Fame, told the Globe. “It speaks to both evolution and refinement of the sport.”

As for Carzo, he isn’t trying to eliminate the Rutgers-Princeton game’s place in the history books – just refine it.

“We’re not trying to displace anybody,” Cazro told the Globe. “But part of being in the academic business is being in the quest for truth – and if we find it, we find it. And with that comes the obligation to say something about it.”

And if that doesn’t work, Carzo says the question can always be settled on the field.

“I think there’s a great way to settle it,” Carzo told ESPN. “I think Rutgers and Princeton should play Tufts and Harvard. The game should be sponsored by ESPN and we should work it out.”