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       #Post#: 1785--------------------------------------------------
       First Thanksgiving Day Football Game Played
       By: Road2HardCoreIron Date: November 30, 2022, 8:35 am
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       November 30
       First Thanksgiving college football game played
       On November 30, 1876, Yale defeats Princeton, 2-0, in Hoboken,
       New Jersey in the first collegiate football game played on
       Thanksgiving. Nearly 1,000 fans attend the game, played in cold,
       rainy weather. "The friends of both colleges mustered in good
       force," the New York Times reports. "Several carriages
       containing ladies were on the ground, and a goodly number of
       Alumni were there to cheer the contestants."
       The football was oval and made of leather, the Times noted,
       "similar to those used in Rugby Union rules." The game resembled
       rugby more than a present-day football game.
       READ MORE: Who Invented Football?
       Playing conditions were not ideal. "[T]he ground was so hard
       that terrific thumps and bruises were the rule and not the
       exception," the New York Daily Herald reported. But each team
       was superbly outfitted.
       "The Yale team wore blue skullcaps, shirts, stockings of the
       same color and white flannel trowsers," the Daily Herald
       reported. "The Princeton lads were gorgeous in their orange and
       black uniforms."
       Play became ragged, with the game reportedly resembling
       Greco-Roman wrestling. Perhaps the first example of college
       football trash talk was noted by the Daily Herald.  "Just wait
       awhile, and we will show these fellows something," a Princeton
       player was quoted.
       The Yale-Princeton Thanksgiving game started a collegiate
       tradition. Later in the 19th century, the universities of
       Kansas, Missouri, Michigan and others began playing football on
       the holiday.
       On November 6, 1869, a little more than four years after the end
       of the Civil War, Rutgers defeated Princeton, 6-4, in the first
       college football game.
       .
       FOOTBALLSPORTS HISTORY
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