College football’s 150th anniversary: The 150 best moments that stood the test of time

150. The Genesis of College Football (1869)

As we celebrate the 150th season of college football in 2019, it is worth looking back and remembering the game that got it all started. In terms of football as we know it today, the game on the gridiron at Princeton on November 6, 1869, would look foreign to current pigskin fans.

The contest more closely resembled soccer than it did football or even rugby. Yet it served as the prototype from which the uniquely American version of the game would develop over the next century and a half.

The two teams of 25 players lined up to kick the ball into their opponent’s goal. The game continued until a goal was scored, and then the two teams reset. Rutgers came out on top 6-4 at the end of the day, prompting fans to run the Princeton throng out of New Brunswick. A week later, the Tigers returned the favor against their earliest rival as the only two teams to play in the 1869 season split their home-and-home series.

149. Duck Brawls Cougar on Autzen Sideline (2007)

In general, we go to football games for the action that happens inside of the thick bands of white paint delineating the gridiron from the rest of the stadium. Sometimes, though, an event outside of those boundaries is so memorable that it cannot be easily forgotten. One such moment came in the 2007 season opener at Autzen Stadium between the Oregon Ducks and the Houston Cougars.

Oregon and Houston played a barnburner in the first half, with the Conference USA side hanging tough against their Pac-10 opponents. The Cougars even tied things up with a field goal on their first possession of the second half. It was the closest they would get in the end thanks to Oregon’s Chip Kelly-coached offense.

The score prompted one of the greatest impromptu displays of two mascots in a donnybrook college football has ever seen. Taking jabs at each other throughout the first half, the two mascots finally went at it full steam. The ensuing brawl remains legend in Eugene and shows that mascots, often seen as the cuddly ambassadors for a school, aren’t always so cuddly after all. It also served as a perfect visual footnote for one of the craziest seasons overall in college football history.

148. American Students Play First Football Game in Europe (1897)

While we tend to think about college football as a uniquely American sport, the fact is that Americans travel around the globe and take their pastimes with them as they travel. Even before the 20th century rolled around, one game opened the doors for the gridiron game to gain a foothold in Europe.

Two groups of American students studying at a pair of influential Parisian art schools, the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian, organized a game against one another on Thanksgiving Day 1897.

The group of young men, mostly graduates of Harvard and other Ivy League institutions, congregated on the field of the Racing Club de France in Levallois in the northwestern suburbs of Paris around 2:30 in the afternoon. While the score was not preserved for history, the game was viewed as a curiosity by the local French press and stands as a landmark moment for college football.