College Football Tickets

The birth of football in the United States coincided with the birth of college football on November 6, 1869 with an inter-collegiate game between Princeton and Rutgers Universities at New Brunswick, New Jersey. That first game, nearly 140 years ago, was very unlike the modern football played today. With 20 players to a side, and with no officials, that first game was more rugby-like than today’s football. A soccer style round ball was used, and the game was played on a 120 yards by 75 yards field. Rutgers won this home game 6-4, but lost the return away game 8-0.

The game developed slowly, and by 1875, the same year when an egg-shaped leather covered rugby ball was adopted, teams from Columbia, Yale, Harvard, and Stevens Tech had joined in. The game now had three officials – one judge from each team, and a referee.

By 1876, the number of players per side was reduced to 15, the size of the field was reduced to near today’s dimensions, and a crossbar – 10 feet in height – was added to the goal posts. In the early 1880s, Walter Camp – a former Yale Player – revised the rules, and the game started taking shape of the game we know today. Some of the revisions were:

11 players to a side.

A scrimmage system for putting the ball in play.

A system of downs for advancing the ball. It required a team to make 5 yards in 3 downs. (The current system of 4 downs to make 10 yards was adopted in 1912).

With these changes, the popularity of the game rose, and by the turn of the century, 250 college teams were playing football.

In the 19th century, there was no ‘forward pass,’ and the teams applied the ‘flying wedge’ strategy, where a wedge of teammates surrounded the ball carrier. Those days there was no head protection, and the practice of throwing oneself onto the legs of the opponents to break the ‘wedge’ was quite a dangerous move.

The game, then, was one of brute force, and there were a number of deaths and serious injuries. There was a clamor to ban the game, and several colleges, including Columbia, banned football. The demand for reform grew, and was supported by President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1910, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was created, and since then has been responsible for formulating changes in rules, and setting up procedures under which football programs are operated.

Whether you are looking for regular season college football tickets, or tickets for bowl games, or for the championship games, the tickets are not easy to come by. Contact us at Reedstickets.com for the NCAA football tickets for your favorite teams. We have the wherewithal to arrange for all types of tickets you wish.

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