The Rise of College Football.

By 1900 football had become well established as the principal sport in American colleges and universities. After Rutgers defeated Princeton 6 goals to 4 in history's first collegiate football game on 6 November 1869, the sport spread from the Northeast to the Midwest, West, and South. In the Northeast, Yale University, led by former player and unofficial coach Walter Camp, dominated the game. Yale won 197 and lost only 9 games during the 1880s and 1890s, holding opponents scoreless in 1888, 1891, and 1892. In the Midwest the University of Michigan started playing football in 1879 but briefly abandoned the game in 1882, after losing several games to the powerful eastern schools. Michigan resumed football in 1883 and became the region's powerhouse. With the inauguration of an annual game between Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, in 1892, football caught on in the West as well. Southern colleges...