Rise of College Sport.

In the last half of the nineteenth century, sports became an essential element of college life. Intercollegiate sport emerged before the Civil War, with rowing, or crew, being the first college sport. In the 1830s students at prestigous eastern colleges formed informal rowing clubs, and by 1846 Harvard and Yale clubs began to compete against noncollegiate organizations. In the ensuing decades rowing was joined by baseball, cricket, and football on college campuses. The first intercollegiate football game played to rugby rules was between McGill and Harvard on 15 May 1874, and ended in a scoreless tie. In the 1870s football grew into the leading college sport in the United States, and in 1876 Princeton, Rutgers, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale met in Springfield, Massachusetts, to form the American Intercollegiate Football Association. At that meeting the schools agreed on the Rugby Union rules for college football...