Northwestern kicked off the first complete game of American football in the Midwest on Tuesday, February 22, 1876. As we near the 150th anniversary of this (until recently) forgotten milestone, HailToPurple.com is posting a series of articles about the game. This information uses research from the 2023 book Gus Hornsby's Gamble, which describes that first game in detail.

By Larry LaTourette


This article posted on the date of the 150th anniversary of Northwestern's first football game, played on February 22, 1876. Previous posts have looked at the details of the game, the first NU team, the first playing field, and the season and holiday that set the stage for this game. Now we address the biggest question: so what? What made this game significant—to Northwestern and to American football in the Midwest? There are at least three aspects to consider.


1. IT WAS THE FIRST GAME STAGED IN THE MIDWEST

As previously described, the February 1876 game between the Chicago Foot-Ball Club (the CFBC) and NU was the first full game of American football played in the Midwest. While the CFBC had scrimmaged with other groups in late 1875, including the Chicago Barge Club and St. Ignatius College, the team considered these practice sessions. The week after the NU game, CFBC co-founder Gus Hornsby referred to it as the CFBC's "first 'foreign' match," rather than scrimmages the CFBC had played by splitting its own teams into practice squads. In interviews conducted in 1909 and 1922, Hornsby also refers to the Northwestern game as the CFBC's first match. The game predates the match typically cited as the first American football game in Chicago by over three years (the 1879 game between Michigan and Racine).


2. IT CLAIMED SEVERAL OTHER FIRSTS (OR EARLY DEVELOPMENTS)

Hornsby employed the Concessionary Rules agreed to by Harvard and Yale in November 1875. This style of play, which favored Harvard's rugby-style American football (as opposed to the prevailing soccer-style football that most other Eastern teams played), was a significant step forward in the development of American football. The Northwestern-CFBC game was only the second-ever game anywhere that employed American football's new rules.

Hornsby, however, modified two parts of the Concessionary Rules, and these modifications are critical to the sport's development. First, as an expert English rugby player, he insisted on using a rugby ball instead of a round (soccer-style) ball. The Concessionary Rules favored Harvard rugby but made a concession to Yale by allowing the use of a round rubber ball. As a result, the Northwestern-CFBC game was the first game anywhere to use the new rugby-style rules with an oval rugby ball. The second change Hornsby made was to the value of touchdowns. The version of football favored by Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and most other Eastern schools at the time didn't even count touchdowns: they were only ways to give a team a better shot at a field goal. The Concessionary Rules counted touchdowns, but weakened them so that three touchdowns could be converted to one goal. Hornsby counted touchdowns separately and scored them distinctly from goals. Another first set by the February 1876 game: as mentioned in the previous post, it was played on a holiday, making NU the first known college team to play American football on any holiday.

Program from the Concessionary Rules game, showing Yale's association ball

Regardless of which set of rules was used or where it was played, the game makes Northwestern one of the oldest football teams among current Division I schools. Only Princeton, Rutgers, Columbia, Yale, and Harvard have older programs in Division I.


3. THE GAME HAD AN EFFECT ON CHICAGO FOOTBALL FOR YEARS TO COME

Strangely, the game had little lasting effect on Northwestern athletics, but it did spark the events that would lead to American football taking an early hold in Chicago.

In the wake of the 1876 game, Northwestern's players decided to form a club and play by the new rules. However, they eventually decided to play only intramural games, extending no invitations to other teams. Within two years, the club disbanded, and students returned to playing the earlier kicking game. The school turned down invitations to play other teams in 1878, but did play a couple of high schools in scrimmages in 1879 and 1881 (these games are rightly considered unofficial). Eventually, Northwestern played Lake Forest in both schools' first intercollegiate games in 1882.
 

Photo of William Curtis, taken shortly before he formed the Chicago Athletic Club

However, the 1876 match had a pronounced effect on the CFBC, and particularly on CFBC co-founder William B. Curtis. Curtis and Hornsby had become frustrated by early 1876 at their failure to orchestrate a full football match, but the Northwestern game showed them that their efforts could succeed. Curtis was not just the co-founder of the CFBC; he was the co-founder of both the Chicago Athletic Club (in 1872) and the New York Athletic Club (1868). Curtis was wealthy enough to split his time between New York and Chicago, and he eagerly brought East Coast athletic pursuits to Chicago, including—at Hornsby's suggestion—American football. After the success of the 1876 game, Curtis lined up other matches in Chicago, even as Hornsby's involvement with his team began to drop off. During the next three years, the CFBC played games against Beloit and the University of Michigan's senior class. Crucially, Curtis also staged matches against other teams he helped to set up in Chicago, including the "Chicago Southsides" FBC. When the CFBC disbanded in December 1879, Curtis turned his attention to these other Chicago teams and recruited East Coast college football alumni living in the Chicago area.

One of Curtis's early attempts at an alumni all-star team was the Chicago Rugby All-Stars, which featured C.J. Williams (the CFBC's last captain) as the All-Stars' captain. The team began playing in 1881. A later effort produced the University Club of Chicago, which played Michigan in 1884. By 1885, Chicago-area alumni and athletic association teams proliferated, and the city's second independent team, the Chicago Wanderers, was founded. Curtis folded the University Club alumni team into his Chicago Athletic Club to form the highest-caliber team the city had yet seen, and local interest in the sport exploded.

The University Club / Chicago Athletic Club dominated Chicago football in the late 1880s through 1892. The team went undefeated and unscored upon in 1889 (beating Northwestern 28-0). Curtis's creation drew in the best talent from the East Coast, Michigan, and throughout Chicago. The team's players transitioned to the Chicago Athletic Association in 1892. During the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, American football became a featured attraction. Northwestern hosted the Denver Athletic Association during the Fair, but the headlining game was the CAA taking on Army, West Point's first road game aside from visiting Navy*.

By the mid-1890s, there were dozens of other athletic associations, many of which formed solely to challenge the University Club / CAA athletes. One such club, formed in 1898, was the Morgan Athletic Club on Racine Street, which became known as the Racine Street Normals and later the Racine Cardinals (the legendary origin of the club's nickname: when team owner Chris O'Brien bought surplus jerseys from the University of Chicago, the players complained about wearing Chicago's maroon hand-me-downs. "That's not maroon," O'Brien is reported to have said, "that's Cardinal red!"). The team became a founding member of the NFL. Now located in Arizona, it is the oldest team in the league. The Cardinals are the end result of the chain of interests set in motion years earlier by William Curtis, who determined that football had a place in Chicago.




*Army considers this game an exhibition, and does not include it in the team's official records.