Photos: Beautiful panoramics of early American football games
Even then, the crowds were massive
Football’s pre-professional origins are a tale of Ivy League airs and bruising rivalries. And while most Americans associate late November with NFL matchups, the first big games to spark fire on these crisp autumn days were collegial. The Harvard–Yale rivalry goes back to the very beginning, in 1875, when the two teams first squared off. The game was a little different back then—25 players a team, round ball, no snap, all scrum—but the sport was gaining popularity and well on its way to securing its place in our culture. By 1892, an equally intense west coast rivalry had sprung up between Stanford and U.C. Berkeley.
Football was an exceedingly violent sport through the turn of the century. Group formations and scant protective gear contributed to injury and death on the gridiron, until a spike in fatalities—nineteen in 1905—prompted rule changes and increased oversight. In 1906 the forward pass was introduced and the game changed forever.
American football’s rise in the later decades of the 19th century also coincided with the introduction of flexible photographic film in 1888. Free from the burden of glass or metal plates, rolled celluloid allowed the nascent field of panoramic photography to realize its potential, finding subjects in the spectacle of growing cityscapes, waning natural vistas, and stadium sports.
