Editing College football (section)

====Harvard–McGill (1874)====
{{main|1874 Harvard vs. McGill football game}}
[[File:HarvardMcGill.jpg|thumb|The [[1874 Harvard vs. McGill football game|McGill vs. Harvard football game]] in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]] in 1874; Harvard won 3–0.]]
Old "Football Fightum" had been resurrected at [[Harvard College|Harvard]] in 1872, when Harvard resumed playing football. Harvard, however, preferred to play a rougher version of football called "the Boston Game" in which the kicking of a round ball was the most prominent feature though a player could run with the ball, pass it, or dribble it (known as "babying"). The man with the ball could be tackled, although hitting, tripping, "hacking" and other unnecessary roughness was prohibited. There was no limit to the number of players, but there were typically ten to fifteen per side. A player could carry the ball only when being pursued.

As a result of this, Harvard refused to attend the rules conference organized by Rutgers, Princeton and Columbia at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City on October 20, 1873, to agree on a set of rules and regulations that would allow them to play a form of football that was essentially Association football; and continued to play under its own code. While Harvard's voluntary absence from the meeting made it hard for them to schedule games against other American universities, it agreed to a challenge to play the rugby team of [[McGill University]], from [[Montreal]], in a two-game series. It was agreed that two games would be played on Harvard's Jarvis baseball field in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]] on May 14 and 15, 1874: one to be played under Harvard rules, another under the stricter [[rugby union|rugby]] regulations of McGill. Jarvis Field was at the time a patch of land at the northern point of the Harvard campus, bordered by Everett and Jarvis Streets to the north and south, and Oxford Street and Massachusetts Avenue to the east and west. Harvard beat McGill in the "Boston Game" on the Thursday and held McGill to a 0–0 tie on the Friday. The Harvard students took to the rugby rules and adopted them as their own,<ref name=PFRA1>{{cite book | chapter = No Christian End! | title = The Journey to Camp: The Origins of American Football to 1889 | publisher = Professional Football Researchers Association | chapter-url = http://www.profootballresearchers.com/articles/No_Christian_End.pdf | access-date = January 26, 2010 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150402124846/http://www.profootballresearchers.com/articles/No_Christian_End.pdf | archive-date = April 2, 2015 | url-status = live }}</ref><ref>[http://www.athletics.mcgill.ca/varsity_sports_article.ch2?article_id=111 Infamous 1874 McGill-Harvard game turns 132] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061206062313/http://www.athletics.mcgill.ca/varsity_sports_article.ch2?article_id=111 |date=December 6, 2006 }} at McGill Athletics, published by McGill University (no further authorship information available). This article incorporates text from the ''McGill University Gazette'' (April 1874), two issues of ''The Montreal Gazette'' (May 14 and 19, 1874). Accessed January 29, 2007.</ref><ref name=davis>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/stream/football002320mbp#page/n77/mode/2up|title=Football, the American intercollegiate game|page=64|author=Parke H. Davis|author-link=Parke H. Davis}}</ref> The games featured a round ball instead of a rugby-style oblong ball.<ref name=davis/> This series of games represents an important milestone in the development of the modern game of American football.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.mcgill.ca/athletics/newsroom/spotlight/item/?item_id=106694 |title=Spotlight Athletics |publisher=Mcgill.ca |date=May 14, 2012 |access-date=October 22, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121018211559/http://www.mcgill.ca/athletics/newsroom/spotlight/item/?item_id=106694 |archive-date=October 18, 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|title=Parke H. Davis '93 On Harvard Football|page=583|journal=Princeton Alumni Weekly|volume=16|date=March 29, 1916|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ThJbAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA583|via=[[Google books]]}}</ref> In October 1874, the Harvard team once again traveled to Montreal to play McGill in rugby, where they won by three tries.

In as much as Rugby football had been transplanted to Canada from England, the McGill team played under a set of rules which allowed a player to pick up the ball and run with it whenever he wished. Another rule, unique to McGill, was to count [[Try (rugby)|tries]] (the act of grounding the football past the opposing team's goal line; there was no end zone during this time), as well as goals, in the scoring. In the Rugby rules of the time, a try only provided the attempt to kick a free goal from the field. If the kick was missed, the try did not score any points itself.