User:Murphanian777/Preliminary football at Notre Dame

Old-Style football
The University of Notre Dame did not play rugby football until the rules were introduced to them by the University of Michigan in 1887. Prior to this, the University played a brand of football (and alternatively foot-ball) that was common among many American colleges from the 1820s through the early 1880s. The sport was known broadly as the "Kicking Game", although at Notre Dame this spectacle was known as "old-style" foot-ball. Old-style shared many of the same traits that the early soccer games held, and was loosely based on the rules standardized by the London Football Association in 1863. However, there were certain qualities which differentiated the contests from their English counterparts. The most distinct variation was the process by which a team would win. In soccer, the team who scored the most points in a set timeframe would be declared the victor. In the old-style game however, players were given an indefinite time, and whoever scored first would be awarded the point for that period. Periods were initially known as "games" and later "innings" over the ever-popular pastime of baseball at the University. These periods were also seen more as individual games than divisions within an overall contest, creating some confusion on how to write their outcomes. "Best of five" was considered to be the standard for these periods, although best of three, best of seven, and single games were also employed. This method of scoring was standard within the wider Kicking Game and many of the early intercollegiate football games during the 1860s-70s, and was emphasized by pioneers like Dartmouth College.

The first old-style foot-ball games at Notre Dame seem to have materialized in the early 1870s, between two teams of Seniors (collegians). The last record of a football game under the old rules was during the 1891 season, when Brownson and Sorin halls played an interhall match during the University's two-year hiatus from the more modern rugby-oriented football.

The size of individual teams varied immensely and the localized rules at the time seem to have allowed an infinite number of players on either side, as long as these sides were roughly equal. Most accounts range from between twenty to fifty men per team, although it's possible that this number may have been twice as big. Length of the games also varied based on the number of individual games/innings within the overall contest and usually the size of the teams, with bigger teams having a harder time scoring than smaller groups. Time ranged from roughly thirty minutes to nearly four hours. Each scholastic year was known as a "session" of competition, a precursor to the notion of football seasons.

Whether a player was allowed to use body parts other than their feet is a topic of much confusion. Generally, it appears that from the introduction of the sport at Notre Dame in 1869 and into the late 1870s, only kicking was allowed. This may have begun to change during the 1880 season, as game accounts mentioned the first use of the fair catch/drop-kick, which was essentially catching the ball in mid-air and punting it without taking a step. Pass-backs were also mentioned, which may have been the first laterals. Positions such as "forwards" were also written at the time. No definitive set of rules were ever specified for the old-style game at Notre Dame, but this trend generally followed the evolution of football within many leading eastern powerhouses in the 1870s.

1868
The first mention of football, or foot-ball (the terms were interchangeable), was written in the Notre Dame Scholastic on November 21, 1868, in an article titled "The Study of Natural Sciences".

1869
The first mention of foot-ball at the University of Notre Dame was written on September 13th, 1869, in an article titled "Homesickness". Given the vagueness of the excerpt, it's possible that "Foot-Ball Clubs" existed at Notre Dame prior to 1869, or they may not have existed at all if taken from a general point-of-view.

Later that year, kicking footballs was mentioned as a particular form of exercise for students during the wintertime. The exercises were conducted on St. Joseph's Lake once it had iced over.

1870
The first mention of a foot-ball game was recorded in the Scholastic on November 19, 1870. The winner of the two picked teams of twenty to twenty-five men was unknown.

Minims
The Minims and Juniors were first mentioned as participants in campus foot-ball during the winter of 1870

1871
Football, excluding the hyphen between "foot" and "ball", was first used in the Scholastic on October 21, 1871.

Juniors
The practice of rewarding the winning football team with a barrel of apples was first reported on October 13, 1872, as part of the St. Edward's day athletic events. The reward had been previously offered for the intramural baseball nines since at least spring 1870.

Juniors
The second St. Edward's day foot-ball game was carried out by the junior department. Frank Egan and J. O'Connor served as de-facto captains of their respective teams. Brother Paul, who would lead the first modern university football teams of the 1880s, administered over the contest. Three barrels of apples were distributed among the contestants by Brothers Marcellinus, Paul, and Leauder.

Seniors
The seniors ordered a more durable "iron-clad" football from Paris in November, and it arrived on December 1. The old American football that the seniors had previously broken was also stitched up by a shoemaker in South Bend.

Juniors
The Juniors ordered an "English" foot-ball from New York in November.

Juniors
The Juniors had broken six foot-balls by November 11. One of the most detailed accounts of preliminary football was given for the Reds-Whites game on September 29. Benjamin Heeb of Dubuque, Iowa, and James Haggerty of St. Louis, Missouri, were chosen as captains due not to their size, but their experience with the game. This was also the first mention of of any football player as officially "captains" at Notre Dame. The prize was set at two barrels of apples. First the two captains chose sides according to "the old spelling-school style", and ended up with forty-two members on both teams. Colors were chosen by Heeb's white handkerchief and Haggerty's affinity to the St. Lewis Red Stockings, a recent professional club and rival of the future St. Louis Cardinals. The game began at 2:30 p.m. with a sizeable crowd. The first goal was made twenty minutes in by the whites, and they scored again to go up 2–0. The Reds won the "third inning" in less than fifteen minutes to bring the score within one, and managed to tie the game forty-five minutes in the fourth under a crowd of "fever-heat excitement". The fifth inning began to decide the winner, but it began to rain and the referee decided to call the game a draw. The apples were shared evenly among the two teams.

Minims
During the St. Edward's day games (which were postponed to October 18), John Seeger was given as the best player of foot-ball. Whether an actual game occurred is unclear.

Inter-Department
The first recorded inter-department football was played on October 5th on the junior campus. The rivalry between the Junior and Senior study halls was a precursor to the Brownson-Carroll and Carroll v. Ex-Carrollites contests which spanned multiple departments and eight decades.

Inter-department
It was reported that numerous games took place between the Minims and Juniors during the week preceding St. Edward's day.

Juniors
The Juniors received a new English football in mid-October. A football was carried into the senior yard a month later and ripped apart by some of the prominent collegians, and it is unclear if this was the same football.

Juniors
The juniors were gifted a "new patent" football from France by Professor Lyons in late September.

Minims
A football from Dan Taylor amused the Minim teams in February of 1880.

Minims
The Minims were recorded with their first Red and Blue teams during the 1880 season.

Inter-department
A series of "championship" football games were played between the Juniors and Seniors during the 1881 season.

Juniors
The first mention of a "rugby football" at Notre Dame came in Issue No. 6 of the Scholastic. The newspaper writes, "The Juniors have a new 'Rugby' football".

"Birth of interhall football"
On October 21, 1885, the Reds and Blues and the Senior Department played a game of football that has been cited by numerous sources as the birth of interhall or rudimentary football at the University of Notre Dame. However, this is nothing more than a well-circulated myth. There are many problems that demonstrate this was neither the first rudimentary or interhall contest. First, while many cite October 24 as the date of the game, that was actually just the day of the Scholastic's publication of that issue. Secondly, rudimentary football of its kind had existed since the early 1870s, and the only difference between those earlier games and the contest on October 21 was it was given lengthy coverage and description (although less lengthy then some of the previous contests in the 1880s). Additionally, Sorin hall, the first collegiate dormitory for the Senior department, would not be established until 1888. This entailed that no interhall contests could have occurred before that schoolyear. The first recognized interhall football game was recorded by Sorin and Brownson halls on November 11, 1890. While the Blue v. Red. game was not the first of its kind, there were a few notable details surrounding contest's place in the evolution of football., such as it was the first to mention the position of "rushers".

Seniors
Among the Senior footballers of 1885 was William Harless. Next year, Harless would transfer to the University of Michigan, and began one of the three main proponents to establishing a rugby football team at Notre Dame in 1887. He and george De Haven, a fellow Notre Dame alumnus, orchestrated the game of football between Notre Dame and Michigan, as they had become star players on the latter's squad.

Seniors
The Senior teams of 1886 were littered with players who would go on to serve as the first members of the Notre Dame intercollegiate, rugby-style, football team. Of the eleven men who composed the first squad in 1887, fullback Ed Prudhomme, center Joe Cusack, and right tackle Tom O'Regan played on the old-style Red and Blue teams.

1888
No old-style football games were played during the 1888 sue to the new-found infatuation with rugby football.

1890
The 1890 schoolyear saw a brief resurgence of old-style football to the University.

Carroll
The Juniors of Carroll Hall were reported to "indulge in a regular old-time game of football every "rec" day".