by Travis Normand

The caption below states that this is the “oldest collegiate football video footage on record.”  While I am not sure if that claim is true, I still find this clip from 1903 pretty amazing.  The game itself still looks a lot like Rugby Union only with stoppage of play after each tackle (as Rugby Union play doesn’t stop after the player is tackled).

Princeton and Yale’s 1903 battle wasn’t just a match-up of undefeated teams. It also served as the site for the oldest collegiate football video footage on record, thanks to a Thomas Alva Edison-sponsored production company. The result is a remarkable recording of a game previously witnessed by only the 50,000 spectators on hand.