Game Trivia

Impressive Trivia

If you want to impress your friends with knowledge that they might not even know about the game—try these tidbits on for size:

1. 1869

   The first football game

   Played Nov. 6, 1869 between Rutgers (NJ) and Princeton. There were 25 players on each team and the players advanced the ball by butting it with their heads.

   25 players per team

2. 1906

   President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to declare football illegal

   The sport was brutal. Few penalties were defined, there was no safety equipment (helmets and pads), and an average of 15–20 players died each year as a result of their injuries.

3. 1913

   The forward pass takes off

   Though the forward pass was legal, it was rarely used until Notre Dame players fine-tuned the strategy: the receiver caught the ball while running instead of standing still, which resulted in a higher success rate.

4. 1920

   The oldest NFL team is born

   The Chicago Bears started out as the Decatur Staleys in 1920.

5. 1929

   Ernie Nevers' scoring record

   In November 1929, Nevers played for the Chicago Cardinals and scored six (6) touchdowns and four (4) extra points against the Chicago Bears. It's still the most points in a single game.

   40 points in one game

6. 1958

   The game that put football on TV

   Few Americans cared about professional football until December 28, 1958, when the NY Giants and Baltimore Colts played for the NFL Championship at Yankee Stadium and it was broadcast on television.

   30 million viewers

   Read the story

   Up until then, football was rarely seen on TV. As this nail-biting game held the audience's attention through overtime, the broadcast went blank: an excited fan had accidentally kicked loose a cable. An NBC executive pretended to be a drunk who stumbled onto the field, distracting the referees long enough for the network to fix the problem.

   Once the American audience could experience the excitement of the game together, the sport took off.

7. Today

   From also-ran to America's favorite

   For the first half of the 20th century, baseball was the most popular sport—even horse racing got more headlines than football. Today, football is watched by more viewers than all the other televised sports combined.