The first football games in America were played in a disorganized and chaotic fashion with players basically scrambling for the ball and few if any rules in place to govern the play. The Boston games as they were called were played on Boston Common by children in the early part of the 1800s. Yale and harvard Universities began to play these informal games in the 1820's. Due to the brutatlity of these early disorganized games Harvard and Yale banned the play of football in 1860 and 1861. The ban did not last and the universities were playing again not long after the ban was institiuted. In 1869 Rutgers played Princeton in the first intercollegiate game. In 1873 several of the ivy league schools met to furhter codify the rules of the game. Another meeting followed in 1876 which included Harvard who avaoided the orignal meeting. In 1855 the first of the modern manufactured footballs and been produced and the sport was gaining ground in schoolyards and campuses across the country. Dartmouth University actually published a set of rules for football in 1871.
In the very end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century many of the rivalries that we know today began to pop up. Kansas and Missouri squared off in 1891, California and Stanford in 1892, the Iron Bowl featuriong Alabama and Auburn in 1893 and Michigan and Ohio State in 1897. These games became the big event for many of these schools and were widely attended by students and the general public alike. In 1879 the University of Michigan was the first team west of Pennsyvnia but was soon followed by other teams like University of Chicago, Northwestern University, University of Minnesota. Fielding yost was the coach at the University of Michigan and became a great driving force behind the growth in popularity of the Unviersity of Michigan football team and the team became a national powerhouse. The formation of these wetern teams would eventually lead to the creation of the conference that we know today as the Big Ten conference.
