125 years ago this November 16, Grinnell (Iowa College at the time) played the University of Iowa in the first championship football game west of the Mississippi River. The Pioneers prevailed 24 - 0. Throughout the season we will be celebrating 125 years of Pioneer football with regular blog posts featuring some of the top games, moments, and players in our history.
To kick things off, we will feature an account of the game from Grinnell's perspective, and we'll follow that up later in the week with the University of Iowa's perspective. The following was excerpted from: On a Field in Grinnell: A Gridiron First, written by William Deminoff.
There were no bleachers, no bands, no hotdogs, or cheerleaders. The field was a patch of prairie with lines scratched on the turf. One team was dressed in spanking new white-canvas uniforms, the other in shirts and pants "of all shapes and colors."
Regardless of their appearance, the players were there to make history. The teams were both named Iowa - The State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa) and Iowa College (now Grinnell College) - and the record book shows that Grinnell won 24-0. Today, that would be David felling Goliath. But it wasn't the score that made this a special day; it was the fact that this was the first intercollegiate football game played west of the Mississippi River. The game took place November 16, 1889, and was played on a 330-by-160 foot field west of what is now the College Forum on the Grinnell campus. This was 20 years after Rutgers beat Princeton in the nation's first intercollegiate football game on November 6, 1869.
Both the 1869 and the 1889 game were precursors to American football as we know it today. Rutgers-Princeton was virtually a soccer match, while the Iowa-Grinnell contest had rugby features. It was, in fact, much more like the Harvard-McGill game of May 15, 1874 - the first intercollegiate rugby football match played in the United States. The 1889 contest resulted from a University of Iowa challenge to "any college or other team in the state to a game of football, American Association rules." The challenge was published in two Iowa newspapers in late October. Grinnell's Fred Van Gieson and Frank Everest, both of whom had played the game in a New Jersey prep school, accepted the challenge, quickly organized a Grinnell team, and scheduled a two-week series of practices.
When the Iowa team arrived on November 16 for the 2:30 pm start of the game, its personnel looked big to the Grinnell gridders - much bigger than the average 174 pounds that the local team hefted. Big or not, most of the players were officially enrolled students at their institutions, with the exception that a few of the Grinnellians would be "special students" - that is, taking courses but not aiming for a degree. If this was some sort of violation, it was balanced by the fact that Iowa's captain, Martin Sampson, was not a student at all - he was in fact a professor of English literature.
The rules of the day called for a game of one and one-half hours, "each side playing 45 minutes from each goal" with a 10 minute break between halves.
At the opening of the game, Grinnell got the ball and gained ground with a flying wedge. First used by Princeton against Pennsylvania in 1884, the formation hid the ball-carrier within a V as the entire wedge surged forward. Grinnell used a variation by passing from the V, and before long the local team was inside Iowa's 25 yard line. The first touchdown was scored by Otto Savage who, true to his name, fought his way through the Iowa line. The touchdown was worth four points. Van Gieson, who according to the rules could try a place-kick or a punt for two points, opted for a put but missed.
A contemporary account says that Iowa then "kicked the ball from center, but it was quickly rushed in their territory by (Grinnell), and a safety was soon scored." This yielded two more points, followed by rushes that brought the Grinnell team again inside their opponents 25 yard line. This time it was Harry Macomber's turn to take the ball in. The kick failed, but the score at the end of the half was Grinnell 10, Iowa 0.
In the second half, Van Gieson made a long yardage play after receiving an Iowa kick. A few plays later Theron Lyman took the ball in, and John Harvey kicked the two-pointer to make the score Grinnell 16, Iowa 0. Iowa matched Van Gieson's big play with one of its own, Martin Sampson carrying the ball for 25 yards. Sampson almost broke through, but a hard tackle by Grinnell's Herb Miller stopped the play, and Grinnell soon regained possession of the ball. A few plays later, Lyman pushed the ball into the end zone, and Grinnell was ahead by 20-0 (the try at two points again failed). Iowa couldn't bring teh ball downfield, and when the Grinnell took over, Van Gieson rushed into the end zone. Final score: Grinnell 24, Iowa 0.
