Last week, I promised that if the Hoosiers kept winning, I’d keep writing. I’m thrilled to have a reason to be back, as IU Football is heading to the College Football Playoff National Championship game!
My last two posts focused on IU football’s past trips to the Rose and Peach Bowls. But since we’re heading somewhere we’ve never been before, let’s take a step back and explore the early days of IU football.
Here in the Archives, we maintain fantastic reference and clippings files on a variety of topics that are perfect starting points for most research questions. I checked our Athletics-Football files and found a folder about the “First Game Played” and thought “Great! This is it!” But I found that the contents are about an 1887 game vs. Franklin, yet we have a photo of an 1886 team in our photo database:
I found my colleague and the Archives Photo Curator, Brad Cook. Brad handles most of our athletics-related inquiries and compiled the Franklin game file. So I asked—what else did he know? Brad checked his files and said the 1887 Franklin game was the earliest game he was able to find. He found evidence we had a team beginning in at least 1885 but for that year, there was no recorded coach and no known record of any games for ’85 or ’86. He didn’t have time to dig in further at the time (alas, if we could spend all our time researching!) so had just recorded those notes. He told me to let him know what I found. On it!
It struck me as odd that we had a photo of the 1886 team but no record of any games. So I started to dig into some digitized newspapers, which had not been available to Brad when he first looked into this in 1997. So lots of appreciation to the Indiana State Library’s Hoosier State Chronicles and the IU Libraries subscription to NewspaperArchive!
Now, I’ll admit to you now that I know enough about football to be able to enjoy our Hoosiers. I don’t know the intricacies of the game and still impress the heck out of my husband when I yell “Late hit! Late hit!” because that’s a ton more than I knew even two years ago. So while it was news to me, it may not be news to some of you that the collegiate game used to be very different. What I could find about these first years of Indiana football was that rather than a season as we know it today, the colleges and universities throughout the state played a series; lose and you are out.
And score! I was thrilled to come across evidence of an 1886 game in the October 17, 1886 issue of the Bloomington Progress. (Ignore the misleading headline—rugby was also mentioned, though details are scarce.) The article reported that “a series of foot-ball matches between the students of the Indiana colleges for the state championship and a gold medal has been arranged by the Athletic club, the contests to be held at their park on every Saturday afternoon for the next month….Five colleges have entered for the championship of the state — Butler, Franklin, Hanover, Wabash and the State University.”
IU, according to the article, was scheduled to play Butler on October 30.
So that team DID have a game scheduled! But did they play?
They did – and to disappointing results, with Butler coming out victorious, 14-8.
Brad also asked me to let him know if I found results of the 1887 Franklin game, and I’m happy to report that I did! The story took two full columns of the paper so the screen capture isn’t worth sharing but you can read it in the October 18, 1887 issue of the Bloomington Telephone at the Hoosier State Chronicles (p. 4). IU started the second half scoreless but “[R.E.] Wilsey kicked a goal at an angle of forty-five degrees from the goal-posts, a very difficult kick, scoring six points for Bloomington.” (That would be three points today.) Then, we picked up our other points when “Captain Hazelrigg’s men [Franklin] were forced by the superior weight of the opposition across their goal line, and Shea and Jenkins [Indiana] fell on Clark and forced him to make a safety touch-down, scoring two more for Bloomington.” The reporter ends with a note that the “referreeing was bad” and Indiana should have had more on the board.
This was a fun glimpse into IU’s earliest football days! I need to stop now but still haven’t found anything definitive about an 1885 team. If you are so inclined and come across something, please share it with us at archives@iu.edu!
This wraps up my final post of the season on IU Football. A huge thank you to the team and coaches for giving Hoosier fans such an unforgettable ride!