From September to November, every Saturday afternoon is football time in the United States. In thousands of stadiums all over the country, millions of people gather to watch schools and colleges play. In fact, football is the country’s leading college sport.

Yet, the game as we know it, is less than 100 years old. The first game of football in the United States was played on November 6, 1869 at New Brunswick, New Jersey, between teams representing Princeton and Rutgers Universities. The game spread first among the older eastern universities, such as Yale, Harvard, and Columbia, and was later adopted by the whole nation.