"So the Boston game became the Harvard game"
Morton Prince '75
The Oneida Monument in the Boston Public Garden, was
one of a handful of places Jacob and I had on an unwritten bucket list. We
combined a few of these, visiting the Oneida Monument, the Ether Monument and
the Ether Dome, all in the same day.
We consider the Oneida Monument more of a monument
to the Boston Game than to a single team playing this type of football,
although its intent was to immortalize only one of the more successful teams
that played the Boston game in the 1860s and it was funded by seven of the
living members. The original plans for the monument featured a round rubber ball,
correct for the game that had been played. It was felt later that this round
ball would not be recognizable to people who were now, in the 1920s, accustomed
to seeing an oblong shaped football and thus the newer style football was carved
onto the monument.
The Boston Game was played from the late 1850s
through the mid-1870s and it was the Boston Game specifically that kept Harvard
from playing intercollegiate “football” games. In 1874 that was all to change.
In describing the Boston game and its significance
in the history and development of American football I will borrow a small
section from The H Book of Harvard
Athletics that was written by Morton Prince (please see blog posting dated
June 13,2015, The H.F.B.C. and the Foundations of Football: Beginnings of a
Game: 1873 Membership Shingle).
“Harvard on the other hand played an entirely
different game, one inherited, as we have seen, from the preparatory schools,
with a long history behind it, and — though we may now smile — dear to the
heart of this section of New England. One fundamental principle of our game,
determining the whole character of the play, was, I may repeat, that a player
was permitted to pick up the ball, run with it, throw it, or pass it. He could
also seize and hold an adversary to prevent his getting the ball. Quite contrary
to this by the Yale rules, which were essentially the same as those of
Princeton, Columbia, and Rutgers, no picking up, carrying, or throwing the ball
was allowed, nor was holding or pushing with the hands. The game was all foot
work. On the other hand Harvard's game was based on the strategy of carrying,
passing, and holding. The two styles of game were consequently vitally
different, as different as Soccer football is from the present game. The
principles underlying the play were essentially unlike. There could therefore
be no compromise or modifications made that would harmonize the two styles of
game. If Harvard entered the convention one or the other game would have to be
given up. It was easy at the time to foresee which it would be. Harvard would have
been outvoted four to one, and then we should have been morally bound to say
" good-bye” to our beloved "Boston " football and to support the
rules adopted by the convention, — the Association rules, as they were
afterwards called.
When fall (1874) came we played McGill in Montreal.
This return match, following the experience with the Rugby game the preceding
spring, had unexpected consequences; for learning to play Rugby Harvard learned
that there was another game besides its own which was worthy of being played.
And with familiarity Harvard became weaned from her first love and a new taste
was acquired for a better game which opened the door for the longed for match
with Yale under rules which all American colleges were destined to adopt.
Indeed the impression made upon the Harvard players by the Montreal experience
was such that in the following spring we had, although the Rugby rules had not
been formally adopted, gone so far that under them a match was arranged with
Tufts, instead of under the "Boston" rules with which Tufts must have
been more familiar.”
And so it was, the pivotal role of the Boston game on
the path to our modern game of football.
1863 Oneida game used rubber ball on display at Historic New England in Boston
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