History of Ivy Rugby Featured in Penn Archives

The history of rugby among Ivy Rugby Conference schools - and America - is featured in an article from the University of Pennsylvania's University Archives and Records Center.

The article, written by Nicholas Gutowski, mostly discusses the origins of football in the United States. A good portion of the article discusses the sport's roots in America, including how rugby originated as a cousin and alternative to a primitive version of football in the 1800s.

Since rugby had not yet caught on in the U.S., Harvard turned to McGill University as an opponent. McGill, a Canadian school with a storied rugby history, played a traditional form of rugby that was foreign to Harvard - at the time, Harvard played by a set of rules similar to rugby with some variations. The match between Harvard and McGill set in motion a string of events that would shape the future of rugby among Ivy League schools.

Harvard's players had never tried [traditional rugby rules]. Once they did, however, the players decided they preferred traditional rugby to their own rules, and began trying to convince other colleges to try them as well. It was not until 1875 that Harvard succeeded in this, convincing Yale to play a game of rugby, with Princeton students in attendance. The game convinced the other schools of rugby's superiority, or at least novelty, and by 1876 both Yale and Princeton had abandoned their own rules in favor of modified rugby rules.

The article provides fascinating insight into the sport's roots in America, as well as how the rules of modern football began to evolve from a primitive European sport that resembled soccer.

To read the full article, head to the University of Pennsylvania's Archives and Records Center website.