Stop Saying it's Football's 150th Anniversary Because it's Not and You're Wrong

We all know the story. 150 years ago, Rutgers and Princeton met in what was deemed the first official football game, one in which Rutgers won 6-4.

That milestone might need to be challenged, however, as it can be easily argued that whatever sport or game these pioneers were playing is pretty much unrecognizable today, or even like 50 years after the fact. How can we even count this as a football game?!

A "sleeper"? "Fielders" and "bulldogs"? 10 "games" completed a contest? Doesn't sound like football to me.

Yes, football used to be played with leather "helmets," it used to take nine balls to walk a batter in baseball, and basketball was played by throwing what was basically a boulder into a peach basket without the use of a backboard. Sports in the 19th century are so alien that they would be hardly recognizable nowadays.

However, whatever that "game" was is so fundamentally different from modern football that you have to call it something else. It's closer to rugby, and there's even plenty of distance between those two.

If 12-on-11 action that ends after 10 scores sounds like football to you, then you might be a lost cause.