November 14, 1903: Harvard Stadium Opens

November 14, 1903: Harvard Stadium opens, changing the history of college football, and of sports venues in general.

Harvard University, America's 1st college and one of its earliest practitioners of intercollegiate sports, began playing football in 1873, at Jarvis Field. In 1898, their baseball and football teams moved to Soldier's Field, dedicated as a memorial to Harvard men who had sacrificed their lives in the American Civil War. Their baseball team still plays there today, although since 1997 it has been named Joseph J. O'Donnell Field, after a former Harvard baseball player whose donations allowed them to upgrade it.

But college football was becoming a business, and Harvard perennially had one of the best teams in the sport. In 1903, Harvard Stadium was built, the 1st vertical structure to employ reinforced structural concrete.

This would inspire not just football stadiums, but baseball stadiums: In 1909, Shibe Park in Philadelphia would be the first concrete-and-steel ballpark, followed later that year by Sportsman's Park in St. Louis and Forbes Field in Pittsburgh; in 1910, League Park in Cleveland and Comiskey Park in Chicago; in 1911, the Polo Grounds in New York and Griffith Stadium in Washington; in 1912, Crosley Field in Cincinnati, Tiger Stadium in Detroit and Fenway Park in Boston; in 1913, Ebbets Field in Brooklyn; in 1914, Wrigley Field in Chicago; and in 1915, Braves Field in Boston.

After playing their 1st 8 games of the 1903 season at Soldier's Field, the Crimson opened Harvard Stadium on November 14. Dartmouth College spoiled the party, winning, 11-0. However, when Harvard's arch-rivals, Yale University, opened the Yale Bowl in 1914, Harvard would win the first game there.

In 1905, a newspaper with a photograph of a bloody football player, Swarthmore College guard Robert "Tiny" Maxwell," made its way to President Theodore Roosevelt. A former athlete himself -- he had been on the Harvard boxing team in 1880, and played tennis even while President -- he requested figures, and found out that 18 young men had died playing college football in 1904.

So the Rough Rider hauled the presidents of Harvard, Yale and Princeton -- then the nation's leading football-playing universities -- into the White House, and told them point-blank: Either you do something to make football safer, or I will take action. Given his reputation as a man who got things done and didn't let anything stand in his way, just the possibility that he would be taking over their sport, taking their power away, was enough to spur them into action. The safety measures they took over the next year are now considered the founding of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

One move that was made in the interest of safety was the invention of hashmarks, putting the ball at the yard-line where the last play ended, but closer to the middle of the field, instead of putting the ball exactly where the play ended every time.

Another suggestion was widening the field. But Harvard shot this idea down, since they had only opened Harvard Stadium in 1903, and they didn't have room to widen their field, and they weren't going to tear down half of their new stadium just to accommodate everyone else. In those days, what Harvard wanted, Harvard got. So an alternative was thought up: The legalization of the forward pass. It would take a few years, but football became considerably more exciting because of it.

The addition of stands in the northeast end zone of Harvard Stadium's horseshoe raised the seating capacity to 57,166. But as the Ivy League decreased in importance and influence, so did crowds, and this bleachers were replaced by a smaller structure in 1952, dropping capacity to 40,280. This would be the attendance for the stadium's, and the Ivy League's, most famous game, the title decider that decided nothing, as unbeaten Harvard came from 16 points down in the last minute to hold unbeaten Yale to a tie -- or, as the Harvard Crimson newspaper headline put it, "HARVARD BEATS YALE, 29-29."

In the 1970 season, and only in that season, Harvard Stadium was the home of the NFL's Boston Patriots. In 1971, they moved to suburban Foxborough, Massachusetts. In 1998, the steel bleachers in the open end were torn down, and replaced by the Murr Center. This reduced the seating capacity to the current 30,323.

The oldest active stadium in college football, and still in good shape due to the donations of rich alumni, Harvard Stadium maintained a natural grass surface until the 2006 season, when it was replaced by FieldTurf. That same year, it got its first permanent lights. Its 1st night game was played on September 22, 2007, a 24-17 win over Brown University.

*

November 14, 1903 was a Saturday. These other noteworthy college football games were played:

* Elsewhere in what would became known as the Ivy League, Princeton beat Yale, 11-6 at Yale Field in New Haven, Connecticut; Columbia beat Cornell, 17-12 at Percy Field in Ithaca, New York; the University of Pennsylvania lost to the Carlisle Indian School, 16-6 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia, perhaps the 1st notable upset by a school that would produce many over the next few years; and Brown beat Syracuse, 12-5 at the Old Oval in Syracuse, New York.

* Among the service academies, Army beat the University of Chicago, 10-6 on The Plain in West Point, New York; and Navy lost to Bucknell, 23-5 at Worden Field in Annapolis, Maryland.

* Alabama, not yet a big football school, lost to Cumberland College, 44-0 on The Quad in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

* Georgia, already a big football school, were upset by the Savannah Athletic Club, 6-0 in Savannah, Georgia.

* Michigan beat Wisconsin, 16-0 at Regents Field in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

* Minnesota beat Illinois, 32-0 at Illinois Field in Champaign, Illinois.

* Notre Dame, not yet a big football school, played Northwestern to a 0-0 tie at South Side Park, then the home of the Chicago White Sox.

* The Pennsylvania State College, not yet a university, let alone a big football school -- unlike a lot of schools then using only colors as a team name, before developing mascots, they were simply "the Penn State football team" -- lost to Dickinson College, 6-0 at Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

* In an intracity rivalry, Georgetown University beat George Washington University, 33-0 at Georgetown Field in Washington, D.C.

* In what would become one of the biggest rivalries in the sport was played the day before: Texas beat Oklahoma, 11-5 at Colcord Park in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma was still a Territory, and wouldn't gain Statehood until 1907.

* And in another growing Western rivalry, Colorado A&M beat Wyoming, 17-0 at Durkee Field in Fort Collins, Colorado. A&M was renamed Colorado State in 1957.