page_title: Rutgers University
section_title: Athletics
hierarchical_section_title: Rutgers University / Athletics
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of the Rutgers College Football team,
context_page_description: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, commonly referred to as Rutgers University, or RU, is an American public research university in New Jersey. It is the largest institution of higher education in New Jersey.
  Rutgers was originally chartered as Queen's College on November 10, 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The college was renamed Rutgers College in 1825 in honor of Colonel Henry Rutgers. For most of its existence, Rutgers was a private liberal arts college but it evolved into a coeducational public research university after being designated "The State University of New Jersey" by the New Jersey Legislature in laws enacted in 1945 and 1956.
  Rutgers has three campuses located throughout New Jersey: New Brunswick campus in New Brunswick and adjacent Piscataway, the Newark campus, and the Camden campus. The university has additional facilities elsewhere in the state. Instruction is offered by 9,000 faculty members in 175 academic departments to over 45,000 undergraduate students and more than 20,000 graduate and professional students.
context_section_description: Rutgers was among the first American institutions to engage in intercollegiate athletics, and participated in a small circle of schools that included Yale University, Columbia University and long-time rival, Princeton University (then called the College of New Jersey). The four schools met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan on October 19, 1873, to establish a set of rules governing their intercollegiate competition, and particularly to codify the new game of football. Although invited, Harvard chose not to attend. In the early years of intercollegiate athletics, the schools that participated in these athletic events were located solely in the American Northeast. However, by the turn of the 20th century, colleges and universities across the United States began to participate.
  Rutgers University is referred to as "the birthplace of college football" as the first intercollegiate football game was held on College Field between Rutgers and Princeton on November 6, 1869, in New Brunswick, New Jersey on a plot of ground behind where the present-day College Avenue Gymnasium now stands. Rutgers won the game, with a score of 6 runs to Princeton's 4. According to Parke H. Davis, the 1869 Rutgers football team shared the national title with Princeton. (This game is believed to have been closer to soccer than to modern American football.)
  In 1864, rowing became the first organized sport at Rutgers. Six mile races were held on the Raritan River among six-oared boats. In 1870, Rutgers held its first intercollegiate competition, against the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard, the then top-ranked amateur crew of the time. Since the start in 1864, Rutgers has built a strong crew program consisting of heavyweight and lightweight men. Women's crew was added to the program in 1974. Financial support of the men's crew program was discontinued by the university in 2006, though the crew continues to compete (funded entirely by alumni and private support) at a high level in the prestigious Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges conference.
  The first intercollegiate athletic event at Rutgers was a baseball game on May 2, 1866, against Princeton in which they suffered a 40–2 loss.
  Beginning in 1866, Rutgers was unaffiliated with any formal athletic conference and thus classified as "independent" for eighty years. From 1946 to 1951, the university was a member of the Middle Three Conference, and from 1958 to 1961, was a member of the Middle Atlantic Conference. In 1978, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights became a member of the Atlantic 10 conference. In 1991, it joined the Big East Conference for football. All sports programs at Rutgers New Brunswick subsequently became affiliated with the Big East in 1995.
  The first intercollegiate competition in Ultimate Frisbee (now called "Ultimate") was held between students from Rutgers and Princeton on November 6, 1972, to mark the one hundred third anniversary of the first intercollegiate football game. Rutgers won 29–27. The Rutgers Scarlet Knights men's Basketball Team was among the "Final Four" and ended the 1976 season ranked fourth in the United States, after an 86–70 loss against the University of Michigan in the semifinals, and a 106–92 loss against UCLA in the consolation round of the 1976 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament.
  The Rutgers Scarlet Knights are members of the Big Ten Conference, a collegiate athletic conference consisting of 14 colleges and universities from the Midwestern and East Coast regions of the United States. The Big Ten Conference is a member of the Bowl Championship Series. Rutgers currently fields 27 intercollegiate sports programs and is a Division I school as sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Rutgers fields thirty teams in NCAA Division I sanctioned sports, including football, baseball, basketball, crew, cross country, fencing, field hockey, golf, gymnastics, lacrosse, soccer, softball, tennis, track and field, swimming and diving, wrestling, and volleyball.
  The Scarlet Knights have won five Big East Conference tournament titles: men's socc
caption: The Rutgers College football team in 1882
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