page_title: Princeton Tigers
section_title: Football
hierarchical_section_title: Princeton Tigers / Teams / Football
caption_attribution_description: English: Princeton Tigers vs. Lehigh University
context_page_description: The Princeton Tigers are the athletic teams of Princeton University. The school sponsors 38 varsity sports. The school has won several NCAA national championships, including one in men's fencing, six in men's lacrosse, three in women's lacrosse, and eight in men's golf. Princeton's men's and women's crews have also won numerous national rowing championships. The field hockey team made history in 2012 as the first Ivy League team to win the Division I NCAA Championship in field hockey.
context_section_description: The football team has competed since 1869 and played in the first game against Rutgers University.  They have won 24 national championships when the school competed in what is now known as the FBS.  Twenty-one former players have been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
  The first football game played between teams representing American colleges was an unfamiliar ancestor of today's college football because it was played under soccer-style London Football Association rules. The game, between Rutgers College (now Rutgers University) and the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), took place on November 6, 1869 at College Field (now the site of the College Avenue Gymnasium at Rutgers University) in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Rutgers won by a score of six "runs" to Princeton's four. The 1869 game between Rutgers and Princeton is notable because it is the first documented game of any sport called "football" between two American colleges. It is also noteworthy because it occurred two years before a codified rugby game would be played in England. The Princeton/Rutgers game was significantly different from American rules football today but, nonetheless, it was the first inter-collegiate football contest in the United States. Another similar game took place between Rutgers and Columbia University in 1870 and a third notable game took place between Tufts University and Harvard University in 1875.  The popularity of intercollegiate competition in football would spread throughout the country shortly thereafter.
  Though Princeton is no longer a part of Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, the Tigers have the most overall national championships of any team in major college football history with 24 consensus and non-consensus national championships dating all the way back to their first one, shared with Rutgers, in 1869.
  Princeton's football helmets are also the basis for Michigan Wolverines football team's famed winged helmets, as introduced by Fritz Crisler, the coach at Princeton before he was hired as the coach of the University of Michigan.
caption: Princeton vs. Lehigh, September 2007
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