The Football Thesaurus: 77 Years on the American Gridiron

The first college football game was played between Rutgers College (i.e., Rutgers University) and the College of New Jersey (Princeton University) on November 6, 1869. This “thesaurus” was published in 1946. It contains the record (by college or university) of every football game played by that school from their first football game played through the 1945 season. For example, for Notre Dame University, its first football game was played in 1887 against the University of Michigan—Notre Dame lost by a score of 8-0. Then for each year after that through 1945 the opponents and scores of all the football games played by Notre Dame are listed.

In addition, the thesaurus contains the name and location of each school, when it was founded, the school colors and nickname, a list of the schools head football coaches, and other pertinent information—such as the conference the school belonged to. In total there are about 300 universities covered by this book. The 11” x 17” book of 248 pages was privately published.