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Rutgers was one of the early institutions to engage in intercollegiate athletics , in a small circle of schools including Yale University, Columbia University and long-time rival, Princeton University.
On May 2, 1866, in the first intercollegiate athletic event in Rutgers history, the Rutgers baseball team was humiliated by the Princeton team, 40-2.
On November 6, 1869, Rutgers became the "Birthplace of College Football" when it defeated Princeton, six "runs" to four, in the first intercollegiate football game ever played (the site, then a field, is now occupied by the College Avenue Gymnasium). Instead of wearing uniforms, the players stripped off their hats, coats, and vests and bound their suspenders around the waistbands of their trousers. For headgear, the Rutgers team wound their scarlet scarves into turbans atop their heads. This led to the College later adopting scarlet as its school color. The game—more resembling those of English rugby than what developed into American football—gave birth to a new pastime described as "replete with surprise, strategy, prodigies of determination, and physical prowess." Rutgers got Columbia University started in the grid sport the following season and in a few years most of the East's colleges and universities were represented on the gridiron.
However, Rutgers proceeded to lose to Princeton each year for the next 68 years, only breaking that losing streak in 1938.
Today, Rutgers University is a member of the Big East Conference, (in football since 1991, all other sports since 1995) a collegiate athletic conference consisting of thirteen colleges and universities in the Northeastern United States. Rutgers, in terms of athletics, is a Division I-A school as sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
The Rutgers University mascot is the Scarlet Knight.
The alma mater of Rutgers University is the song entitled On the Banks of the Old Raritan, written by Howard Fullerton (Class of 1872). The lyrics to the song are, as follows:
Howard Fullerton, a member of the Order of the Bull's Blood, goes down in Rutgers history not only for his penning the alma mater but for allegedly inspiring the theft of a cannon from the campus of Princeton University on 25 April 1875, an event—and the ensuing debate between the two university presidents—reported in nationwide newspapers. Princeton students retaliated by raiding the Rutgers Armory and stealing a few muskets. Eventually the committee appointed by the two colleges recommended the return the stolen items to their owners before the event. When the cannon was returned, Princeton University officials ordered it buried in the ground, encased in cement, with only a few feet of the butt end exposed above ground.
Several Rutgers students attempted to repeat the crime, unsuccessfully, in October 1946. With the efforts of the Princeton administration to thwart them unknown, they attach one end of a length of heavy chain to the cannon and the other to their Ford. Surprised by Princeton men and the local constabulatory, they gun the engine of the Ford so viciously that the car is torn in half. The Rutgers army manages to escape, but with neither the car nor their prize, the cannon.
To this day, intrepid Rutgers students journey the 16 miles to Princeton University to place their declaration of ownership of the cannon by painting the cannon scarlet red. Unfortunately, like the students who stole the cannon in 1875, they usually paint the wrong cannon, as there are two behind Nassau Hall at Princeton. Today, a cannon is placed in the ground before Old Queens at Rutgers, memorializing both this event, and a few alumni in the service who were killed in action. At Commencement, tradition leads undergraduates to break clay pipes over the cannon, symbolizing the breaking of ties with the college, and leaving behind the good times of one's undergraduate years. This symbolism dates back to when pipe-smoking was fashionable among undergraduates, and many college memories were derived from evenings of pipe smoking and revelry with friends.
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