The historically accepted start of UGA football may need to be revised

As the story goes, the sport of American football, resembling a rugby-like scrum more than the modern sport we know of today, was introduced at the University of Georgia in 1891 by a chemist, of all people.

A native of Milledgeville, Ga., Dr. Charles Herty was hired by the University of Georgia in the fall of 1891 as a chemistry instructor. Herty had recently received his Ph.D. from Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University. There “he had seen something of the maverick rugby game, often referred to merely as football, which had become the craze of the East.” In turn, according to UGA archives, “It was Herty who brought football to Georgia.”

In first introducing football to the University, Herty addressed a group of students apparently totally unfamiliar with the sport. According to the book The Ghosts of Herty Field by John F. Stegeman: "We were just a robust bunch of country boys, who knew nothing whatever of football or how it should be played," said George Shackleford. Shackleford, a native of Jefferson, Ga., was a member of Georgia’s 1891-92 football team, or what has been identified as the very first gridiron squad at the school.

Originally planning a game for Thanksgiving Day of 1891, Shackleford and his teammates eventually represented the school for its first football game on January 20, 1892, defeating Mercer in Athens, 50-0. It was the first of only two games in which Herty would coach the Red and Black, yet because the professor introduced the sport to the school and organized its first football team, he has been recognized as the “Father of Georgia football.”

And the rest, as they say, is history (or so it’s been said).

UGASports.com first discovered the possibility of organized football being played at the University of Georgia prior to the 1891-92 academic year. The 1888 Pandora, the school’s yearbook, curiously mentions that the ‘88 senior class had “a football eleven that has never been defeated.”

Therefore, the question arises: How did a school’s “football eleven” go undefeated—or even play a football game, for that matter—when the sport wasn’t introduced at the school for another four years?

As it turns out, the sport had already been played on campus for at least a half-dozen years, or, beginning with the 1885-86 academic year, when it was said each class (i.e., freshman, sophomore, etc.) had its own football team “not merely on paper, but in reality.”

The next year, in November of 1886, the University Athletic Association was reorganized, whereby its president appointed an executive committee to select a 13-man football team. The chosen squad of 11 starters and two substitutes was represented by students from all classes: two seniors, eight juniors, two sophomores, and one freshman. Alas, no game results were reported for the appointed team.

“I’ve been digging into this. There was definitely football being played on campus from the mid-1880s onwards, but it seems to have been arranged on the level of what we would call club sports today,” responded Jason Hasty, UGA Athletics History Specialist for the Hargrett Library, when UGASports.com inquired about pre-1892 football at Georgia. “Overall, it seems that the competition was with other UGA students, not with other Universities,” Hasty added.

On November 2, 1887, at the Athens Fairgrounds, an 11-man “Seniors” team faced off against the “College” (freshmen, sophomores, and juniors) in two short contests, producing the first known game reporting associated with UGA football. Playing under rules seemingly identical to those in effect for the Georgia-Mercer game more than four years later, the Seniors defeated the College both times on successfully made placekicks by William Glass and T.M. Cunningham, respectively.

A month later in December, the sport’s popularity on campus had apparently grown even greater, as a team consisting of solely juniors was elected. Two years later, during the 1889-90 academic year, it was said that of UGA’s number of “crack” football teams, particularly the sophomores had “some of the best football players in college.”

“I think it’s really interesting that there was organized football being played on campus prior to the official start date of January 30, 1892,” Hasty said. “I’d love to know more about these proto-Bulldogs, but the documentation that we have just doesn’t give us much insight beyond that they were, in fact, playing games.”

Although it’s clear Georgia had been playing football on at least a club level for several years prior to November of 1891, it was then that Dr. Herty finally organized what can be considered the school’s first intercollegiate football team—or the initial squad to eventually play against other Universities, and not other UGA students. Still, that means, Herty didn’t literally “introduce” football to the school, nor presumably instruct a student body which “knew nothing whatever of football or how it should be played.”

Furthermore, Herty likely didn’t first notice the sport as a Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins. Rather, he perhaps was first introduced to football even before attending school in Baltimore. You see, back in the mid-1880s, when the University of Georgia’s total enrollment was only around 220 students, Charles Holmes Herty attended the college as an undergraduate, graduating in 1886—or, when, according to a campus newspaper, “some fine games of this sport (football) are played on the campus every afternoon.”