The First Football Game Under the Lights
Friday, September 24, 2010
When historic college football rivals Brown and Harvard face each other for the first time under the lights tomorrow, they will echo an equally historic football game. In 1929, in Providence.
Before Rhode Island football fans followed the Patriots, even before those ancient pre-AFL days when local fans engaged in a bit of geographic desperation to root for the New York Giants, there was another professional football franchise in town: the Providence Steam Roller.
Dubbed “the Roller” in the newspapers of the day (and sometimes "rollers," as in the program shown here), the team played in the early days of the National Football League, and even won the league championship in 1928. The game football historians remember them for, however, took place on the evening of November 6th, 1929, when the Providence team hosted the very first pro football game ever played under lights.
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It took place at Kinsley Park, an athletic field at the corner of Kinsley and Acorn Streets in Providence’s Valley neighborhood. (There’s a parking lot there today.) Powerful floodlights had been installed at the field for night soccer games. A few colleges had successfully experimented with what was called “floodlight football,” so the professional league thought it was worth a try in order to give them more scheduling flexibility.
Fighting to remain in the 1929 playoff race, the Providence eleven hosted the Chicago Cardinals that night. And they truly were eleven: in those days, the same eleven players played on offense, defense, and special teams.
Six thousand watched
Six thousand fans packed the stands for this novel nighttime contest. And although commercially and technically the game was a complete success, for the Steam Roller it was a dismal failure. The local boys lost to the Cardinals 16-0, but the game was so thoroughly dominated by one athlete, the final score may as well have read, “Ernie Nevers 16, Providence 0.”
Future NFL Hall of Famer Nevers was an All-American fullback from Stanford, and in fact had left a career in professional baseball to join the NFL. Nevers was already known for making incredible contributions everywhere on the gridiron, and that night was no exception. The football legend rushed for 102 yards and a touchdown, completed 10 of 15 passes, including a 46-yard touchdown bomb, kicked a point-after-touchdown and a field goal, punted the ball, and played nearly the entire game on defense.
Perhaps the Providence squad was just tired. While today it’s considered a disadvantage when an NFL team plays on only five days’ rest, the first professional night game in history was the second of four games the Steam Roller played on four consecutive days.
For more on the Brown-Harvard game, read here.
Above, a page from a Steam Roller program two years later, in 1931 (the Packers beat the hometown heroes 48-20).
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