There is some debate about when the first college football game was played, but just about everyone agrees it was either Nov. 6, 1869, or May 14, 1874.

Best I can tell, the first time a group of fans decided to fell the goal posts was Nov. 18, 1876. On that date, Harvard played Yale and, according to newspaper accounts, “Yale rooters tore down the goal posts so that Harvard should not be able to kick a goal.” Whether that was the start of the ritual is hard to say, but there is no doubt that soon a 100-years tradition was born.

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Along the way, there have been moments of good humor:

• Fans of Marietta College once tore down* the goal posts — after a tie. Even without a win, the school had snapped the nation’s longest losing streak at 34 games.
• Northwestern fans did one better and tore down the goal posts after a loss. In 1981, the Wildcats set the major-college record with 29 straight defeats, a feat Northwestern fans celebrated by chanting “we’re the worst” and tossing the goal posts over the side of the stadium.

And perseverance:

• To celebrate their Rose Bose Bowl win over Alabama in 1938, Cal fans decided to rip down the goal posts. But when they realized the posts were cemented in the ground, they stayed at it for 45 minutes until they finally came down.

And serendipity:

• When Arkansas upset Tennessee in 1999, a high school offensive lineman named Sean Young got so caught up in the atmosphere while on his recruiting visit that he helped Arkansas fans carry the goal posts around the field. In the end, Young still picked Tennessee.

There have been moments of ridiculousness:

• In 1986, a 19-year-old Iowa student was charged with inciting a crowd to tear down a goal post after the Hawkeyes beat Michigan. His crime? He was one of the first four people to reach the goal post, so he grabbed it and chanted, “Goal post.”

And ingenuity:

• After Marshall beat Louisiana Tech to win Conference USA in 2014, fans tore down the goal posts and marched them to a nearby steel mill, hoping to divide the posts into commemorative pieces. When the mill turned them down, a resourceful fan did the job in the parking lot.
• Montana fans, meanwhile, celebrated a second straight trip to the Division I-AA championship game by carrying the goal posts downtown. When they realized a 30-foot section wouldn’t fit in the front door at Red’s Bar, they impressed a stout, big-headed bartender and future sports writer named Ryan Divish when they regrouped, shimmied it through the back door and wedged it on a wall between two TVs and a stuffed shark.

And even moments of pure delight:

• Eastern Illinois’ players tore down a goal post after they clinched the school’s first conference title in 15 years. Their coach, Bob Spoo, did not care. “How often does something like this happen?” he said.

Goal posts have been torn down in the name of retaliation:

• After a high school team in New Jersey beat a rival in 1937, students claimed their cars were pelted with stones, rotten tomatoes and eggs, so they went to the rival’s field and tore down their goal posts.

And in the name of chaos:

• In a totally surreal (but real) video, fans at the 1976 game between the Steelers and a team of college all-stars took advantage of monsoon conditions to rip off their shirts, slip-and-slide on the field and tear down the goal posts before the game was over.

And they have been torn down in protest:

• Hundreds of University of Detroit students tore down the school’s goal posts in 1964 after officials dropped the football program.

But in the long and colorful history of tearing down goal posts there has never been a run like that of the Rutgers’ faithful.

When Rutgers beat in-state rival Princeton in 1968, the first time in six years, a reporter noted “there was hardly a goal post left in one piece on the entire Princeton University campus. … Even the practice field posts fell.”

OK, fine. That was a big win in college football’s oldest rivalry.

The next year, after Rutgers scored a late touchdown to go up 29-0, the Scarlet Knights went for two. They weren’t trying to run up the score; they simply had no choice, seeing as their fans had rushed the field with three minutes left and tore down both goal posts. Again.

Then Rutgers fans just lost it.

In 1971, they took down the first goal post with four minutes left. Princeton fans booed. When they then tore down the second goal post, even Rutgers fans booed. After the game, Rutgers coach John Bateman was asked what would have happened had either team needed to kick. He said the teams would’ve moved to the practice field.

Except, he was told, Rutgers fans had ripped down those goal posts as well.

Princeton won in 1972, but when Rutgers reclaimed the rivalry in 1973, you guessed it: They stormed the field with two minutes left and tore down the goal posts.

Maybe you’re wondering where this is headed. Maybe you can’t imagine it getting any stranger. You would be wrong.

In 1974, the teams played a close, hard-fought game. With about three minutes left, Rutgers led 6-0, and as is custom, Scarlet Knight fans streamed onto the field in search of their prize. They located the goal posts, tore them down, and play carried on. Except with 22 seconds left, something strange happened.

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Princeton scored a touchdown to tie the game at 6. All the Tigers had to do was kick an extra point — and they couldn’t. Princeton pleaded with the officials to delay the game and erect new goal posts, or allow the Tigers to kick on a practice field, or position two officials where the goal posts had been.

Princeton had to go for two instead (and failed). The game ended in the only tie in the rivalry’s long history.

“The thing that bothers me,” complained Princeton AD Royce Flippin afterward, “is that this is the fourth year in a row the Rutgers fans have done this.”

He was wrong. It was actually five times in a row. But Rutgers was not done yet.

The Scarlet Knights tore down the goal posts in 1979. In 1980, the two teams played for the final time. Rutgers thumped Princeton 44-13. Naturally, about 150 Rutgers students tore down one goal post with five minutes left. A couple minutes later, hundreds more brought down the other goal post, then fought amongst themselves for scraps of it.

So, yeah, no one had a run like Rutgers.

Bringing down a goal post was not for the faint of heart.

In 1929, Georgetown beat Richmond, so Hoya fans stormed the field. Richmond’s brilliant head of police had told officers to protect the goal posts — city property — with force. What one newspaper described as a “bloody battle” broke out, sending three students to the hospital with cracked heads.

Alas, the Richmond head of police had only thought to protect one goal post, and when the Georgetown students realized the other end was left unguarded, they ripped down that goal post and marched out of the stadium singing the Georgetown fight song.

That same year, Iowa beat Wisconsin 14-0 at Camp Randall and intended to celebrate by taking the goal posts. Wisconsin fans, however, were determined to protect their property.

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As one reporter noted, “if the Wisconsin players had displayed as much fight during the game as their adherents did after the contest in defending Wisconsin’s goal posts against the Iowa rooters the contest would have been much more closely waged.”

By the end of the 15-minte free-for-all, the goal posts still stood.

In 1961, things got even crazier. Florida State fans rushed the field in suits and ties to celebrate their team’s 3-3 tie — the first time Florida State did not lose. The Seminole faithful tore down one goal post and attempted to make their way across the field to the other goal post.

At that point, Florida fans tore down the other goal post and the two sides used their posts as battering rams against each other at the 50-yard line. The bands played “The Star Spangled Banner” to try and stop the brawls, but the fighting did not stop.

In 1985, Patriots fans tore down the goal posts after the Pats had clinched a playoff spot. A group of fans carried one post above their head, out of the stadium and down Route 1. Somewhere along the way, the post came into contact with a 20,000-volt power line, zapping and burning whoever had their hands on it.

Not surprisingly, the tradition has faded over the years, and with good reason. There have been too many severe injuries, even deaths, amid the chaos. But the tradition does live on in other ways.

In 1946, two high school rivals in New Jersey played each other for the ninth time. But something happened that day for the first time in the series history: After Metuchen beat Highland Park, the Metuchen fans tore down the goal posts, which happened to be county property.

As a result, officials from the two schools decided that the two schools would play for what was called the Goal Post Trophy, and it has been that way ever since.

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*A reader made a slight (but wonderful) correction: 

.@JaysonJenks I was at that Marietta College football game. We did not tear down the goal posts. We unscrewed them. Seriously. They were back together for the next home game.

— David Owens (@daowens) November 20, 2020

(Photo: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)