Is anyone surprised to hear that football, the game, is a Scorpio? That intense sign that is all about sex, death and transformation? Ruled by Mars, the god of war, in a game that is played like a military exercise? Scorpio is the sign that describes this peculiar American sport, which was first played one afternoon in New Jersey 145 years ago — the same state where Super Bowl 48 is being played.
The modern sport of the gladiators, football sets aside many of the usual ideas of sportsmanship and balance, in favor of a game where violence and injury are part of the entertainment.
A morph of rugby and soccer, the first football match was played without cheerleaders, sponsorship or the NCAA, between Princeton University and Rutgers University on the Rutgers campus on Nov. 6, 1869. Rutgers won, according to the Princeton coach I talked to last week. Then a week later, they traveled to Princeton and lost by a wider margin. The first two games favored the home team.
“The rules were still considered in flux, and were decided on in a game-to-game basis. However, the rules used likely did not resemble anything that a modern football observer would recognize,” we learn from Wikipedia’s editors on the topic.