First TV Football Game
Waynesburg Plays in First Televised Football Game
The inception of televised sports took place in the New York City area from 1939 to1940. A signal reaching an estimated 500 homes in a 50-mile radius broadcasted games from Ebbets Field, Madison Square Garden and Yankee Stadium. Those who could afford a $600 television set at the time witnessed television history. And it was the Waynesburg College Yellow Jackets that they first watched play football.
The Yellow Jackets visited Randall's Island, N.Y., on Sept. 30, 1939 to play in the first televised football game when they battled Fordham University at Triboro Stadium.
NBC broadcasted the game with one camera, as announcer Bill Stern made the historic call.
Fordham won the game, 34-7, over Waynesburg, guided by its all-time winningest coach Frank Wolf, despite scoring the first touchdown in the televised football history when Bobby Brooks reached the end zone on a 63-yard run.
The historic journey to New York took an entire weekend as a cavalcade of cars left Waynesburg on Thursday, Sept. 28. In all, 42 players and the team's personnel made the 400-mile trip. Among the players was John F. "Jack" Wiley, the namesake of the current Waynesburg football stadium. Wiley would move on to play for the Pittsburgh Steelers before a coaching career at Waynesburg. The Jackets finished the season 6-2-1, as did Fordham, a preseason pick for the national championship.
The game came just one month after the Brooklyn Dodgers hosted the Cincinnati Reds in the first-ever televised professional baseball game, and five months after the Princeton and Columbia baseball teams played the first televised sporting event. On Oct. 22, 1939, the Brooklyn Dodgers football team defeated the Philadelphia Eagles, 24-14, at Ebbets Field for the first-ever televised professional football game. Within a year later, the New York Rangers played the Montreal Canadiens in the first televised hockey game at Madison Square Garden, while the University of Pittsburgh visited Fordham for the first televised basketball game.
What was once considered the demise of attendance at games and the end of professional football, television broadcast has since developed into a lucrative business that has changed American culture. And yet, it all started when a few men from Waynesburg left town for the weekend to play a simple game of football.
