Much like the first football games played at universities such as Rutgers, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, there were not many rules, if any at all. The event always devolved into a massive fight between the competing students, with injuries, torn clothing, and even arrests being the norm. In 1903, a reporter from the New York Times noted that “black eyes and bruises were seen everywhere, and everyone received a liberal smudge of mother earth.” In what is considered the first recorded account of a Harvard football game, James C. Richmond, in 1827 wrote a poem entitled “The Battle of the Delta.”