“Bloody Monday,” as it came to be known, was a tradition at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dating back to the 1700’s. In an open field known as “the Delta,” where currently stands Memorial Hall, sophomores and freshmen would meet annually on the first Monday of the school year and engage in a free-for-all wrestling match. Sometime in the 1800’s, a ball was added and would be placed between the two groups and each would try to move across the opposing side’s goal line. This game was a precursor to the intercollegiate football that would soon after take hold of the Ivy League. In 1925, with the game well established in the college community, the Harvard Crimson paper still referred to this annual tradition as a “football match.”<br>