Editor’s note: Throughout the offseason, The Athletic is celebrating the 150th anniversary of college football, one decade at a time. For more on the 1890s, read Matt Brown on the best players, teams, games and coaches of the decade.



You might say the revolution began to take shape one brilliant fall afternoon in the American South, with a fortuitous accident that occurred in front of more than a thousand largely unwitting spectators.



Oct. 26, 1895, Atlanta: A University of North Carolina football player, besieged by a wall of Georgia defenders while preparing to punt, hoisted a leather-bound spheroid to his shoulder. It was not the same football we know today — it was heavier and rounder, with all the aerodynamic thrust of a ripe watermelon — but then, this was not the game we know today, either. In that moment, in an industrial nation nearing the turn of the 20th century, the gospel of football had just begun to manifest itself nationwide, and yet...