Rutgers Scarlet Knights
intercollegiate sports teams of Rutgers University
The Rutgers Scarlet Knights are the athletic teams that represent Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus. In sports, Rutgers is famously known for being the "Birthplace of College Football", hosting the first ever intercollegiate football game on November 6, 1869, in which Rutgers defeated a team from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) with a score of 6 runs to 4.
Among the first American schools that participate in intercollegiate athletics, Rutgers currently fields 24 teams in the Big Ten Conference, which participates in Division I competition, as sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the following sports: baseball, basketball, cross country, field hockey, football, golf, gymnastics, lacrosse, rowing, soccer, softball, tennis, track and field, swimming and diving, wrestling, and volleyball. The athletic programs compete under the name "Scarlet Knights", after the Rutgers University mascot that was chosen in 1955 by the student body.
The Rutgers campuses in Newark and Camden also participate in intercollegiate competition — under the names "Scarlet Raiders" and "Scarlet Raptors", respectively — in NCAA Division III.
Athletic heritage
Rutgers was among the first American institutions to engage in intercollegiate athletics. Organized sports at Rutgers started with the Rutgers Men's Crew Team in 1864. In addition, the university participated in a small circle of schools that included Yale University, Columbia University and long-time rival, Princeton University (then called The College of New Jersey). The four schools met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan on October 19, 1873, to establish a set of rules governing their intercollegiate competition, and particularly to codify the new game of football. Though invited, Harvard University chose not to attend. In the early years of intercollegiate athletics, the circle of schools that participated in these athletic events were located solely in the American Northeast.
The public source identifies “Rutgers Scarlet Knights” as intercollegiate sports teams of Rutgers University. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Rutgers, Scarlet and Knights.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q923819. VIAF identifies the subject as 153990876. The Library of Congress control number is no2008024300. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1869, 1955, 1864 and 1873.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rutgers Scarlet Knights” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.