The very first night football game was played in Mansfield, Pennsylvania on September 28, 1892 between Mansfield State Normal and Wyoming Seminary. Mansfield hosted the 13th annual Tioga County Agricultural, Mechanical and Industrial Fair in late September 1892. According to an NCAA.com post one of the highlights of that year's fair was a portable generator with a brand new fangled light display. Under the lumination from these lights would be a game of football played. It was a novelty as advertised and the fair attracted over 18,000 patrons many of who watched the first football game played at night. The idea of the game came from the Mansfield football team who had just started playing a year earlier and they got General Electric interested in the idea as a way of showing off the new technology in grand fashion. They had lights all around the playing field and one light pole smack dab in the middle of the field too. The lighting quality was very poor though and on almost every play few knew where the ball was. The game ended in a scoreless tie after only a total of 10 plays were run, but it was history making nonetheless.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons of the Mansfield Normal School Football field circa 1915.
