Long before they became institutions, America’s favorite games were experiments — new leagues, new tournaments, new ideas. These 10 firsts laid the foundation for the sports that drive us to eat, sleep and breathe our fandom.
The First Major League Baseball Game (1876)
Baseball was America’s most popular professional team sport by the 1870s, but plagued by folding franchises, disputed contracts and inconsistent schedules. The National League, launched in 1876, was designed to impose stability. Multiple contests were played on Opening Day, Apr. 22, though the Boston Red Caps’ 6-5 victory over the Philadelphia Athletics is most commonly cited as the first game in modern major-league history. When the rival American League arrived in 1901, the two circuits eventually joined forces, contesting the first World Series in 1903 and forming the foundation of today’s Major League Baseball.
The First US Open: Tennis (1881)
The Newport Casino in Rhode Island played host to the first US National Championship, renamed the US Open in 1968. Twenty-five men competed in the tournament, with their play accompanied by a string quartet. Atop the grass courts — today the site of the International Tennis Hall of Fame — Richard Sears, a 19-year-old Harvard student, staked his claim as the first ever Singles champion. Sears would go on to win the tournament every year through 1887, for a total of 18 straight matches.
The First US Open: Golf (1895)
For his victory in the inaugural US Open, Englishman Horace Rawlins, 21, received a gold medal and $150. The tournament was held Oct. 4, 1895, on the nine-hole course of the Newport Golf Club in Rhode Island, where competitors played four rounds in a single day. Rawlins, employed by the club as an assistant professional, shot 173 to beat fellow Brit Willie Dunn by two strokes. Of the 10 golfers to compete, just one, Canadian Andrew Smith, hailed from outside the United Kingdom. The following year, John Shippen became the first American to play in the tournament.
The First Professional Football Game (1920)
The National Football League traces its origins to Triangle Park, a stretch of grass three miles north of Columbus, Ohio. In the first contest between two teams in the American Professional Football Association — renamed to the National Football League in 1922 — the Dayton Triangles defeated the Columbus Panhandles, 14-0. There was no national media attention nor radio broadcast. Dayton’s roster was composed of factory workers, while Columbus’ team were laborers on the Panhandle section of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Over the next century, the NFL would rise from a loose collection of industrial-town teams into America’s preeminent league.
America’s First Professional Hockey Game (1924)
The National Hockey League was founded in 1917 in Canada, and its first American team — the Boston Bruins — didn’t join until 1924. These Bruins hosted the debut NHL game on American soil on Dec. 1, 1924, at Boston Arena, where they bested the Montreal Maroons 2-1. The Boston Post likened the physical play to “football tactics,” while the Boston Globe questioned whether the sport had a future: “It’s hard to say just how well professional hockey will go in this city.” More than a century — and six championships — later, the Bruins remain one of the league’s most iconic franchises.
The First NCAA Basketball Tournament (1939)
The Oregon Webfoots was the last team left standing at the conclusion of the first Big Dance. En route to the title, the “Tall Firs” first defeated Texas, then Oklahoma before, in the March 27 championship game at Northwestern’s Patten Gymnasium, beating Ohio State, 46-33. Afterward, the Webfoots were presented with a broken trophy — disfigured after star-player Bobby Anet tipped it over in pursuit of a loose ball along the sidelines. The first tournament drew just eight teams selected by regional committees from across the country, with several schools, including Dartmouth and Bradley, declining invitations.
America’s First Professional Basketball Game (1949)
Just as the NFL began as the APFA, the NBA began as the BAA, the Basketball Association of America. In the league’s first game, held at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens, the New York Knickerbockers beat the Toronto Huskies, 68-66. The Knicks’ Ossie Schectman scored the game’s first basket, a give-and-go layup. Scraping for an audience, the Huskies offered tickets priced between $0.75 and $2.50 — with free admission free for anyone taller than Toronto’s big man, 6-foot-8 George Nostrand. But if any fans claimed the offer, history has no record.
Super Bowl I (1967)
Football’s first championship came nearly four-and-a-half decades after the sport’s first game. The AFL-NFL World Championship Game — retroactively known as Super Bowl I — took place at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Jan. 15, 1967. It was the product of a merger agreement between two rival leagues that had spent years battling for players, fans and television audiences. With a halftime performance from the University of Arizona marching band, in front of a stadium only two-thirds full despite tickets costing just $12, Bart Starr’s Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10. The game, simulcast on CBS and NBC, garnered nearly 50 million viewers; the most recent Super Bowl on NBC averaged about 125 million.
Passage of Title IX (1972)
With just 37 words, Title IX changed everything: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” The federal civil rights law, passed in 1972, was America’s first real guarantee of equal opportunities for women — and sports was its most visible consequence, with proportional funding for facilities, coaching and scholarships. In 1971, about 30,000 women competed in college sports; as of 2024, that number has increased more than 700% to over 242,000.
First WNBA Game (1997)
The Women’s National Basketball Association tipped off on June 21,1997, when more than 14,000 fans filled the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, Calif., to watch the New York Liberty down the Los Angeles Sparks, 75-57. The Sparks’ Penny Toler made the league’s first basket, and the game featured two of the WNBA’s great centers, Lisa Leslie (Sparks) and Rebecca Lobo (Liberty) — who told ESPN that the magnitude of the day hit her when she spotted herself on a billboard from the airport to the Forum. But not everything went off without a hitch: Jeffrey Osborne was set to sing the national anthem but got stuck in traffic and missed his spot.
