I just found 2 tickets to the 1902 College Basketball Championship Game between Williams and Amherst along with all sorts of newspaper articles that went with it describing it as the championship game etc. Does anyone know anything about early college basketball tickets that can tell me if this was the first college championship game or if there were such games before 1902? I recall seeing a 1905 college basketball championship ticket for Williams v. Dartmouth once, but this is the earliest I have ever seen by three years and since Basketball was invented in the mid-1890's, 1902 seems really old for the sport. Any help would be appreciated.

Rhys

That is very early, however, I'm sure there were all kinds of so called "championship games" during that time. There was no sanctioning body and travel was somewhat limited so any "championship" was probably a fairly local label.

Any pics?

Rob M.

Realize basketball was only invented in 1891. The first game between colleges was 1895, and the first 5 on 5 game was 1896. The NCAA was founded in 1906, and the first NCAA Championship game was in 1939.

Rhys -

Contact vintage basketball collector Hank Reizes at cager91@cox.net
Tell him that Alan, the puny Jewish basketball collector said Hank would know

Alan

I checked Amherst College's website and it was a league championship not national championship. I don't believe there was any national championship that early. Their league was called the triangular league and consisted of Amherst, Wesleyan, and Williams Colleges. Amherst had a good athletic program at the time, with the football and baseball teams playing Ivy League schools including Harvard and Yale. I believe this was Amherst's first basketball championship, as they formed their first team in 1901.

Source:

http://www.amherst.edu/library/archives/texts/tower_amherst_athletics/index.html

Here is a scan of the tickets. The article itself refers to it as "the Championship of the New England Inter-Collegiate Basketball League". It says they were 7-0 and played the following schools

Trinity
UMass (twice)
Holy Cross
Wesleyan
Dartmouth
Williams

New England was the hotbed of early Basketball and although they were playing it in Kansas and Nebraska by this time since James Naismith had moved there, I would bet that the New England Champion was probably given more credence over the midwest in 1902. I appreciate the information people have posted so far and if there are anymore thoughts I would love to hear them.

I have not decided to soak the tickets off the page or keep them intact as a display. I guess it would depend partially on how much they are worth but the answer to that is probably harder than the answer to whether this really was THE Basketball Championship of 1902.

Rhys