Program from the dedication game
November 5, 1938: Rutgers Stadium opens in Piscataway, Middlesex County, New Jersey, across the Raritan River from the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers College, now called Rutgers University.
For the 1st time since they played each other in the 1st college football game in 1869 -- 69 years minus 1 day earlier -- Rutgers beat Princeton, 20-18.
Rutgers had begun the season playing home games in New Brunswick, at Neilson Field, where they had been playing since 1892. They finished the 1938 season 7-1, their only loss coming at Neilson Field, to New York University (NYU), 25-6.
Before 1892, including that 1869 game, they had played at College Field. In 1931, the College Avenue Gym and its parking lot were built on the site.
In 1953, the Alexander Library, the hub of RU's University Library system, was built on the site of Neilson Field. As far as I know, Rutgers is the only school that tore down a football stadium and built a library on the site. Can you imagine that happening at another school that's now in the Big Ten? Or in the South?
The 1938 Rutgers Stadium, late in its tenure
RU would continue to play home games in football, and sometimes soccer and lacrosse, at the 23,000-seat Rutgers Stadium until 1992. By the time of their undefeated season in 1976, when they committed to playing what they called "bigger time" football, the stadium was hopelessly outdated, and they had begun playing games at Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands.
It was far larger, but well off campus, and visiting teams sometimes drew in bigger crowds, making it seem like a home game. Example: Army's Michie Stadium is 82 miles from Piscataway, but only 48 miles from the Meadowlands.
While RU played their 1993 home games at Giants Stadium, the old stadium was demolished, and replaced with a 41,000-seat modern Rutgers Stadium that opened in 1994. It was renamed High Point Solutions Stadium in 2011, HighPoint.com Stadium in 2017, and SHI Stadium in 2019. It now seats 52,454.
The current Rutgers stadium
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November 5, 1938 was a Saturday. These other notable college football games were played:
* The University of Pittsburgh, then ranked Number 1, were by their neighbors, Number 19 Carnegie Tech, 20-10 at Pitt Stadium. This ended a 22-game unbeaten streak for the Panthers (20-0-2). Both teams used Pitt Stadium as their home field, and Carnegie Tech became Carnegie Mellon University in 1967.
* The Number 3 team in the country also lost: California lost to Number 13 USC, 13-7 at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
* The Number 2 team, Texas Christian University, a.k.a. TCU of Fort Worth, beat the University of Tulsa, 21-0 at Skelly Field in Tulsa. TCU jumped to Number 1, won the Southwest Conference title, and beat Carnegie Tech, then ranked Number 6, in the Sugar Bowl to finish 11-0. Their quarterback, a lefthander named Davey O'Brien, was awarded the Heisman Trophy.
* Number 4 Notre Dame beat Navy, 15-0, in a game moved from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland to Municipal Stadium in Baltimore, to take advantage of the much higher seating capacity. Memorial Stadium would be built on the site in 1954. Notre Dame would blow its shot at the National Championship by losing to USC.
* Number 6 Tennessee beat the University of Chattanooga, 45-0 at Shields-Watkins Field in Knoxville, Tennessee. (It was later renamed for Tennessee's head coach, Bob Neyland.) Tennessee rose to Number 2, and then beat Number 4 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl to finish 11-0. The polls split the National Championship between TCU and Tennessee.
* Number 12 Minnesota beat Iowa, 28-0 at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. They went on to win the Big Ten.
And 2 games were played in the NHL. The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-2 at the Montreal Forum; and the Boston Bruins beat the Detroit Red Wings, 4-1 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.