TicketsSixteen years after the program's first season, the Bearcats began playing football on campus in 1901 in the "Burnet Woods hollow" we now call Carson Field. It was chosen first by students for intramural athletic events––an overlooked, sunken marshy area perfect for roughhousing—and then by a fledgling athletic department, for its naturally surrounding hills that provided a vantage point for spectators.
Cincinnati was a public school established for its people with a mission of educating the masses. To this end, in 1906, the university invented cooperative education, providing students real-world experience by sending them to workplaces during the day. "[Dean of Engineering] Herman Schneider's contemporaries ridiculed his plan to send university students to work in factories," wrote UC Magazine. "Business owners worried about fraternity boys mangling their machinery. Faculty pictured grimy-fingered factory boys in class."
What was originally a one-year trial that only narrowly received board approval quickly caught on. And so by 1909, Cincinnati football had a problem: The team needed to practice, but many of its players were down the hill working in factories until sunset, leaving no daylight hours to prepare for Saturdays. Schneider did what he could, putting boys interested in playing football on the same rotation, meaning the co-op students (half of the roster at the time) would spend their days in factories one week and attend classes the next. Unfortunately, that still wasn't enough to provide adequate time for game preparation. The solution proved to be both obvious and unprecedented. They'd set up lights and practice in the dark.
The team first practiced at night on September 27, 1909. "They went through a stiff workout, lasting over two hours," wrote The Enquirer. "About a half dozen electric poles have been erected in the hollow, each suspending large electric lights. The lights did not give forth expected rays … No punting can be done by the present system." Things continued this way for a while. Head coach Robert Burch made a habit of keeping an electrician on site at practices to attend to any needs, adjusting the carbon arc lights on the fly to provide optimal illumination. They even painted the ball white so they could see it. Eventually, it became normal—a way of life for kids wanting a blue-collar education to go with their blue-collar sport. The system incrementally improved until the university decided to spring for something bigger.
In 1921, electrical engineering student Jack Bernard Silverman designed an incandescent lighting system as his co-op thesis––the genesis of a problem crafting its ultimate solution. The new array consisted of 28 light towers, providing five times the illumination as the original setup. "They make the field almost as bright as day after dark," claimed The Enquirer.
The lights were good enough that university officials had an idea. If a team could practice at night, why not play a game?
In 1923, Cincinnati set out to play the first intercollegiate night game in the Midwest, fourteen years after it began practicing under the stars. They felt their system was reliable enough, and the team was used to the concept, though outsiders remained skeptical. The Cincinnati Post sent a photographer to Carson Field the night before the game to stage photographs of the team "without the aid of a flashlight" just to prove the whole thing was real, and it was. Cincinnati invited Kentucky Wesleyan to be its opponent and offered them the field one night to get themselves acclimated to the lights, then they grabbed a white football and put their idea to the test.
"Other schools located in large cities throughout the country are watching the experiment closely," reported The Cincinnati Post. "And if it is as successful as these photos indicate it will be, night football games early in the season are likely to become common in a year or two."
The Bearcats beat Kentucky Wesleyan by a 17-0 final score that night, but the real story was the spectacle:
"Substituting a great battery of searchlights for the sun, the University of Cincinnati eleven introduced a new game to pigskin followers and one which was the first to be played in gridiron history under similar conditions, when it defeated Kentucky Wesleyan at Carson Field last night, 17 to 0.
With the huge lights turning the night into bright daylight, every play could be followed in every detail, and punts and passes were as plain to the 5,000 spectators as if the game was being conducted with the sun shining brightly.
While those in the first three or four rows were bothered a bit by the lights directly across the field from them, those in the upper tiers and at the end of the rows never missed a move, and announced that the new game was a great success.
Never at any time during the contest were the players of either team bothered by the bright rays. This was shown particularly by the fact that the contest was marked by few fumbles. Few punts were misjudged, and when they were it was the player's fault."
Participants in that pioneering game remembered it fondly. "We were sure of one thing," recalled Kentucky Wesleyan captain George Ditto years later. "We were going to carry the battle to the Bearcats if we had to wear miners' caps to see."
Word of the experiment's success quickly traveled. Reports reached newspapers in Texas, New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota, The Miami Herald, and The Boston Globe.
The game was such a hit locally that the Bearcats turned around and tried to schedule their Week 2 game against Kentucky after dark, though opposing head coach Jack Winn refused. "Whether Winn's refusal to play at night is caused by fear of the Bearcats … is not known," speculated The Kentucky Post.
That season opener proved to be the team's only night game that year.
The captain of that Bearcats team wouldn't be around to see the legacy it left behind. Jimmy Nippert—a center in 1923—was cleated in the season's final game against "ancient enemy" Miami (OH). His wound was filled with mud and droppings from a pre-game chicken race. Not realizing his injury's severity, he finished the Cincinnati victory. Nippert later developed an infection, fell ill, and found himself fighting for his life. On Christmas Day 1923, he died of blood poisoning at Christ Hospital.
Six days later, Jimmy's grandfather—James N. Gamble, son of the Procter & Gamble co-founder—wrote a letter to UC president Frederick Hicks, offering to pay for the completion of the stadium surrounding Carson Field, adding 18 sections of seats to the 14 that the university had already constructed. Original cost estimates were between $125,000 and $150,000, but the final sum paid by Gamble was $270,000 (about $4 million adjusted for inflation). The stadium included state-of-the-art training rooms (one for UC and another for visitors), allowing on-site medical care for injured players, preventing future student-athletes from suffering the same fate his grandson did.
Nippert's final words, "Five more yards to go — then drop!" were etched into a memorial at the stadium's south end, just above a 10-foot etching of Jimmy himself that still stands today.
The stadium was completed and dedicated the following year, as the Bearcats played two more home games under lights. From there, the games became a tradition, as many (and often most) September and early October games were slated for nighttime beginning in the '20s, in the stadium now bearing the former captain's name.
For all the success of that 1923 experiment, college football at night didn't spread as fast as sportswriters of the time had imagined. Eventually, Kentucky did muster up the guts to play at night—becoming the first SEC program to host a night game in 1929. LSU—one of the premiere destinations for after-dark football in the 21st century—followed in 1931. Georgia Tech joined in 1936 before Georgia caught on in 1940. Still, many teams, like Clemson, waited until after World War II, while most clung to the traditionalism of Saturday afternoon games for decades. Tennessee's Neyland Stadium didn't host a night game until the '70s. Ohio State, Notre Dame, Colorado, and Virginia Tech waited until the '80s. Mizzou hosted their first late kickoff in 1992, and Michigan—the last major holdout—waited until 2011 to turn the lights on in The Big House.
One hundred years later, an idea Cincinnati pioneered has become a calling card. One of the biggest wins in program history—a 2006 trajectory-changing upset of 7th-ranked Rutgers—came at night. The Bearcats are 39-12 in Nippert at Night games since.
It was an idea born out of necessity and brought to life by ingenuity: Football in the dark, played by a bunch of grimy-fingered factory boys.