The 1869 college football season was the first season of intercollegiate football in the United States. While played using improvised rules more closely resembling soccer and rugby than modern gridiron football, it is traditionally considered the inaugural college football season. The 1869 season consisted of only two games, both between Rutgers and Princeton. The first was played on November 6 at Rutgers' campus, and the second was played on November 13 at Princeton's campus. Both games were won by the home team.

The first college football national championship was awarded retroactively to the two teams. Princeton was named the champion by the Billingsley Report and the National Championship Foundation, while college football research historian Parke H. Davis named Rutgers and Princeton co-champions. Various other ratings and retrospectives have rated the teams differently.

The two games were played with rules very different from what is currently understood as American football, and also played under home field rules that differed from each other. However, in both games, there was no running with the ball, each team included 25 players, and the ball was perfectly spherical.

New Brunswick is a city in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States. The city is the county seat of Middlesex County, and is the home of Rutgers University. The city is both a regional commercial hub for the Central New Jersey region and a prominent and growing commuter town for residents commuting to New York City within the New York metropolitan area. New Brunswick is on the Northeast Corridor rail line, 27 miles (43 km) southwest of Manhattan. The city is located on the southern banks of the Raritan River in the Raritan Valley region.

For 2020, New Brunswick had a population of 55,266, representing a 0.2% increase from the 55,181 people enumerated at the 2010 United States Census, which in turn had reflected an increase of 6,608 (+13.6%) from the 48,573 counted in the 2000 Census. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 55,676 in 2019, ranking the city the 689th-most-populous in the country. Due to the concentration of medical facilities in the area, including Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and Saint Peter's University Hospital, as well as Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey's Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick is known as both the Hub City and the Healthcare City. The corporate headquarters and production facilities of several global pharmaceutical companies are situated in the city, including Johnson & Johnson and Bristol Myers Squibb. New Brunswick has evolved into a major center for the sciences, arts, and cultural activities, bringing gentrification to the city.

New Brunswick is noted for its ethnic diversity. At one time, one quarter of the Hungarian population of New Jersey resided in the city and in the 1930s one out of three city residents was Hungarian. The Hungarian community continues as a cohesive community, with the 3,200 Hungarian residents accounting for 8% of the population of New Brunswick in 1992. Growing Asian and Hispanic communities have developed around French Street near Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.