Saturday afternoon, college football returns to action across the Atlantic as North Carolina faces TCU in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic.

Although the Dublin matchup has become a regular Week 0 event only recently, the sport ventured overseas long before. International college football carries an underappreciated past, with contests held beyond U.S. borders from the game's earliest period.

The Bacardi Bowl occurred several times from 1907 to 1946 in Havana, pitting American schools against Cuban sides. Encounters in Canada involving U.S. programs versus McGill and other northern institutions trace to the 1870s. And few recall Missouri's unsanctioned, spur-of-the-moment venture into Mexico alongside Texas in 1896.

Wait, really?

The contests went unrecorded officially by either program since they were exhibitions, leaving the earliest known college football matches in Mexico as minor notes in the sport's history. Yet they took place, and Missouri's defiant decision to participate proves more remarkable than the play itself.

College football celebrates the odd and overlooked. This narrative hits both marks, beginning with a future lawyer's clever move and concluding with a coach's dismissal. To mark the sport's return on foreign ground, we revisit one of those forgotten footnotes and reconstruct a singular gridiron curiosity.

Mid-December, 1896: 'No opportunity to prevent'

Missouri's unsanctioned crossing of the Rio Grande arose from a chance pairing of timing and independent college spirit.

George A. Hill pursued many ventures. A railroad promoter by profession, he earned notice as a reliable organizer of journeys into Mexico. The Austin-American Statesman called him the tireless Mexican excursion manager and promoter.

Yet passengers were not Hill's sole focus. Late in 1896 he aimed to introduce football south of the border as well.

Hill first intended to bring the University of Texas squad plus a regional all-star group. The second piece remained unsettled until December, when circumstances aligned.

While Hill planned the southern football trip, Missouri's team traveled to Texas for its season finale. The Tigers dominated. Besides a 10-0 victory over the Longhorns, Missouri defeated four other Texas opponents, mostly city YMCAs, by a combined 129-0.

Hill sought an all-star squad, and one delivering all-star results appeared. After Missouri's 28-0 win over the Dallas Athletic Club, Hill recruited the Tigers. The offer of a foreign trip with expenses covered proved irresistible. Missouri's 1897 yearbook, the Savitar, noted the team's swift, unanimous acceptance.

After the game the discussion of the Mexico trip began, the Savitar states. Mr. George A. Hill of Austin originated the idea and, with Texas coach Harry O. Robinson, presented it to the pleased Tigers. The squad decided at once to go.

One obstacle remained. Missouri had approval for the Texas journey, yet that permission was limited and did not cover an extra international leg. A holiday detour to Mexico would exceed any return deadline. The team's rapid agreement helped avoid immediate conflict.

So pleased were the Missourians that the plan was accepted without any notice to the faculty, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, describing the resulting commotion on campus in Columbia.

Because that reaction was anticipated, later accounts suggested the limited contact may have been deliberate.

Team manager George English believed the faculty, more than a thousand miles away, would not understand and would refuse permission. So he did not ask. If the faculty issued no prohibition, the trip would not constitute disobedience. He therefore gave them no chance to object, the Kansas City Times recounted in 1913 after interviewing English. The paper noted that English later built a successful legal career.

Faculty concerns aside, practical steps were impossible. The Tigers stood more than a thousand miles from campus. Any messages to Austin went unanswered.

With nothing to stop us except college rules, we agreed we would love to go, English told The Associated Press in 1921.

That settled the matter. Missouri and company would travel to Mexico.

Late December, 1896: 'Football will likely stay foreign'

By every report the journey proved memorable.

Departing December 23 with about one hundred fellow travelers, Hill's group rode in Pullman palace cars and other comforts across the Rio Grande toward Monterrey and Mexico City. The train featured new dining-car service. Upon arrival, the Savitar recorded numerous anecdotes from the Tigers' explorations.

A near-altercation was avoided when a traveler said Good God instead of Good Day to a local resident. One player was surprised by nude swimmers in Mexico City pools. Coach Frank Patterson acquired a fifty-cent opal for a dime.

Former Missouri governor Thomas T. Crittenden, then U.S. consul general in Mexico City, praised the players as fine representatives who fully enjoyed the experience.

The boys are building reputations for the universities more than your learned professors could achieve in five times the time, Crittenden wrote in a letter to University of Missouri president Richard Henry Jesse, preserved in the State Historical Society of Missouri archives. This trip also provides them far more education than months on campus could offer.

Despite missing both Christmas and New Year's at home, spirits remained high.

This was Christmas night and the party grew quiet and reflective. The young ladies and some young men performed a concert. The latest songs were absent, yet they sang childhood tunes. Those songs carried everyone home in spirit and eased the sadness of spending the holiday far away, the Savitar noted. A similar evening of song, dance and speeches extended into the morning on New Year's Eve.

On the field the results were mixed. Missouri claimed the first college football game in Mexico, winning 12-0 in Monterrey on Christmas Day before 3,000 spectators that included local governor Bernardo Reyes, according to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

The next two games in Mexico City drew less attention. Pre-trip hopes that President Porfirio Diaz would attend went unfulfilled. The new sport also struggled against bullfighting for interest.

The contests themselves were unconventional. Rosters were combined, multiple reports stated. A 1957 Alcalde article quoted a letter from Missouri player Adam Hill.

We played a mixed team, Hill wrote. During the games we swapped players, and even the coaches, Harry Robinson of Texas and Frank Patterson of Missouri, took part.

Mexico City's altitude affected play.

The great elevation tired the players quickly, the San Antonio Express News reported after the third game, a 0-0 tie. After the second contest the Austin-American Statesman cited The Mexican Herald, noting limited local interest.

The Herald observed that so violent and physical a game is unlikely to take hold, and football will probably remain foreign to Mexico.

Missouri, Texas and the travelers returned north with memories but limited success as sporting ambassadors. In Laredo a missed connection required an overnight wait. They responded appropriately.

They played more football, then bowled. Missouri won both.

In the meantime a football game was played and one evening was spent at the Laredo Club, the Savitar records. There the Missouri bowling team defeated the Texas bowling team, both formed on the spot.

January, 1897: 'The committee recommends...'

The Tigers collected athletic wins, yet their sternest test awaited upon return.

Back on campus, rumors spread that the defiant squad might face discipline. Adding to concerns, two non-roster players named Buchholz and Lewis, neither of them students, had joined the Texas trip.

Buchholz had played for Missouri the prior year. Lewis, described by Buchholz as the toughest and meanest football player alive, was reportedly a practicing physician. Both had competed in Kansas City that fall and attached themselves to the Tigers before the southern journey. Non-students appearing on college teams was not unknown then, yet the issue remained.

Repercussions seemed possible.

The maverick squad found support, however. Fellow students backed the team strongly. One player reportedly warned that expulsion would prompt three hundred students to depart as well.

Unexpected backing arrived from Mexico. Crittenden, aware of possible penalties, wrote the university president in defense of the players.

I write this without their knowledge after seeing in a paper that the faculty might hold the young men responsible for some rule violation, Crittenden stated. As an old friend of the university and of education I speak for the boys. They have taken the trip of their lives, free of cost, which forms part of the broadest and most practical education.

Despite the support, the team lacked a strong defense, though not for want of creative thinking.