It was originally a competition between the The Yale Banner, the Yale Daily News, campus humor magazine The Yale Record and campus radio station WYBC.
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Listeners to the Yale radio station, WYBC, would invariably learn that the station team had won a mighty victory, while readers of the Yale print media were invariably informed that each particular publication had bested all other teams handily, by scores often ranging into the thousands of points.
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Hammond traces the name "bladderball" back to a rugby-like game played by Yale students on the New Haven Green in the first half of the 19th century, featuring an inflated animal bladder.
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In the 1960s a new dimension was added to the game, as teams began to move the ball out of Old Campus and roll it through the New Haven streets to the Yale president's house on Hillhouse Avenue, while simultaneously protecting it from city police.