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UNIVERSITY MISSOURIAN—Monday, December 4, 1911, Page 2, column 2
“The fall home-coming idea originated by Illinois last year is being taken up by several other universities. Indiana held hers at the Purdue-Indiana game. Wisconsin celebrated at the Wisconsin* game and Missouri welcomed her “old grads” back at the Missouri-Kansas game.”
[*Wisconsin’s first homecoming, Nov. 18, 1911, was against Minnesota[

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From the NCAA librarian:
I have researched this issue before and in checking our records I do not find any specific mention of the NCAA “sanctioning” or “crediting” the 1911 Missouri game as the first homecoming.

There was a timeline to commemorate the first 100 years of college football. For the year 1910 it reads, “Mass-play era ends as rules makers require seven players on line of scrimmage, abolish pushing and pulling ball-carrier and interlocked interference, permit passes to be thrown over line at any point, bar crawling and flying tackle. May be merely a coincidence, but radical rules changes coincide with college football’s first Homecoming Game for returning alumni (hosted by Illinois against Chicago).”

I also found another reference that indicates Baylor claims the first homecoming.

Again, I do not have anything in our records indicating that the NCAA acknowledged the 1911 Missouri game as the first homecoming.

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TEXAS

Brownwood (Tex) Daily Bulletin—November 26, 1908
UNIVERSITY ALUMNI MEET
IN GREAT CELEBRATION
Former Students of the Texas University Have
Home Coming and Will See Big Football Game

Special to Daily Bulletin:
Austin, Texas, Nov. 25—The festivities of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Texas University began yesterday and the city is filled with a howling, merry-making throng of alumni and students.
At one o’clock yesterday afternoon the Home-Coming barbecue held attention and more than fifteen hundred former students took part in the big dinner.
President Brooks of Baylor University will deliver an address today at ten o’clock and the new law building will be dedicated.
The big event of the day, however, is the annual football game between A. & M. and Varsity

Galveston Daily News—November 15, 1908
Austin, Tex. Nov. 14—
It is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 students have been enrolled at one time or another in the law department of the university and this reception of the department is expected to be one of the biggest events of the university homecoming week, when hundreds of former students will gather once again on the campus of their old alma mater.

Galveston Daily News—November 22, 1908
Austin, Tex., Nov. 21—In view of the fact that such a large crowd is expected by the University of Texas football management, work was begun today on four new bleachers on which to set the visitors when they return to the university homecoming and Thanksgiving football game.

San Antonio Daily Express–November 27, 1908
Austin, Tex. Nov. 26—Today marked the second and last day of the university homecoming exercises and celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary. The law building was formally dedicated in honor of Gov. O.M. Roberts and Judge Robert R. Gould in the morning, there was a monster football game with Agricultural and Mechanical College in the afternoon and a concert, reception and german at night.

Galveston Daily News—November 27, 1908

TWO-THOUSAND EX-STUDENTS
Concert and German Were Given—Austin Brilliantly Illuminated

Special to the News
Austin, Tex. Nov. 26—Today marked the second and last day of the university homecoming exercises and celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary. The law building was formally dedicated in honor of Gove. O.M. Roberts and Judge Robert S. Gould in the morning, there was a monster football game with Agricultural and Mechanical College in the afternoon and a concert, reception and german at night.

Parade Greeted Students
On the arrival of the cadets from the Agricultural and Mechanical College this morning for the football game they were greeted by the university students and the students of the two colleges formed a parade. With the bands of the respective schools at their heads they marched up the avenue and over town side by side and the best spirit ever shown was manifested. There were a number of carriages in the parade and this added much to the occasion.

City Was Decorated
Strings of vari-colored lights have been yesterday and today hung from base to dome of the capitol and the illumination tonight forms a scene of unusual beauty. The whole town is decorated in honor of the homecoming of the university alumni.
Annual Thanksgiving German
The University German Club tonight gave its annual Thanksgiving german, and it proved a grand success. The halls of the Driskill Hotel were beautifully decorated and the refreshments were fine. There were many of the alumni present and this added much to the occasion.

Concert at Nigh
The program for today’s university exercises ended tonight with a concert in which the members of the university musical organizations took part. They had practiced well and for this reason the program was excellent in many respects.

BAYLOR
Galveston News—November 10, 1909
Baylor Home-Coming
Special to The News
Temple, Tex., Nov. 9—On Tuesday night at 8 o’clock a meeting of all ex-students of Baylor University was held for the purpose of organizing a Baylor Club and perfecting plans for attending the “home-coming” at Waco during Thanksgiving week. A large number of Baylor ex-students were present. A.B. Crouch was elected chairman and Prof. J.L. Head was selected secretary. Steps were taken to include in the organization all ex-students who reside in the county. There is much interest in the movement and much success is expected.

Galveston News—November 26, 1909
BAYLOR HOMECOMING HAS BRILLIANT CLOSE
Special to The News
Waco, Tex., Nov. 25—The grand apotheosis to Baylor University, not only by its alumni and former students, but participated in by the people generally, closed tonight with a reunion of the Philomethian, Calliopean and Erisoiphian literary society of Baylor, the reunion being held in Carroll Chapel and in Georgia Burleson Hall.

In the afternoon beginning at 2 o’clock the “Homecoming March” began, ending in time for the football game. The march commenced on Washington street and terminated at the Baylor campus. The length of the procession was twenty-five blocks, all of the elements of the home-coming entering into its composition…”

Baylor yell as a sign that the first annual Baylor homecoming had passed into history.

ILLINOIS

Chicago Tribune—October 12, 1910
As the game this year will be played on Illinois field, a victory for the downstaters would be more gratifying than ever, and as this is home-coming week at the state institution, the football contest will be the feature of the celebration.

Chicago Tribune—October 15, 1910
As this is home coming week at Illinois, the orange and blue eleven will not lack of support, and, in fact, no team in the west ever has expected to go on the gridiron with the undivided support which the orange and blue clad warriors will receive today.

Christian Science Monitor—November 22, 1912
URBANA, Ill. – The third annual homecoming at the University of Illinois was celebrated by thousands of alumni and students recently. Among the events on the program were football games, band concert, mass meeting, alumni reunions and the play, “The County Chairman,” by George Ade, given by the Mask and Bauble Dramatic club.

New York Times
October 19, 1998, Pg. A10
Homecomings Dethrone Kings and Queens
By DIRK JOHNSON
CHAMPAIGN, Ill., Oct. 17—The boast has been enough to bring tears to the eyes of University of Illinois alumni, who can be recognized by the louder-than-a-boom-box orange attire they customarily don for the Big Ten football games here at Zupke Field.
For nearly a century, Illinois has prided itself as the birthplace of American homecomings, the autumn ritual of welcoming back alumni with parades, dances and football.
The first college homecoming, legend has it, started when two Illinois students, Dab Williams and W. Elmer Ekblaw, invited alumni to the football game on Oct. 16, 1910, against its bitter rival, the University of Chicago, and convinced the school administration to make a three-day celebration of it.
“Unfortunately,” said William Broom, the associate dean of students at Illinois, referring to the school’s claim to be the cradle of homecoming, “it’s a myth.”
It turns out that Baylor University held a homecoming one year earlier, a fact that Baylor officials brought to the attention of Illinois partisans a year ago, taking the bragging rights to the Texas campus.

INDIANA
Indianapolis Star—November 8, 1910
ALUMNI PLEDGE AID TO INDIANA ELEVEN
Old Graduates Hold Rousing Meeting, Promising to Support Crimson Team Against Illlini
“Get your tickets for the Indiana-Illinois football game today.”
That was the slogan expressed at the smoker given last night in the Denison Hotel by the alumni of Indiana university and students and faculty members of the Indiana University School of Medicine to stir up enthusiasm for the home-coming and Indiana-Illinois football game.

http://alumni.indiana.edu/events/homecoming/history.shtml
HOMECOMING AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY
Bradley D. Cook, Curator of Photographs
Office of Indiana University Archives & Records Management
August 16, 2005

It has been said that one “can define homecoming as a well-planned, University-sponsored annual alumni event centering on a football game.”1 This statement made by the University of Illinois Archives needs to be pared down because, by definition, a homecoming is a planned event sponsored by the university in some way; for how long and how well it was planned is completely relative. While I would agree that a homecoming centered on an intercollegiate football game has become the tradition for most schools in this country, whether or not it is centered on a football game, some other intercollegiate athletic contest, or no athletic contest at all is immaterial.

1908
During the week of June 19-24, 1908, Indiana University held its first “Homecoming.” This event, however, was not centered on an intercollegiate athletic contest. The event actually centered on the dedication of three new buildings on the campus. Alumni visited the campus, a “circus” was held on Jordan Field, and a banquet was billed as “the crowning glory of the week.”

Although this event did not involve an intercollegiate athletic contest, it was paramount in the history of homecoming at Indiana University in the sense that students and the faculty were planning the 1908 event and had high hopes that a tradition would begin. A short article in the June 10, 1908 Indiana Daily Student speaks of the upcoming event:

“The idea of a Gala Week, which upperclassmen in conjunction with the faculty are trying to inaugurate here, is one which has long been in favor with practically all the great Western colleges…it is a time of general homecoming and reunions, and probably more than any other one practice, it has helped to cement that wonderful college spirit, which so pre-eminently marks the larger schools, and which is so lamentably missed at Indiana.”

1909
In 1909, Gala Day was moved to the weekend of the Indiana – Purdue football game. This rivalry began in 1890, and in 1909 the introduction of a trophy in the form of an old oaken bucket was still 16 years away. While minutes of meetings and other historical documents have not been found, we can glean from the following newspaper articles that appeared in the Indiana Daily Student (IDS) and Bloomington’s The Daily Telephone (DT) that planning for the 1909 event was clearly taking place:

November 6, 1909 (IDS) — “The churches and Christian Associations of various kinds in the city, have been quietly at work for several days on plans for methods of furnishing meals for the visitors who will pour into Bloomington from every direction on the day of the Indiana-Purdue game.”

November 12, 1909 (IDS) — “Arrangements have all been completed for the ‘Varsity Special,’ which will carry 500 or 600 loyal Indiana alumni and supporters to the Indiana-Purdue game…There will be a ‘smoker,’ but not a banquet at the Denison Hotel Saturday evening to arouse enthusiasm for the game…we’ve decided to spend our money on a band for the alumni rooters at the game instead of refreshments for the smoker…there will be speeches by several of the prominent alumni.”

November 13, 1909 (DT) — “…as the downtown eating places can not near accommodate the crowd, arrangements have been made at the University for lunch stands…several church organizations are preparing to have lunch booths on the campus, and a number of enterprising young men will have eating stands around the public square.”

November 15, 1909 (DT) — “Not three, but four special trains will come into Bloomington Saturday…this morning word was received that arrangements had been made for an excursion train from Evansville which will bring a big crowd of Crimson alumni from the southwest part of the state…By special request of the men who have arranged for the train, the Evansville people will be met at the station here by the University band, and there will be a parade through the down town streets and out to the University.”

November 16, 1909 (IDS) — “Arrangements have been made to have bleachers all around the field, the seating capacity being brought up to 5,700. Circus seats will fill the space between the regular bleachers…”

November 17, 1909 (DT) — “Committees have been appointed to look after the decoration of the business section of the town and to make arrangements for the feeding of the crowd.”

November 17, 1909 (IDS) — “A meeting was held Monday night at Major Louden’s office and Alex Hirsch was appointed chairman of the decorating committee.”

November 18, 1909 (IDS) — “U.H. Smith,” Indiana University’s assistant registrar and accountant, “will arrange a schedule by which different trainloads of people will be guided to different eating establishments.”

November 20, 1909 (DT) — “Not only was it a great football day, but it was a great reunion…”

November 22, 1909 (IDS) — “A Precedent For Future Contests…Not for years has an event made such an impression upon Indiana alumni…Every little while a man well past years of college life would see another man, the two would greet each other as only two Indiana men can…All in all, no more successful day, from every standpoint has been held at the State institution. We won. We won without vicious rooting, and Purdue University was treated correctly. It was a precedent that will live for years.”

1910
In 1908, the titles “Gala Day” and “Home-Coming-Week” were used to describe that summer’s event. In 1909, only “Gala Day” is found. In 1910, the title “Gala Day” is not found at all in describing the event; only the term “Homecoming.” The Indiana Daily Student is replete with articles in October and early November describing the planning of the event — all of which mention the term “Homecoming.” I provide here a sampling of some of these articles as other universities do not dispute our 1910 event:
October 8, 1910 — “Great plans are being made for the Alumni Fall Home-Coming…”
October 21, 1910 — “Home Coming Planned For Illinois Game.”
October 27, 1910 — “Everybody Is Behind The Big Home Coming.”