1886 Yale Bulldogs football team

1886 Yale Bulldogs football
National champion (Helms, NCF) Co-national champion (Davis) IFA co-champion
Conference	Intercollegiate Football Association
1886 record	9–0–1 ( )
Head coach	No coach
Captain	Robert Corwin
Home stadium	Yale Field

1886 college football records
	Conf							Overall
Team	W		L		T			W		L		T
Yale			–					9	–	0	–	1
Princeton			–					7	–	0	–	1
Michigan			–					2	–	0	–	0
Harvard			–					12	–	2	–	0
California			–					6	–	2	–	1
Massachusetts			–					2	–	1	–	0
Navy			–					3	–	3	–	0
Dartmouth			–					2	–	2	–	0
Rutgers			–					1	–	3	–	0
Northwestern			–					0	–	1	–	0
Vermont			–					0	–	1	–	0
Minnesota			–					0	–	12	–	0

The 1886 Yale Bulldogs football team represented Yale University in the 1886 college football season. The team finished with a 9–0–1 record and was retroactively named as the national champion by the Helms Athletic Foundation and National Championship Foundation and a co-national champion by Parke H. Davis.^[1]

On Thanksgiving Day in Princeton, New Jersey, undefeated teams from Yale and Princeton met. The game started late due to the absence of a referee, and heavy rain caused the game to be called on account of darkness with Yale leading 4–0 in the second half. Under the rules of the time, the game was declared "no contest" by the substitute referee, and the final score was declared to be 0–0. After a special meeting of the Intercollegiate Football Association held to review the game, the Association issued a two-part resolution: that (1) Yale should have been acknowledged the winner, but that (2) under their existing rules, the Association did not have the authority to award the game to them.^[2]

Schedule

Date	Opponent	Site	Result
October 6	Wesleyan*	Yale Field • New Haven, CT	W 75–0
October 9	at Wesleyan*	Middletown, CT	W 62–0
October 16	MIT*	Yale Field • New Haven, CT	W 96–0
October 20	at Stevens Tech*	Hoboken, NJ	W 54–0
October 23	vs. Williams*	Williamstown, MA	W 76–0
October 30	Wesleyan*	Yale Field • New Haven, CT	W 136–0
November 2	at Crescent Athletic Club*	New York, NY	W 84–0
November 13	Penn*	Yale Field • New Haven, CT	W 75–0
November 20	at Harvard*	Jarvis Field • Cambridge, MA (The Game)	W 29–4
November 25	at Princeton*	Princeton, NJ	T 0–0
*Non-conference game.

References

1. 1886 Yale University football scores and results. College Football Data Warehouse. Retrieved on January 16, 2014.
2. "No Football Champions.; But Princeton Challenges Yale To Another Game On Saturday". The New York Times. 1886-11-28.