An irreverent look back at the 1884 college football season

College football returned in 1884 with Yale on a 17-game winning streak and hungry for a three-peat. Let’s take an irreverent look back.

In the 21st century, we have seen powerhouse programs go on dominant runs, in the process generating fatigue among the other fan bases. That was readily apparent at the end of the 2019 season, when a nation of football fans outside Tuscaloosa celebrated Alabama’s absence from the College Football Playoff for the first time since its inception. People love dynasties, but only to an extent.

Before Nick Saban’s Alabama, or Pete Carroll’s USC teams, or Tom Osborne’s Nebraska juggernaut, there was Yale.

Yes, technically Princeton had the first run of consecutive titles. The veracity of all those claims, however, leaves something wanting. Not until the Bulldogs took charge of the sport in the early 1880s did we truly see a hegemonic force in the sport.

All dynasties, though, start to crack eventually. 1884 didn’t look like the year when Yale would start to regress back to the mean, but by the end fans in New Haven were left wondering what might have been.

On that note, let’s dive in and take an irreverent look at what transpired in the 1884 season.

Football arrives in the Hoosier State in 1884

The top level of college football in the modern era features four teams from the state of Indiana. Along with the flagship university in Bloomington, the state also boasts Notre Dame, Purdue, and Ball State among its schools playing at an FBS level.

No one among that quartet, however, can boast that they played in the first college football game contested within Indiana’s borders. That honor, rather, goes to two schools that are not regularly associated with the gridiron — Butler and DePauw.

In yet another syncretism of football rules, Butler senior John F. Stone initiated the game after creating a hybridizes set of rules that drew from Association football (i.e. soccer) and the eastern intercollegiate rules negotiated by Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia.

Taking the field on May 31 at Tinker Park in Indianapolis, the two teams battled to a 4-0 Butler victory. The scoring, it would seem, indicates that while Stone adopted some aspects of the eastern intercollegiate game he either a) forgot to take their scoring system or b) this was a defensive struggle in both directions.

Given the dearth of press around this inaugural showdown in Indiana, it is hard to say which of these two possibilities is the accurate hypothesis.

Five months later, Butler put their perfect record on the line against another Indiana school, Wabash. This time Butler was on the losing end, as Wabash finished its first season of football with a perfect 1-0 record.

The usual suspects right back at the forefront in fall

While the novelty of football continued to spread its tendrils slowly throughout American society with each passing season, there were more opportunities to see teams finish with undefeated records. Wabash, given they only played the one game against Butler, was one of three teams at the end of the 1884 season without a loss or a tie.

None of those teams were anywhere near garnering consideration for the national championship. Navy also went undefeated after taking down Johns Hopkins 9-6 in their only game of the year, joining Wabash at 1-0 in the overall standings. Ahead of that duo was Michigan, who defeated the Chicago University Club (which, mind you, was not comprised of enrolled collegians) after previously downing Albion.

The balance of power, however, remained in the northeast. With the ability to play a wider range of opponents and a larger schedule of games, teams like Yale and Princeton inevitably had the upper hand in college football’s second decade thanks to their head start on the field.

Just as early-season games against FCS and Group of Five opponents provide a way for powerhouses of the 21st century to ramp up into the heart of their schedule, so too did October serve a similar purpose in an earlier era for that period’s powers. Yale opened with a 31-0 drubbing of Wesleyan, then followed it up with a 96-0 obliteration of Stevens Tech. Another takedown of Wesleyan finished in a 63-0 shutout, Rutgers fell 76-10, and Dartmouth was humbled by a 113-0 score.

The final results read like an old NCAA Football video game played on rookie mode.

Princeton wasn’t quite as dominant, beating Stevens Tech 4-0 in their season opener. The Tigers followed that up with a 23-5 win over Rutgers and a 22-2 victory over Wesleyan. To cap the month of October, Princeton turned on the heat with 35-0, 31-0, and 140-0 victories over Rutgers, Penn, and Lafayette.

The lopsided scores continued to pile up in November, as Yale and Princeton remained on course to restore their annual matchup as a de facto national championship game.

A quick word on the inauguration of The Rivalry

Before we go into the championship tilt between Yale and Princeton, let’s divert our attention for a moment to the nation’s most-played and longest continuously running rivalry in the entire country. Nestled in eastern Pennsylvania along the border with New Jersey, Lehigh University and Lafayette University boast the only rivalry that has no compunctions about calling itself The Rivalry.

Separated by 12 miles, the two schools first met on October 25. It wasn’t much of a meeting, as Lafayette pummeled their local rivals in a 50-0 whitewash. Lehigh was not without their chances to put points on the scoreboard, but Lafayette stiffened whenever their opponents neared the goal line.

After winning on their home field, the two teams agreed to a return match in Bethlehem a couple of weeks later. During that span, Lafayette tested itself in between the first two editions of The Rivalry with embarrassing defeats against Princeton and Penn (combined margin of defeat: 161-0) while Lehigh opted to rest in between the two games.

Lafayette’s strategy proved to be far more effective in the long run. The return match on Lehigh’s campus a couple weeks later was slightly closer, but the disparity in talent was still on display. The hosts managed not to be shut out, but Lafayette still exerted its will on their overmatched foes.

It was a rivalry borne in lopsided circumstances, but Lehigh was not dissuaded. Since those first two contests, the two schools have played each other 155 times over 135 years.

Yet another Tigers-Bulldogs championship duel

Point to any season between the mid-1870s and the mid-1880s and you will likely stumble on a year where Yale versus Princeton decided the mythical national championship. 1884 was no exception, as the two teams took advantage of liberalized scoring rules to stampede through their respective schedules.

For the past two seasons, Yale had emerged triumphant in this annual series at the Polo Grounds in New York. Riding a 25-game winning streak as they arrived in Manhattan, the Bulldogs needed only to win a 26th game to ensure their place as the first team to win three consecutive undisputed national championships.

Instead, the game devolved into a quagmire of injuries and contested results. When the time stopped on the game, the scoreboard read 6-4 in favor of Yale. However, time stopped early due to nightfall. The referee, by the rulebook, was right to assert, “Properly speaking Yale won the game, but on a mere technicality I was forced to call the contest a draw. The rule calls for two full three-quarter-hour innings to be played.”

Interestingly, the decision to call the game a draw seemed as unpopular with Princeton supporters as it was for Yale partisans. In the first of what would eventually become many instances of deciding national championships off the field, the Intercollegiate Football Association met after the game to determine a champion.

While Harvard voted for Yale, Princeton continues to claim this as one of its inflated number of national championships. The NCAA retroactively acknowledges both teams, though more selectors over the years have tabbed the Bulldogs as the rightful champs.

It was a season that added another state to the map of football-playing locales. It was the point where college football’s two most familiar rivals started their long run of battling for local bragging rights. Most significantly, though, it was the first instance in the sources where a championship was decided behind closed doors. It certainly would not be the last time something of this nature occurred, even with the advent of media polls still decades from fruition.