An irreverent look back at the 1886 college football season

A new team emerged on the west coast, but the balance of college football power remained on the nation’s Atlantic side.

When we look back at the 1886 season, we notice a couple of fascinating trends. Football continued its inexorable march across the continent, as it put down roots on the Pacific coast for the first time this season. Given its status as a novelty in the region, lining up games required a hefty dose of creativity — and an acknowledgement that most if not all of those opponents would come from somewhere other than another university.

1886 also saw the return of Harvard to the game. After canceling intercollegiate play in 1885, the Crimson returned to the field and launched straight into the largest season schedule that had yet been arranged by a college football team. Earning a dozen shutouts against the likes of Tufts, MIT, Dartmouth, Stevens Tech, Andover, Penn, Wesleyan, Phillips Exeter, and a team of alumni, Harvard barnstormed their way to a dozen victories.

What Harvard could not pull off, however, were wins against their two biggest rivals.

As such, college football centered yet again around the twin axes of New Haven and New Jersey. Yale and Princeton each took care of business against the returning Crimson, setting up yet another rivalry showdown between the Bulldogs and the Tigers on Thanksgiving.

It was a common refrain seen all too often in college football for more than a decade at this point. Yet the game somehow survived the glut of dominance by two hegemonic forces to continue spreading its way across the country. Let’s dive in and take an irreverent look back at the 1886 season.

California’s spring of spectacles in the inaugural 1886 campaign

As soon as the new year rang, the students at the University of California in Berkeley wasted no time launching a new football program. There is some evidence that the Golden Bears were playing an Americanized version of rugby at least as early as 1882, but the school and the NCAA acknowledge 1886 as the true launch of the university’s football team.

Without a glut of universities to play against on the west coast, Cal turned its attention to some local athletic clubs from around the Bay Area. Their first game on campus on January 16 took place against the Wasps, a rugby team from San Francisco.

The Golden Bears won that inaugural game 20-2. Over the course of the next four months, California put together eight more games over the winter and spring against other local clubs. They even played two games against Hastings Law College; their first date on February 22 can thus be viewed as the first true intercollegiate game in California, even if the 1-0 Golden Bears victory strains our understanding of just how much this resembled football on the east coast.

Make no mistake, the east coast remained the epicenter of football

The bulk of the programs in 1886 remained embedded within that wedge of American landmass from Pennsylvania north and east along the Atlantic seaboard. New England and the Mid-Atlantic states remained the petri dish in which football was nurtured, tinkered, and disseminated broadly.

As mentioned earlier, Harvard was back on the field in 1886 and dominated everyone except rivals Princeton and Yale. Those two teams remained a cut above everyone else in college football, as they stampeded through their schedules leading up to a head-to-head Thanksgiving encounter.

Princeton opened the year with a home-and-home series against Stevens Tech, dominating their in-state foes 58-0 at home and 61-6 in Hoboken. A three-game series against Penn followed, with the Tigers sweeping the trio of contests by a combined 113-15 scoreline. The Tigers won 12-0 against Harvard, then prepared for the duel with Yale by trouncing Wesleyan 76-6 on a road trip to Hartford.

Yale also had multiple games against opponents. The Bulldogs opened their 1886 schedule with back-to-back beatdowns of Wesleyan, first in a 75-0 shutout at home and three days later by a 62-0 score on the road. One mismatch after another followed: MIT fell 96-0, Stevens Tech crumbled 54-0, Williams collapsed 76-0, and a third game against Wesleyan ended in a ridiculous 136-0 final.

A game against alumni from the Crescent Athletic Club in Brooklyn resulted in another blowout, as did contests against Penn and Harvard. Only the Crimson managed to put any points on the Bulldogs leading up to the Princeton game.

Meeting for the second straight season on a campus rather than a neutral site, this time in Princeton, the Bulldogs and Tigers played the strongest challenger either had yet faced in 1886. A muddy, rainy quagmire developed in New Jersey as the kickoff was delayed due to an absent referee.

Once it commenced, the contest devolved into a defensive struggle. Late in the contest, as the sun drifted below the horizon and visibility lessened, George Watkinson crashed over the goal line for the only touchdown of the game. The goal kick failed to clear the uprights, and soon after time was called due to nightfall.

The scoreboard read Yale 4, Princeton 0. However, with the game called before full time was completed, the game officially went into the record books as a scoreless draw. Much like in their duel two years earlier, Princeton escaped with a draw against Yale on the technicality of time.

Yale protested immediately, bringing the matter before the Intercollegiate Football Association. Though recognizing the merit of Yale’s claims to an undisputed national championship, the committee recognized their inability to change a final result on the ground that was technically accurate by the letter of the law.

Had Yale been declared the victor in the 1884 and 1886 games that officially went down as draws despite the Bulldogs holding a lead each time, they would have come out of the other side of the 1886 season with their fourth undefeated national championship in five years. Instead, they once again had to share a dubious split title with a team they technically toppled in the time allotted.

Princeton saw fit to request a rematch against their rivals, as Tigers captain Henry Savage sent a telegram to his counterpart at Yale.

Yale, still fuming over the decision by the Intercollegiate Football Association and feeling as though they already proved their superiority over Princeton, declined the offer. Nothing went settled as the college football season wound down around the country, with Eli supporters arguing their team’s supremacy and Princetonians able to counter with the letter of the law on their side.

One sad note on the end of the 1886 season was the death of George Watkinson, the Bulldogs player who scored the only points in the Yale-Princeton showdown. Less than a month after the whistle sounded on the rivalry game, Watkinson passed away. While there were not specific injuries reported to the halfback at the time of the game, his early death was attributed indirectly to his participation in the Yale-Princeton showdown.

It was a sad finish to an unsatisfying season for Yale fans, as one of their stars fell possibly as a result of his actions on behalf of the school.

For fans already suffering with the unsatisfactory conclusion of the events on the field, this was a stirring reminder that the increasingly popular game had very real stakes for those who played.