An irreverent look back at the 1891 college football season

Yale was back at the top in 1891, but the most important events for college football’s long-term future were taking place further west and further south.

By the start of college football’s third decade of existence, the story at the top of the sport was already rather stale. There was a Big Three atop the college football hierarchy, and then there was everyone else. That was as true in 1891 as it was the year before or the decade before.

At the same time, for most of college football’s existence that Big Three was really a Big Two. Harvard played tagalong to Yale and Princeton, the twin titans of the sport. The 1890 Crimson team managed to swoop in and finally arrest the momentum of the gemini of the game, but it was a short-lived reprieve from the duopoly.

In Walter Camp’s fourth season as the head coach in New Haven, the Bulldogs ripped off 13 straight victories without allowing a single point en route to their 14th recognized national championship. Yale concluded the season with back-to-back wins over Harvard and Princeton to cap the perfect season. The Thanksgiving duel against the Tigers drew 40,000 spectators to Manhattan Field despite a heavy rain to witness a 19-0 Bulldogs victory.

So Yale was once again the national champion. Outscoring opponents by an average of 38 points per game, Camp’s charges dominated every opponent along the way. Thirteen wins by shutout were impressive to audiences across the country, as newspapers in more than 30 states offered recounts of the showdown on the day after Thanksgiving.

But those locales were interested in Yale-Princeton in part because they were also interested in their own local brands of football. 1891 marked another growth spurt for the game. Rivalries like Yale-Princeton have always been the lifeblood of the sport, just as they are in the 21st century. New rivalries continued to emerge throughout the 1890s, many of which remain relevant to this day.

Let’s look back at some of those growth spurts transpiring around the country in today’s irreverent look back at the history of college football.

Iowa straddles the fence between Midwest and Great Plains

For their first two years on the football field, the University of Iowa focused exclusively on competition within their own borders. At the time Grinnell College was the powerhouse in the state, and the Hawkeyes lost both attempts against the Pioneers in 1889 and 1890. Their first win finally came at the end of the 1890 season, as Iowa finally put everything together in a 91-0 demolition of Iowa Wesleyan.

As they entered their third season of existence, Iowa’s football team started to make its first tentative outreach to teams outside the Hawkeye State. After opening the 1891 season with a 64-6 home win over Cornell College of Iowa, the rivalry which came to be known by its Floyd of Rosedale trophy kicked off for the first time.

Iowa squared off against Minnesota at home and was promptly walloped 42-4. It was a sobering return to earth, especially after falling again a week later against Grinnell. (While the newspapers of the period referred to the team as “Iowa State University” we can identify this as the Hawkeyes rather than the Cyclones due to the fact the game was played in Iowa City rather than Ames.)

At the same time, Iowa’s first trips outside the state took place not in Big Ten country but in Big 8 territory. Iowa crossed the border to Omaha on November 26 and took down Nebraska in a 22-0 shutout victory. A week and a half later, Iowa took to the road again to claim an 18-14 win over Kansas in a neutral-site game in Kansas City.

Given their position in the eastern half of Iowa, the Hawkeyes focused more fully on their Midwestern identity rather than adopting a position as the bulwark of the Great Plains. When the program was first evolving, however, there was no guarantee that they would position themselves among their future Big Ten brethren.

Speaking of the Great Plains, another rivalry was born in 1891

Before either Kansas or Missouri took on Iowa in November, the two schools met in Kansas City to square off in the first edition of what became the Border War. For two states with a history of enmity toward one another extending far beyond the football field, the rivalry game served as a proxy battle for pride and bragging rights and territorial superiority.

That first game went squarely in favor of the Jayhawks, who were in the midst of the school’s first undefeated season. Exacting a 22-8 win over their rival, Kansas earned an early victory that fueled a 7-0-1 record in 1891 as they earned their spot as the top team in the region.

For more than a century after this initial meeting, the annual duel between the Tigers and Jayhawks remained a critical game on the calendar no matter the respective records of the two teams.

Of course, they’d blow tradition all to hell in the 21st century with conference realignments, but the enmity and the bragging rights remain dormant in the background. History this deep can’t be ignored completely, even if it is tabled in the moment.

The rise of more SEC programs down in the Deep South

For modern football fans, it feels at times like college football was tailor-made out of whole cloth by and for the Deep South. The region dominated by the SEC and the ACC produces vast reserves of talent on the field, bolstered by deep-pocketed programs and rabidly loyal fan bases.

That wasn’t always the case, obviously. By 1891, however, the SEC was slowly beginning to take shape. Though the league did not come into existence for another four decades, the programs that would comprise its charter membership started to plant football roots deep into their respective communities.

Kentucky had been playing football for several years, and Vanderbilt launched its program a year earlier in time for the 1890 season. Two more SEC charter members kicked off football at their universities in 1891, as Tennessee and Sewanee both entered the fray.

As a result, football was solidly anchored in the state of Tennessee. Sewanee played Vanderbilt in the school’s first-ever contest, losing 22-0 to the Commodores. Two weeks later, the Tigers took on the University of Tennessee on neutral turf in Chattanooga. Sewanee emerged 26-0 victors against the Volunteers, snatching an early lead in their series now long aborted to the ashbin of history.

Funny enough, the game was billed as the “foot ball championship of the state” even though Vanderbilt dealt out losses to Sewanee on either side of their win over the Volunteers. Nevertheless, two more flagship institutions of the SEC were now online and waiting for their brethren to join them in the football ranks.

Still waiting for the respect of the sportswriters

While football proliferated in hotbeds around the country, the bulk of the media attention — rightly or wrongly, depending on one’s perspective — remained squarely focused on the Big Three and the rest of the teams from the northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.

Caspar Whitney named his All-America team once again. While it continued to be dominated by Yale, Harvard and Princeton, the first player from outside the Big Three finally made the cut. Penn’s center, John Adams, was named to the All-America team in 1891 as one of the 11 best in the country.

It took another seven years for All-America selectors to look beyond this corner of the United States for talent to name to their respective lists. By that point, football would be firmly embedded as a cultural signifier all throughout the United States.