An irreverent look back at the 1893 college football season

More teams popped up around the country, while Princeton ended Yale’s hot streak. Let’s take an irreverent look back at the 1893 college football season.

From the advent of the 1890s, college football exploded into a sport with distinctly regional flavors and a national appeal. Some of the sport’s greatest rivalries formed, and athletic programs started to band together into prototypes of the conferences we know and love well into the 21st century. By 1893, the college football landscape was at a point where it would not look entirely alien to a fanatic transported back 127 years into the past.

Of course, the sport itself was still vastly different than the spread-out, high-flying spectacle that dominates the modern game. There was no forward pass, scoring conventions were still evolving over time, and now-banned tactics like the flying wedge were all the rage.

In that environment, the sport continued to grow. Up in the northeast, Princeton reclaimed its long-held position atop the college football hierarchy. The Tigers entered their Thanksgiving showdown with Yale sporting an undefeated record. So too did the Bulldogs, who were riding a 37-game winning streak stretching across four seasons.

The 6-0 victory by the Tigers in New York ended a streak of Yale national championships and brought the spoils back to New Jersey for the first time since 1889. The 1893 game mirrored that 1889 showdown — on both occasions, Princeton ended a 37-game winning streak and a run of Yale championships.

With the win, Princeton was the top team in the country. Five of their top players landed on the All-America lists of Caspar Whitney and Walter Camp, the former Yale coach who departed New Haven after the 1892 season to take up a new role at Stanford in California.

Just as important as the end of Yale’s streak, though, were the numerous programs springing to life around the country. A growing list of future powerhouses sprouted with each passing season, starting the process of maturing to a state where they might finally topple the ivied institutions of the northeast from their lofty perch atop the sport.

Let’s look at several that came online in 1893 and how that impacted the future story of college football across the United States.

Southern football extends its reach even further in 1893

Prior to the 1893 season, eight of the original 13 members of the SEC were playing football. Three more started playing intercollegiate contests during the 1893 season, as football in the Deep South became ever more popular as a source of local and regional bragging rights.

With the sport already established in Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, the next step was to push further westward. Ole Miss joined the fray, along with Tulane and LSU.

Tulane was in some ways the linchpin of this growth. Located in the heart of New Orleans, the squad eventually known as the Green Wave offered an urban location where teams could come and take on Tulane in front of larger crowds.

After opening the year against the Southern Athletic Club in a cross-city duel, Tulane challenged an LSU team visiting from up the road in Baton Rouge. Taking on the Tigers at Sportsman’s Park in the first edition of the Battle of the Rag, Tulane crushed their visitors 34-0.

The inaugural showdown against Ole Miss did not end quite as well for the Green Wave, as the Rebels came to New Orleans and knocked off the hosts 12-4 on December 2. It was the culmination of a season where the University of Mississippi went 4-1 in its first season of intercollegiate play.

Football also pushed even further west than Louisiana, as the game started to sink deep roots into the Lone Star State. At the University of Texas in Austin, a group of students organized a home-and-home series against teams from the Dallas Athletic Club and a squad from San Antonio. The Longhorns ran the table in their first season, squeaking by Dallas 18-16 on the road before securing shutouts in each of their final three games.

It took another year before Texas actually started to play other universities, but a tradition of success was established early in Austin. For southern football, there was no turning back.

Football experiences a growth spurt in the Pacific Northwest in 1893

It wasn’t just the hotbed of the Deep South that saw a surge in football interest in 1893. Already established in outposts like Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and Seattle, the intercollegiate game started filling in the blank spots across the Pacific coast of the United States. The league now known as the Pac-12 saw a future member start to come to life this season.

With California and Washington already represented on the gridiron, it was only a matter of time before Oregon also joined in the festivities of college football. The game first blossomed at smaller schools such as Albany College (now Division III Lewis and Clark College), the Oregon Normal School (now Division II Western Oregon University), and the Oregon Agricultural College in Corvallis.

The squad from Corvallis that we now know as Oregon State got its start against the visitors from Albany College on November 11, 1893. The Aggies (Oregon State did not take on the Beavers nickname until 1931) trounced the crew from Albany, handily winning 64-0 in their first attempt at intercollegiate football.

Oregon State went on to topple Oregon Normal in a two-game series, winning on the road in Monmouth 36-22 in November and claiming the return match 28-0 a month later in Corvallis. The team went on to play three more games after the new year, defeating a junior side from the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland and the local Corvallis Athletic Association before falling in late February against the short-lived Portland University.

It was an auspicious start for a Beavers team that has experienced a roller-coaster history over the past century. With five conference titles, three Rose Bowl appearances, and a Heisman winner to boast there have been true moments to celebrate at Oregon State. If nothing else, at least the Beavers can boast an earlier start than the rival Ducks down the road in Eugene.

The game of college football, in short, was becoming truly national

Over the course of the 1893 season, more than 100 universities and colleges suited up and played football. As the scores of contests in the south and on the west coast reveal, these teams were playing the game as designed and modified by the Big Three and the other northeastern schools over the previous two decades.

This was no longer the soccer that Princeton and Rutgers played in 1869, nor was it the rugby-dominated pastime that Harvard introduced after its showdowns with McGill. This was the “scientific” game as tweaked by men like Walter Camp and his counterparts from Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia in the Intercollegiate Football Association. By 1893, college football was on an irreversible path to becoming America’s greatest spectacle.