Princeton defends the belt, 4–0, at home over Pennsylvania.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Princeton came in 1,073 days into reign #4, which began with a win over Yale, with 14 defenses already behind it; this was its 15th defense. Princeton went on to defend it 10 more times before Harvard took it on November 18, 1882, 1,451 days after the reign began.
For Pennsylvania this was its 6th shot at the belt; it had never held the belt.
It was the 6th of 20 belt games between the two; going in, Princeton led the belt series 5–0; all-time Princeton leads 18–2. Every meeting →
About this game
Princeton defended the belt at home against Pennsylvania on November 5, 1881, winning 4-0 to retain the championship.
Written by Claude, strictly from this site’s own record of the game — the score and what it meant for the belt. CFBD doesn’t have a box score for games this old, so nothing here is invented beyond what’s verifiably on file.
Sources Game record: College Football Data (id 149) · This game in the downloadable dataset