Pennsylvania defends the belt, 24–0, on the road at Franklin & Marshall.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Pennsylvania came in 686 days into reign #13, which began with a win over Princeton, with 16 defenses already behind it; this was its 17th defense. Pennsylvania went on to defend it 7 more times before Lafayette took it on October 24, 1896, 714 days after the reign began.
For Franklin & Marshall this was its 3rd shot at the belt; it had never held the belt. It still hasn’t: 10 attempts in all, every one of them a loss or a tie.
It was the 2nd of 5 belt games between the two; going in, Pennsylvania led the belt series 1–0; all-time Pennsylvania leads 5–0. Every meeting →
About this game
Pennsylvania traveled to Franklin & Marshall on September 26, 1896, for a regular season matchup in week 3. Franklin & Marshall won 24-0 at home, but Pennsylvania retained the belt as the defending champion.
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 1696) · This game in the downloadable dataset