Pennsylvania takes the belt, 46–0, at home over Lafayette.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Pennsylvania took the belt here, ending Lafayette’s run of 364 days and 12 defenses (reign #14) and starting reign #15. It lasted 378 days and 15 defenses, until Harvard took it on November 5, 1898.
For Pennsylvania this was its 27th shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before — and it took it back here.
It was the 3rd of 5 belt games between the two; going in, the series stood 1–1; all-time Pennsylvania leads 3–1–1. Every meeting →
About this game
Pennsylvania defeated Lafayette 46-0 on October 23, 1897, in the seventh week of the regular season. With this victory on the field, Pennsylvania claimed the College Football Belt from Lafayette.
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 1987) · This game in the downloadable dataset