Harvard defends the belt, 18–0, on the road at Army.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Harvard came in 343 days into reign #16, which began with a win over Pennsylvania, with 6 defenses already behind it; this was its 7th defense. Harvard went on to defend it 16 more times before Yale took it on November 24, 1900, 749 days after the reign began.
For Army this was its 2nd shot at the belt; it had never held the belt.
It was the first of 7 meetings between the two with the belt on the line; all-time Harvard leads 5–2. Every meeting →
About this game
Harvard visited Army on October 14, 1899, in a regular season matchup. Army defeated Harvard 18-0, but Harvard retained the belt as the defending champion since only a loss would have resulted in a belt change.
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 2404) · This game in the downloadable dataset