Yale defends the belt, 53–5, on the road at Pennsylvania.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Yale came in 1,085 days into reign #6, which began with a win over Harvard, with 24 defenses already behind it; this was its 25th defense. It was the last defense: Princeton took the belt in the very next belt game, on November 21, 1885.
For Pennsylvania this was its 9th 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 Yale leads 7–0. Every meeting →
About this game
Yale defended the College Football Belt on November 14, 1885, defeating Pennsylvania 53-5 in Philadelphia. The victory allowed Yale to retain the belt.
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 319) · This game in the downloadable dataset