Harvard defends the belt, 17–6, at home over Bowdoin.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Harvard came in 312 days into reign #18, which began with a win over Yale, with one defense already behind it; this was its second defense. Harvard went on to defend it 9 more times before Yale took it on November 22, 1902, 364 days after the reign began.
For Bowdoin this was its 4th shot at the belt; it had never held the belt. It still hasn’t: 5 attempts in all, every one of them a loss or a tie.
It was the 3rd of 4 belt games between the two; going in, Harvard led the belt series 2–0; all-time Harvard leads 4–0. Every meeting →
About this game
Harvard defended the College Football Belt on October 1, 1902, defeating visiting Bowdoin 17-6 in the fourth week of the regular season. The belt remained with Harvard.
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 3267) · This game in the downloadable dataset