Yale defends the belt, 36–10, at home over Holy Cross.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Yale came in 326 days into reign #19, which began with a win over Harvard, with 5 defenses already behind it; this was its 6th defense. Yale went on to defend it 4 more times before Princeton took it on November 14, 1903, 357 days after the reign began.
For Holy Cross this was its first shot at the belt; it had never held the belt. It still hasn’t: 7 attempts in all, every one of them a loss or a tie.
It was the first of 2 meetings between the two with the belt on the line; all-time Yale leads 2–0.
About this game
Yale hosted Holy Cross on October 14, 1903, in a regular season matchup. Yale won 36-10 and retained the College Football 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 3835) · This game in the downloadable dataset