Yale defends the belt, 65–0, at home over Rutgers.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Yale came in 317 days into reign #9, which began with a win over Harvard, with one defense already behind it; this was its second defense. Yale went on to defend it 27 more times before Princeton took it on November 28, 1889, 735 days after the reign began.
For Rutgers this was its 12th shot at the belt; it had held the belt once before.
It was the 3rd of 3 belt games between the two; going in, Yale led the belt series 2–0; all-time Yale leads 3–0. Every meeting →
About this game
Yale defeated visiting Rutgers 65-0 on October 6, 1888, in the second week of the regular season. The victory allowed Yale to retain the college football 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 485) · This game in the downloadable dataset