Yale defends the belt, 39–0, on the road at Amherst.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Yale came in 330 days into reign #9, which began with a win over Harvard, with 4 defenses already behind it; this was its 5th defense. Yale went on to defend it 24 more times before Princeton took it on November 28, 1889, 735 days after the reign began.
For Amherst this was its 3rd shot at the belt; it had never held the belt. It still hasn’t: 16 attempts in all, every one of them a loss or a tie.
It was the 3rd of 10 belt games between the two; going in, Yale led the belt series 2–0; all-time Yale leads 10–0. Every meeting →
About this game
Yale traveled to Amherst on October 19, 1888, as the defending belt holder. Amherst won 39-0. Yale retained 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 499) · This game in the downloadable dataset