Yale defends the belt, 30–0, on the road at Williams.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Yale came in 331 days into reign #9, which began with a win over Harvard, with 5 defenses already behind it; this was its 6th defense. Yale went on to defend it 23 more times before Princeton took it on November 28, 1889, 735 days after the reign began.
For Williams this was its first shot at the belt; it had never held the belt. It still hasn’t: 13 attempts in all, every one of them a loss or a tie.
It was the first of 6 meetings between the two with the belt on the line; all-time Yale leads 6–0. Every meeting →
About this game
Yale traveled to Williams on October 20, 1888, in week 4 of the regular season. Williams won 30-0. As the defending belt holder, Yale retained the championship with the victory.
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 506) · This game in the downloadable dataset