Yale defends the belt, 68–0, at home over MIT.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Yale came in 335 days into reign #9, which began with a win over Harvard, with 6 defenses already behind it; this was its 7th defense. Yale went on to defend it 22 more times before Princeton took it on November 28, 1889, 735 days after the reign began.
For MIT this was its 2nd shot at the belt; it had never held the belt. It still hasn’t: 2 attempts in all, every one of them a loss or a tie.
It was the 2nd of 2 belt games between the two; going in, Yale led the belt series 1–0; all-time Yale leads 2–0.
About this game
Yale defeated MIT 68-0 on October 24, 1888 in New Haven. As the belt holder, Yale successfully defended 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 511) · This game in the downloadable dataset