Yale defends the belt, 54–0, at home over Pennsylvania.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Yale came in 345 days into reign #9, which began with a win over Harvard, with 8 defenses already behind it; this was its 9th defense. Yale went on to defend it 20 more times before Princeton took it on November 28, 1889, 735 days after the reign began.
For Pennsylvania this was its 19th shot at the belt; it had never held the belt.
It was the 3rd of 7 belt games between the two; going in, Yale led the belt series 2–0; all-time Yale leads 7–0. Every meeting →
About this game
Yale defeated Pennsylvania 54-0 on November 3, 1888, in the sixth week of the regular season. As the defending belt holder, Yale retained the lineal 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 532) · This game in the downloadable dataset