Yale defends the belt, 2–0, on the road at Columbia.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Yale came in 9 days into reign #3, which began with a win over Princeton, with no defenses yet; this was its first defense. Yale went on to defend it 9 more times before Princeton took it on November 28, 1878, 728 days after the reign began.
For Columbia this was its 4th shot at the belt; it had never held the belt.
It was the first of 6 meetings between the two with the belt on the line; all-time Yale leads 5–1. Every meeting →
About this game
Yale visited Columbia on December 9, 1876, in a regular season matchup. Yale won 2-0 and retained the college football belt as the defending champion.
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 57) · This game in the downloadable dataset