Yale defends the belt, 1–0, at home over Tufts.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Yale came in 338 days into reign #3, which began with a win over Princeton, with one defense already behind it; this was its second defense. Yale went on to defend it 8 more times before Princeton took it on November 28, 1878, 728 days after the reign began.
For Tufts this was its first shot at the belt; it had never held the belt. It still hasn’t: 6 attempts in all, every one of them a loss or a tie.
It was the first of 5 meetings between the two with the belt on the line; all-time Yale leads 5–0. Every meeting →
About this game
On November 3, 1877, Yale defeated visiting Tufts 1-0 to retain the college football belt. The belt remained with Yale following the defensive 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 61) · This game in the downloadable dataset