Yale defends the belt, 20–10, on the road at Pennsylvania.
Where this game sits in the lineage
Yale came in 706 days into reign #9, which began with a win over Harvard, with 20 defenses already behind it; this was its 21st defense. Yale went on to defend it 8 more times before Princeton took it on November 28, 1889, 735 days after the reign began.
For Pennsylvania this was its 20th shot at the belt; it had never held the belt.
It was the 4th of 7 belt games between the two; going in, Yale led the belt series 3–0; all-time Yale leads 7–0. Every meeting →
About this game
Yale traveled to Pennsylvania on October 30, 1889, for a week 6 regular season matchup. Pennsylvania won the game 20-10, but Yale 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 621) · This game in the downloadable dataset