1886 Princeton Tigers football team

1886 Princeton Tigers football
National champion (Billingsley) Co-national champion (Davis)
Conference	Independent
1886 record	7–0–1
Head coach	No coach

The 1886 Princeton Tigers football team represented Princeton University in the 1886 college football season. The team finished with a 7–0–1 record and was retroactively named as the national champion by the Billingsley Report and as a co-national champion by Parke H. Davis.^[1][2] They outscored their opponents 320 to 27.^[2]

On Thanksgiving Day in Princeton, New Jersey, undefeated teams from Yale and Princeton met. The game started late due to the absence of a referee, and heavy rain caused the game to be called on account of darkness with Yale leading 4–0 in the second half. Under the rules of the time, the game was declared "no contest" by the substitute referee, and the final score was declared to be 0–0. After a special meeting of the Intercollegiate Football Association held to review the game, the Association issued a two-part resolution: that (1) Yale should have been acknowledged the winner, but that (2) under their existing rules, the Association did not have the authority to award the game to them.^[3]

Schedule

Date	Opponent	Site	Result
October 9	Stevens Tech	Princeton, NJ	W 58–0
October 13	at Stevens Tech	Hoboken, NJ	W 61–6
October 16	at Penn	Philadelphia, PA	W 30–0
October 23	Penn	Princeton, NJ	W 55–9
November 6	at Penn*	Philadelphia, PA	W 28–6
November 13	Harvard	Princeton, NJ	W 12–0
November 20	vs. Wesleyan	Hartford, CT	W 76–6
November 25	Yale	Princeton, NJ	T 0–0
*Non-conference game.

References

1. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) (2015). "National Poll Rankings" (PDF). NCAA Division I Football Records. NCAA. p. 107. Retrieved January 4, 2016.
2. 1886 Princeton University football scores and results. College Football Data Warehouse. Retrieved on October 14, 2013.
3. "No Football Champions.; But Princeton Challenges Yale To Another Game On Saturday". The New York Times. 1886-11-28.