The 1880 Championship Controversy

College Football's First Big Fight

The 1880 Championship Controversy

I wrote a few days ago about the famous 1880 Yale - Princeton game at the Polo Grounds, which was a scoreless affair.

The two teams mentioned possibly meeting for another game afterwards, but that never materialized. Instead, the city of New York was treated to a number of emphatic rhetorical arguments for why each side should have been recognized.

First came Yale’s claim:

From The New York Times, January 13, 1881, page 2

And, a week and a half later, here was the reply:

From The New York Times, January 24, 1881, page 3

Sadly, Yale did not take Princeton up on its proposal to play a late spring game to settle the issue.

In the end, this serves as yet another reminder that it’s better to decide the championship on the field than to try to figure it out in the court of public opinion.