Conference standings
|  |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1875 college football season | ||
|---|---|---|
| Total No. of teams | 11 | |
| Champion(s) | Princeton Columbia Harvard | |
| ||
The 1875 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton as having been selected national champions. [1] Only Princeton claims a national championship for this season.
| Team | Former conference | New conference |
|---|---|---|
| Wesleyan Methodists | Program established | Independent |
| Bates Bobcats | Program established | Independent |
| Canada All-Stars | Program established | Independent |
| | | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The 1903 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Michigan and Princeton as having been selected national champions.
The 1899 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Harvard and Princeton as having been selected national champions.
The 1898 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Harvard and Princeton as having been selected national champions.
The 1896 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Lafayette and Princeton as having been selected national champions. Lafayette finished with an 11–0–1 record while Princeton had a 10–0–1 record. In the second game of the season for both teams, Lafayette and Princeton played to a scoreless tie. Both teams had signature wins: Lafayette defeated Penn 6–4, giving the Quakers their only loss of the season, while Princeton defeated previously unbeaten Yale, 24–6, on Thanksgiving Day in the last game of the season. Princeton was retroactively named the 1896 national champions by the Billingsley Report, the Helms Athletic Foundation, the Houlgate System, and Lafayette and Princeton were named national co-champions by the National Championship Foundation and Parke Davis.
The 1888 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Yale as having been selected national champions. October 18 saw the first intercollegiate game in the state of North Carolina when Wake Forest defeated North Carolina 6–4. The first "scientific game" occurred on Thanksgiving of the same year when North Carolina played Duke. Duke won 16 to 0.
The 1887 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Yale as having been selected national champions. In the West, the 1887 Michigan Wolverines football team compiled a 5–0 record, including three wins over Notre Dame, and outscored its opponents by a combined score of 102 to 10. On November 13, college football was first played in the state of Virginia when the Virginia Cavaliers and Pantops Academy fought to a scoreless tie.
The 1883 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Yale as having been selected national champions.
The 1885 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Princeton as having been selected national champions. The season was notable for one of the most celebrated football plays of the 19th century - a 90-yard punt return by Henry "Tillie" Lamar of Princeton in the closing minutes of the game against Yale. Trailing 5–0, Princeton dropped two men back to receive a Yale punt. The punt glanced off one returner's shoulder and was caught by the other, Lamar, on the dead run. Lamar streaked down the left sideline, until hemmed in by two Princeton players, then cut sharply to the middle of the field, ducking under their arms and breaking loose for the touchdown. After the controversy of a darkness-shortened Yale-Princeton championship game the year before that was ruled "no contest," a record crowd turned out for the 1885 game. For the first time, the game was played on one of the campuses instead of at a neutral site, and emerged as a major social event, attracting ladies to its audience as well as students and male spectators. The Lamar punt return furnished the most spectacular ending to any football game played to that point, and did much to popularize the sport of college football to the general public.
The 1878 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Princeton as having been selected national champions.
The 1876 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Yale as having been selected national champions. On November 11, organized intercollegiate football was first played in the state of Pennsylvania as Princeton defeated Penn 6–0 in Philadelphia. This season was notable in the history of American football as it saw Walter Camp, widely considered to be the "Father" of the sport, participate as a freshman on the Yale team.
The 1873 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Princeton as having been selected national champions.
The 1874 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Princeton, Harvard, and Yale as having been selected national champions. Only Princeton and Yale officially claim championships for this season.
The 1877 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Yale and Princeton as having been selected national champions.
The 1879 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Princeton and Yale having been selected as national champions.
The 1880 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Princeton and Yale as having been selected national champions. On April 9, college football was first played in the state of Kentucky when Kentucky University defeated Centre 133/4–0 at Stoll Field. It was one of the first in the South.
The 1881 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Princeton and Yale as having been selected national champions.
The 1884 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Princeton and Yale as having been selected national champions.
The 1886 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Princeton and Yale as having been selected national champions.
The 1875 Columbia football team represented Columbia University in the 1875 college football season. The team finished with a 4–1–1 record and was retroactively named co-national champion by Parke H. Davis. They outscored their opponents 13–10.
The College Football Researchers Association (CFRA) was founded in 1982 by Anthony Cusher of Reeder, North Dakota, and Robert Kirlin of Spokane, Washington. The CFRA took a vote of its members from 1982 to 1992 to select an annual college football national champion. Members were asked to rank the top 10 teams, and a point system was used to determine a national champion based on the members' votes. The CFRA also conducted a retroactive poll to determine historical national champions for each year from 1919 to 1981. The CFRA is listed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) as one of 40 former and current selectors of college football national champions, and the CFRA selections are included in the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision record book.
 | This college football 1870s season article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |