Indiana Second Team to Go 16-0

 

The Undefeated Yale Bulldogs of 1894

The 1894 Yale Football Team won 16 games and lost none. 

The "Y" Sweaters: The men in the dark blue sweaters with the large white "Y" are the varsity starters.

The Canvas Jackets: You’ll notice some players wearing quilted or canvas-fronted vests; these were the primitive "pads" of the era, designed to help players slide through tackles and provide a small amount of rib protection.

It’s a shame S. Brinkerhoff Thorne and his Yale football teammates aren’t still around. They would surely march around campus cheering “Rah, rah, rah for Indiana” just as they marched around the campus in 1894 cheering the election of Thorne as captain of the team.

You see without Indiana’s amazing charge through the just-ended college football season, culminating in a perfect 16-0 record and the national championship, no one would be talking about that 1894 Yale team.

Indiana was the first team to match Yale’s matchless record of perfection of 16 wins. No team before Yale had won 16 games in one season. And Yale did it in a mere three months, winning their 16^th and final game on Dec. 1, 1894 by a score of 24-0 over Princeton in the mud and slush of a New York City field before 20,000 fans. It took Indiana almost five months to complete its 16-0 season.

Ah, but things were different in 1894, you say. Yes they were but some things were strikingly similar.

The differences first. No Yalie, not even S. Brinkerhoff, wore a helmet. The protective device –called a head harness - had only been invented a few months earlier by George Barclay, a halfback at Lafayette College, who was known for his vanity (he didn’t want a cauliflower ear from a game injury). Forward passes were not allowed in 1894; the offense was mostly just spinning and handing off and lateraling and running and kicking field goals. That’s why they called it foot ball. A field goal was worth 5 points while a touchdown counted for only 4 points – FOOT ball. (A point after a touchdown was two points, same as a safety.) The system had been developed by the legendary Walter Camp, coach at Yale for nine seasons, before taking the coaching position at what was then known as Leland Stanford University. (His student manager at Stanford, who organized the team and handled the finances, was Herbert Hoover, yes, that Herbert Hoover.)

Now for a few similarities that may surprise you.

 

Betting was big.

It wasn’t called FanDuel or DraftKings but betting on college football was widespread and not at all secretive.

The New York Tribune reported before the final game of the 1894 season, “Princeton insists upon odds of 2 to 1, and Yale men, with a sad recollection of the money lost at those terms a year ago, refuse to offer more than 5 to 3, and few takers are found at the odds. A bet was made between two prominent alumni of Princeton and Yale, of $100 to $10 that Yale would not score, the short end being taken by the Princeton man. A few bets of $100 to $75 on Yale were also made at the Fifth Avenue and other hotels.”

The New York Telegram went so far as to name names:

“The football fever was rampant about the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Collegians and city enthusiasts gathered in the corridor and barroom, but the crowds of last year were not in evidence. There was some betting, the odds being about 2 to 1 on Yale. Frank McKee, the theatrical manager, made the only attempts to get money on. He bet $100 to $50, $150 to $75, $80 to $40, and $100 to $50 in quick succession before leaving. Billy Edwards was the stakeholder in all these bets, the small end being taken by Princeton students as a rule. "I hold about $2,000 in bets only," said Edwards. "The betting is unusually light, the odds ranging from 2 to 1 to 100 to 60 on Yale."

 

There was even an early version of “prop bets” in 1894.

For the gambling novice a prop bet (short for proposition bet) is a wager on a specific event inside a game that isn’t the final score (and often isn’t even “football,” strictly speaking). Think: first player to score, will there be a safety, coin toss result, how long the National Anthem lasts, even what color will the Gatorade be?

Witness this “prop bet” story from the Dec. 13, 1894 edition of the Hartford Courant:

“General Benjamin Butterworth, whose son was a member of Yale's football eleven at the recent games, said without reservation, that the injury which his son encountered at the game between Harvard and Yale was the result of a deliberate assault upon him by one of three Harvard men. The blow was intentional. There were several bets made prior to the game that Frank Butterworth would not play in the second half of the game.”

A prop bet.

 

Football was rough.

It still is: a Miami player took a swing at an Indiana player only moments after the end of the national championship.

Here’s how rough it was in 1894 as outlined in this story that was carried by more than 50 newspapers on the morning of the Yale-Princeton game:

“POLICE WILL INTERFERE.

“There Will Be No Slugging in the Princeton-Yale Football Game.

“NEW YORK, Dec. 1. - Police Superintendent Thomas F. Byrnes announced today that no exhibition of brutality would be permitted at the Yale-Princeton football game on Manhattan Field. He has instructed Inspector Colton to stop the game if it should prove to be anything but a purely scientific contest.

“The superintendent said that he would not allow the players to act like a lot of prize fighters and publicly maim each other for life. The game would be stopped at the first exhibition of brutality.”

The fact that New York had sent police inspectors to the game to ensure no slugfest so incensed Yale men – who prided themselves on playing the “scientific” game - that the next week the school’s football players and professors vowed never to play another game in Manhattan.

 

Who’s Number One?

You would think that a team that won a record-setting 16 games, while losing none, would easily be declared national champions.

Not so, fast. This was 1894, long before the AP and UPI Polls, even longer before computer models and the College Football Playoffs. Championships were more like barroom arguments. And in this case there was another pretender to the crown, a school that had won 14 games while losing none, and felt it had played the tougher schedule.

Here's how the Rochester Times-Union described the situation:

“CHAMPIONSHIP UNDECIDED.

“Question Will Not be Settled as Yale and Pennsy Won't Meet.

“NEW YORK, Dec. 15. - Pennsylvania still feels aggrieved because Yale refuses to meet her eleven on the gridiron. There is really no eastern champion. (Wisconsin had been declared the “western champion.”) It is known that neither Princeton nor Harvard had the best team. Between Yale and Pennsylvania there is no basis for forming a choice. Yale men think the blue-legged warriors are unbeatable: the warriors of the red and blue feel confident of the abilities of Capt. Knipe's team to wallop anything, while non-partisans are divided, all saying that a Yale-Pennsylvania game would be a ‘corker.’

“Yale has played Trinity, Brown (twice), Williams, Dartmouth, Lehigh (twice), West Point, Tufts, Harvard, Princeton and the Crescent, Orange, Boston, Chicago A. A. and Volunteer Athletic Association, and has scored a total of 485 to her opponents' 13 points.

“Pennsylvania has met Franklin and Marshall, Swarthmore, Georgetown, Lehigh, Crescent Athletic Club (twice), University of Virgina, Annapolis, Lafayette, Warren, Camden Athletic Club, Cornell, Princeton, and Harvard, and has scored a total of 352 to her opponents' 20 points.

“Yale has averaged 30.31 points per game, to her opponents' .81 points; Pennsylvania, 25.14 points per game, to opponents' 1.42 points. In the big games with Princeton and Harvard, when each team played its full strength, Yale scored 36 points to her opponents' 4, and Pennsylvania 30, to her opponents' 4.”

Let me interject here that neither of Yale opponents, the Volunteer Athletic Association or the Orange, took the train up from Knoxville.

In 1894, the Volunteer Athletic Association of New York and the Orange Athletic Club from New Jersey were prominent independent athletic clubs, serving as strong, semi-professional teams where former college stars provided tough competition for Yale and Pennsylvania and other college teams before the rise of fully professional leagues. These were basically social clubs with high-level football teams, featuring players starting careers in law or business.

These teams were part of an era in football where club teams filled out schedules for colleges like Yale, creating challenging games and showcasing top talent outside of just college campuses

The Orange Athletic Club won the American Football Union (AFU) championship that season. Yale beat them 24-0 on October 20, 1894

The Pennsylvania schedule was similarly sprinkled with these semi-pro social club teams.

While Pennsy fans were denigrating Yale’s strength of schedule, “the New Haven people cannot see why University of Pennsylvania has an exceptional team,” according to the Chicago Tribune. “The best the Quakers could do to Princeton was to win by twelve points, while Yale doubled that figure. It is considered that Pennsylvania failed to score against Harvard Thanksgiving day as long as the Harvard players were not disabled, and failed to cross the goal line till Capt. Emmons and the Harvard backs had retired. Pennsylvania barely escaped being shut out by Cornell and won by a single touchdown. Yale’s score over Princeton makes Yale people think that Yale would have won from Harvard by twice as big a score had the slugging, the off-side, and the momentum play rules been enforced as strictly as against Princeton.”

There was obviously only one way to settle this debate: a challenge match. And Pennsy was ready to issue just such a challenge.

Only one problem.

As Yale team manager Benjamin Cable told the Philadelphia Enquirer before the Princeton contest, “(After the game) the football eleven is to disband. Our examinations begin next week and further play is out of the question.”

They really were student-athletes.

 

 

 

"Brinck" Thorne (left): He was a star halfback who would go on to lead the team as captain the following year and eventually became Yale's head coach in 1896.

Frank Hinkey (Captain in 1894): He was known for his slight build (around 150 lbs) but ferocious tackling, which earned him the nickname "The Silent Scotsman."

 

 

 Famous Players on the 1894 Yale Bulldogs

• Frank Hinkey (Captain): His fame cannot be overstated. He was a 4-time All-American and is widely considered the greatest "small" player in college football history. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in its inaugural 1951 class.
• Sam "Brinck" Thorne: After being a star in the 1894 game, he captained the 1895 team and was later a successful head coach at Yale. Like Hinkey, he is a College Football Hall of Famer.
• George Adee: The quarterback of the 1894 team. Beyond football, he became a major figure in American sports as a Tennis Hall of Famer. He served as the president of the U.S. National Lawn Tennis Association (now the USTA) and was instrumental in the early years of the Davis Cup.
• Anson McCook Beard: He became a prominent and wealthy New York lawyer, and grandfather of the photographer Peter Beard (who married model Cheryl Tiegs).