1875 Yale Bulldogs football team

1875 Yale Bulldogs football
ConferenceIndependent
Record2–2
Head coach
  • None
CaptainWilliam Arnold
Home stadiumHamilton Park
Seasons
← 1874
1876 →
1875 college football records
Conf Overall
Team W   L   T W   L   T
Harvard     4 0 0
Princeton     2 0 0
Columbia     4 1 1
Rutgers     1 1 1
Yale     2 2 0
Stevens     3 3 0
Tufts     0 1 0
NYU     0 1 0
Wesleyan     0 1 0
Bates     0 1 0
Canada All-Stars     0 2 0
CCNY     0 3 0

The 1875 Yale Bulldogs football team represented Yale University in the 1875 college football season. The Bulldogs finished with a 2–2 record. The team won games against Rutgers and Wesleyan and lost to Harvard and Columbia.[1]

In this season, the first Yale vs Harvard contest was held, two years after the inaugural Yale vs Princeton football contest. Harvard athlete Nathaniel Curtis challenged Yale's captain, William Arnold, to a rugby-style game.[2][3] The next season Curtis was captain.[4] He took one look at Walter Camp, then only 156 pounds, and told Yale captain Gene Baker "You don't mean to let that child play, do you? . . . He will get hurt."[5][6]

The two teams agreed to play under a set of rules called the "Concessionary Rules", which involved Harvard conceding something to Yale's soccer and Yale conceding a great deal to Harvard's rugby.[7] The game featured a round ball instead of a rugby-style oblong ball,[8] and caused Yale to drop association football in favor of rugby.[9]

  1. ^ "1875 Yale Bulldogs Schedule and Results". SR/College Football. Sports Reference LLC. Retrieved February 27, 2017.
  2. ^ "First Harvard versus Yale Football Game Program, 1875 - lot - Sotheby's". sothebys.com.
  3. ^ "Year by Year 1875". theunbalancedline.com.
  4. ^ "Media Center: Harvard Crimson Football - All-Time Football Captains". Harvard. Archived from the original on February 16, 2013. Retrieved January 10, 2021.
  5. ^ "Camp Curbed the Carnage". Spokane Daily Chronicle. September 8, 1962.
  6. ^ "Star-News - Google News Archive Search". google.com.
  7. ^ "No Christian End!" (PDF). The Journey to Camp: The Origins of American Football to 1889. Professional Football Researchers Association. Retrieved January 26, 2010.
  8. ^ Parke H. Davis. Football, the American intercollegiate game. p. 64.
  9. ^ THE BOSTON GAME article by Michael T. Geary at academia.edu