| 1909 college football season | ||
|---|---|---|
 Tennessee football program | ||
| Regular season | September 25–November 25 | |
| Champion(s) | Yale | |
| ||
The 1909 college football season was the first for the 3-point field goal, which had previously been worth 4 points.[1] The season ran from Saturday, September 25, until Thanksgiving Day, November 25, although a few games were played on the week before.[2]
The 1909 season was also one of the most dangerous in the history of college football. The third annual survey by the Chicago Tribune at season's end showed that 10 college players had been killed and 38 seriously injured in 1909, up from six fatalities and 14 maimings in 1908.[3]
Schools in the Midwest competed in the Western Conference consisting of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Northwestern, Purdue and Wisconsin and Chicago. Iowa was also a member of the Missouri Valley Conference, which included future Big 12 teams Iowa State, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska, as well as Drake and Washington University in St. Louis. In California, intercollegiate football programs (such as those of Stanford University and the University of California) had been discontinued after the 1905 season, and rugby was the autumn intercollegiate sport.[4]
Although there was no provision for a national championship, major teams played their regular schedules before facing their most difficult matches late in the season. The most eagerly anticipated games were the November 10 matchups, with Princeton at Yale, Dartmouth at Harvard, Michigan vs. Pennsylvania (in Philadelphia), and Cornell at Chicago.[5]
- ^ "About the New Rules", Syracuse Herald, September 26, 1909, pII-1
- ^ "Football Season Bigger Than Ever", New York Times, August 22, 1909, pS-3; the Carlisle Indians played a Wednesday game on September 22 against Lebanon Valley, winning 30–0. Although some sources list the Virginia vs. William & Mary and Washington & Jefferson vs. Denison games as taking place on September 18, both matches were on the 25th.
- ^ "Football in 1909 Caused 26 Deaths", New York Times, November 21, 1909, p9
- ^ "Why California Likes Rugby", by A.A. Goldsmith, Outing Magazine (March 1914), pp742-750
- ^ "Collegians Ready To Start Football", New York Times, September 5, 1909, p32