1906 College Football Season - November

November

November 3 The Yale Bulldogs traveled to West Point, and finally yielded some points, with the Army Cadets taking a 6-0 lead at halftime. Yale made no first downs, but won the game anyway. Clarence Alcott blocked a punt and returned it for a touchdown to tie the game 6-6 on the point after. With two minutes left, Bigelow of Yale kicked a 35 yard field goal (for 4 points) from a steep angle, and a 10-6 win.

Unbeaten Princeton (7-0-0) and Dartmouth (5-0-1) met in New Jersey, and it was no contest. The Princeton Tigers shut down the Big Green, 42-0 with seven touchdowns. Harvard beat Brown 9-5 (on a field goal with three minutes left) to reach 8-0-0 as well. Swarthmore defeated Amherst, 21-0, and Lafayette beat Washington & Jefferson 14-6, to stay unbeaten. Carlisle defeated Syracuse, 9-4 in a game in Buffalo.

Out West, previously unbeaten Kansas traveled to meet St. Louis to match their rushing game against Eddie Cochem's pass attack. St. Louis made all the points, including the safety, for a 34-2 win. Vanderbilt (4-0) traveled to Ann Arbor to take on Michigan (3-0), and lost, 10-4. Sewanee visited Tennessee at won, 17-0, while Georgia Tech pasted Auburn 11-0. Clemson had its 3rd 0-0 tie, this one with Davidson, for a 1-0-3 record.

November 10 In the East, the number of unbeaten and untied teams went from five to just three: Harvard, Princeton and Yale. Lafayette and Penn played to a 0-0 tie in Philadelphia; the Quakers drove 59 yards to the one, but were held by Lafayette's goal line defense. At Annapolis, Swarthmore lost at Navy, 5-4, the result of a touchdown against a field goal. Before a crowd of 25,000 Harvard beat visiting Carlisle, 5-0, and Yale beat Brown by the same score Princeton won at West Point, 8-0.

In the South, Sewanee stayed unbeaten with a 35-0 win in New Orleans over Tulane (followed two days later by a 24-0 in over Ole Miss in Memphis). Vanderbilt beat Rose-Hulman College, 33-0 to reach 5-1-0 and Georgia Tech won at Georgia, 17-0. Clemson beat Tennessee 16-0. Texas A&M played TCU a second time; the first time around, TCU lost 42-0, and the second contest was a 22-0 loss.

November 17 The big game of the season (making the front pages the next day) was at Princeton, New Jersey, where 26,000 watched Yale and Princeton (both 8-0-0) faced off at Osborns Field. Both teams tried out the forward pass, described in the New York Times as "these spectacular new-fangled plays". Yale crashed the Princeton line in the final minutes, gaining at least 4 yards on each carry, but time ran out just as the Bulldogs reached the ten yard line, and the game ended in a 0-0 tie.

Harvard became the last unbeaten and untied team, as its 22-9 win over Dartmouth gave it a record of 10-0-0. Princeton's season was over, but the annual Harvard-Yale game was still to be played. Cornell (7-1-1) hosted Swarthmore (7-1-0) and came away with a 28-0 victory. Previously unbeaten Lafayette (6-0-1) hosted 4-3-0 Syracuse and was upset, 12-4. Penn State beat Dickinson in Williamsport, PA, 6-0. In Philadelphia, 15,000 watched the visiting Michigan Wolverines lose 17-0 to the Pennsylvania Quakers.

In the West, Kansas played at Nebraska, winning 8-6 to extend its record to 7-1-1. Iowa State beat Grinnell 25-6 to reach 7-1-0. Carlisle visited Minnesota and won 17-0

In the South, Sewanee beat Maryville to reach an 8-0-0 record, and Vanderbilt beat Georgia Tech 37-6 to reach 6-1-0. Their annual game was set for Thanksgiving Day, which in 1907 fell on November 29. Texas A&M won at Tulane, 18-0, and two days later won at LSU, 22-12, to reach 5-0-0. The Alabama-Auburn game ended with Bama winning 10-0.

November 24 The big game of the season was Harvard (10-0-0) at Yale (8-0-1). A crowd of 32,000 in New Haven saw the Crimson-Blue meeting, described as "a game as has seldom been seen on any field," with both sides relying heavily on the forward pass. . Paul Veeder threw a pass and Clarence Alcott jumped high to catch it at the 3 yard line for a first down. Two plays later, Tom Roome forced his way through the line for Yale's touchdown. A Harvard fumble in the closing minutes was recovered by the Bulldogs, who were 12 yards from goal when the whistle blue. Final score: Yale 6, Harvard 0.

With that final game, both Yale and Princeton closed their seasons with identical 9-0-1 records, nine wins each and their own 0-0 tie. Other games played that day were Lafayette's 33-0 win over Lehigh, and Penn State 10-0 over West Virginia.

Thanksgiving Day, November 29, 1907, was the next best thing to post-season play, as rivals met on the holiday. Cornell and Penn played to a 0-0 tie and Lafayette beat Dickinson 26-6 and Penn State won at Pittsburgh, 6-0, giving both teams an 8-1-1 finish. In the West, Iowa State won at Drake, 7-0, and Texas beat Texas A&M 24-0. Both teams finished at 9-1-0. Further West, college football wasn't yet played on the Pacific Coast; the big game there had been Stanford's 6-3 win at Berkeley over California—in a rugby game attended by 10,000 fans

In Nashville, Sewanee (8-0-0) and Vanderbilt (7-1-0) met on Thanksgiving for the South's biggest game. Vandy, whose only loss was its visit to Michigan, handed the Sewanee Tigers a 20-0 defeat. Alabama crushed Tennessee, 51-0, to finish 5-1-0, while the Vols' record was 1-6-2; the win, and one of the ties, was against American College. Clemson won at Georgia Tech, 10-0, closing its season unbeaten, though not untied (4-0-3).