1871 college football season

American college football season 1871 0 None None Not awarded until 1935 The 1871 college football season is the only year since the first season in 1869 in which no games were played.National Champions: 1869-1879 Jimmy Atkinson College Football Blog March 13, 2006 January 18, 2015 http://www.collegefootballblog.org/2006/03/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110724093954/http://www.collegefootballblog.org/2006/03/ 2011-07-24 deadCamp and his Followers: American Football 1876-1889 Professional Football Researchers Association Professional Football Researchers Association January 18, 2015 http://profootballresearchers.com/articles/Camp_And_Followers.pdf Princeton did play several games against a Princeton Theological Seminary team in 1871, although the Tigers considered these "practice" (or exhibition) games, and the general convention is not to count these as official games.Tex Noel, Stars of an Earlier Autumn: An Unofficial College Football Records Book (iUniverse, 2011), 978-1462053063, p. 107. Excerpts available at Google Books.Mel Smith, "We're Not That Kind of School" https://web.archive.org/web/20110506074313/http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/CFHSN/CFHSNv16/CFHSNv16n3e.pdf 2011-05-06 , College Football Historical Society Newsletter, May 2003, p. 12-13. Only two college football games had been played in each of the previous seasons (1869 and 1870) by only three teams (1870 Rutgers Scarlet Knights Rutgers, Princeton, and 1870 Columbia Lions Columbia University Columbia). There are accounts of a competitive game played between the University of Virginia and Washington & Lee University in 1871, but no score or statistics are known. University of Virginia Football Vault Ratcliffe Jerry 2008 Whitman Publishing, LLC Atlanta, Ga. 978-0-7948-2647-5 8 http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/u4812190 Because no games were played, 1871 is the only year since college football play began in which no college football national champion has been named, retroactively or otherwise. References