1871 college football season

1871 college football season
Regular season	None
Champion(s)	None
football seasons

The 1871 college football season is the only year since the first season in 1869 in which no games were played.^[1][2]

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.^[3][4]

Only two college football games had been played in each of the previous seasons (1869 and 1870) by only three teams (Rutgers, Princeton, and Columbia).

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

1. Jimmy Atkinson (March 13, 2006). "National Champions: 1869-1879". College Football Blog. Archived from the original on 2011-07-24. Retrieved January 18, 2015.
2. Professional Football Researchers Association. "Camp and his Followers: American Football 1876-1889" (PDF). Professional Football Researchers Association. Retrieved January 18, 2015.
3. Tex Noel, Stars of an Earlier Autumn: An Unofficial College Football Records Book (iUniverse, 2011), ISBN 978-1462053063, p. 107. Excerpts available at Google Books.
4. Mel Smith, "We're Not That Kind of School" Archived 2011-05-06 at the Wayback Machine, College Football Historical Society Newsletter, May 2003, p. 12-13.