The 1881 Harvard Crimson football team represented

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in the

1881 college football season The 1881 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the ''Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book'' listing Princeton and Yale as having been selected national champions National champions are corporations which are technica ...

. They finished with a 6–1–1 record. The team was managed by first-year head coach,

Lucius Littauer Lucius Nathan Littauer (January 20, 1859 – March 2, 1944) was an American politician, businessman, and college football coach. He served in the United States House of Representatives from New York for five terms between 1897 and 1907. Littauer ...

, and captained for the second year by William H. Manning.

Schedule

Game summaries

October 31: Harvard 4, Michigan 0

Harvard played Michigan on October 31 in the first matchup of teams from the west and east. ''

The Boston Journal ''The Boston Journal'' was a daily newspaper published in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1833 until October 1917 when it was merged with the ''Boston Herald''. The paper was originally an evening paper called the ''Evening Mercantile Journal''. When ...

'' carried a lengthy article about the game, saying that Harvard scored one touchdown and Michigan none.

"Yesterday afternoon, in a drenching rain, for the first time an Eastern foot-ball eleven played with a Western eleven. The Western college boys have long wished a chance to try their powers with Eastern opponents, and, to effect this, the University of Michigan this fall have sent on a representative eleven to play the largest of the Eastern colleges. Their first opponent were the Harvard team. They were beaten but with fair weather the result would have been very uncertain. As it was, Harvard won more by luck than by superiority in strength or skill, for with the exception of the first ten minutes they were forced to play a defensive game. ... During the second half hour the ball was near the Harvard line constantly. Once it came within three feet of the chalk, but the most desperate fighting on the Harvard forced it back foot by foot until the immediate danger was over. ... The Michigan team excelled in running, and their tackling was very fair. As to passing, they did very little. It was by all odds the best game seen in Boston this fall."

In 1901, one of the Michigan players,

Fred Townsend Frederick Townsend (July 1, 1862 – November 21, 1918) was an American football player, lawyer and politician. Townsend was born in 1862 at Albia, Iowa. He was the son of John Selby Townsend, a district judge and legislator in Iowa. Townsend ...

, wrote an account of the 1881 trip. He said Harvard scored a touchdown at the very beginning of the game, but missed the try for goal. Michigan recovered and came within three yards of scoring a touchdown in the second half, but they were held for downs by the bigger Harvard players.

References

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Harvard Crimson football seasons

Harvard Crimson football The Harvard Crimson football program represents Harvard University in college football at the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA). Harvard's football program is one of the oldest in the world, having begun c ...

19th century in Boston {{Collegefootball-1880s-season-stub