The 1898 Princeton Tigers football team was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

team that represented

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

as an independent during the

1898 college football season Events January–March * January 1 – New York City annexes land from surrounding counties, creating the City of Greater New York as the world's second largest. The city is geographically divided into five boroughs: Manhattan, B ...

. The team compiled an 11–0–1 record, shut out 11 of 12 opponents, and outscored all opponents by a total of 266 to 5.

Art Hillebrand Arthur Ralph Thomas "Doc" Hillebrand (March 9, 1876 – December 14, 1941) was an American football and baseball player and coach. He played college football as a tackle for Princeton University. Hillebrand served as head football coach at the U ...

was the team captain. There was no coach. There was no contemporaneous system in 1898 for determining a national champion. However, Princeton was retroactively named as the national champion by one selector, Parke H. Davis, a Princeton alumnus.

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 ...

finished with an 11–0 record and was named as the national champion by the

Billingsley Report The Billingsley Report is a college football rating system developed in the late 1960s to determine a national champion. Billingsley has actively rated college football teams on a current basis since 1970. Beginning in 1999, Billingsley's ratings ...

Helms Athletic Foundation The Helms Athletic Foundation, founded in 1936, was a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to the promotion of athletics and sportsmanship. Paul H. Helms was the organization's founder and benefactor, funding the foundation via his ownership ...

Houlgate System The Houlgate System, also known as the Deke Houlgate collegiate football rating system, was a mathematical rating system for determining annual college football national championships. The ratings, which rated teams according to the strength of th ...

, and

National Championship Foundation The National Championship Foundation (NCF) was established by Mike Riter of Hudson, New York. The NCF retroactively selected college football national champions for each year from 1869 to 1979, and its selections are among the historic national ch ...

. Two Princeton players were selected as consensus first-team players on the 1898 All-America team: end

Lew Palmer Lew Russell Palmer (February 11, 1875 – March 24, 1945) was an American football player and expert on industrial safety and accident prevention. He played for the Princeton Tigers football team and was selected as the consensus first-team end ...

and tackle

. Hillebrand was later inducted into the

College Football Hall of Fame The College Football Hall of Fame is a hall of fame and interactive attraction devoted to college football. The National Football Foundation (NFF) founded the Hall in 1951 to immortalize the players and coaches of college football that were vote ...

. Other notable players included end

Art Poe Arthur Poe (March 22, 1879 – April 15, 1951) was an American football player and businessman, and one of six celebrated Poe brothers—second cousins, twice removed, of American author Edgar Allan Poe—to play football at Princeton in the lat ...

and guard Big Bill Edwards.

Schedule

References

{{College Football National Champion pre-AP Poll navbox

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine ...

Princeton Tigers football seasons College football national champions College football undefeated seasons

Princeton Tigers football The Princeton Tigers football program represents Princeton University and competes at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) NCAA Division I Football Championship, Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) level as a member ...