The 1981 Dartmouth Big Green 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

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

during the

1981 NCAA Division I-A football season The 1981 NCAA Division I-A football season ended with the Clemson Tigers, unbeaten and untied, claiming the national championship after a victory over Nebraska in the Orange Bowl. This was also the first year of the California Bowl, played in Fres ...

. Dartmouth tied for third place in the

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...

. In their fourth season under head coach

Joe Yukica Joseph M. Yukica (May 27, 1931 – January 22, 2022) was an American college football player and coach. He served as the head football coach at the University of New Hampshire (1966–1967), Boston College (1968–1977), and Dartmouth College (1 ...

, the Big Green compiled a 6–4 record and outscored opponents 208 to 137. Kent Cooper and George Thompson were the team captains. The Big Green's 6–1 conference record tied

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

for the Ivy League championship. Dartmouth outscored Ivy opponents 193 to 87. Dartmouth's sole league loss was to its co-champion, Yale. This was the Big Green's last season in the NCAA's top level of football competition. Shortly after the season ended, the NCAA reassigned all of the Ivy League teams to the second-tier Division I-AA, which would later be renamed the Football Championship Subdivision. Dartmouth played its home games at Memorial Field on the college campus in

Hanover, New Hampshire Hanover is a town located along the Connecticut River in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. As of the 2020 census, its population was 11,870. The town is home to the Ivy League university Dartmouth College, the U.S. Army Corps of Eng ...

Schedule

References

{{Ivy League football champions Dartmouth Dartmouth Big Green football seasons Ivy League football champion seasons

Dartmouth Big Green football The Dartmouth Big Green football team represents Dartmouth College in NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) college football competition as a member of the Ivy League. The team possesses a storied tradition that includes a natio ...