The 1899 Columbia Blue and White 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

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

as an independent during the

1899 college football season The 1899 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the ''Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book'' listing Harvard and Princeton as having been selected national champions. Chicago, Kansas, and Sewanee went undefeated. With ...

. In its first season under head coach George Sanford, the team compiled a 9–3 record and outscored opponents by a total of including eight shutouts. The 1899 season marked Columbia's return to the sport after not participating in intercollegiate football from 1892 to 1898. Robert R. Wilson was the 1899 team captain. On October 28, 1899, Columbia defeated

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 ...

, 5–0. The result was described by ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' as "one of the most disastrous defeats Yale has ever experienced in her athletic history." Columbia's freshman back Harold Weekes scored the game's only points on a long touchdown run in the middle of the second half. Three Columbia received honors on the 1899 All-America team: center Jack Wright (Walter Camp second team; ''New York Sun'' first team); Weekes (Walter Camp second team); and back Bill Morley (''Outing Magazine'' second team). Columbia's sports teams were commonly called the "Blue and White" in this era, but had no official nickname. The name "Lions" would not be adopted until 1910. The team played its home games at

Manhattan Field The Polo Grounds was the name of three stadiums in Upper Manhattan, New York City, used mainly for professional baseball and American football from 1880 through 1963. The original Polo Grounds, opened in 1876 and demolished in 1889, was built fo ...

, also known as Polo Grounds II, in

Upper Manhattan Upper Manhattan is the most northern region of the New York City borough of Manhattan. Its southern boundary has been variously defined, but some of the most common usages are 96th Street, the northern boundary of Central Park ( 110th Street), ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Schedule

References

{{Columbia Lions football navbox Columbia Columbia Lions football seasons Columbia Blue and White football