The 1887 Yale Bulldogs 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

Yale University 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 wo ...

as a member of the

Intercollegiate Football Association The Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA), also known as the American Intercollegiate Football Association, was one of the earliest college football rules-making and scheduling organizations in existence; it was active from the 1873 to 1893 ...

(IFA) during the

1887 college football season The 1887 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the ''Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book'' listing Yale as having been selected national champions. In the West, the 1887 Michigan Wolverines football team compiled a ...

. The team compiled a perfect 9–0 record, shut out seven of nine opponents, and outscored all opponents by a total of 515 to 12. Quarterback Harry Beecher was the team's captain. There was no contemporaneous system in 1887 for determining a national champion. However, Yale was retroactively 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 ...

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 ...

, and Parke H. Davis.

Schedule

References

{{College Football National Champion pre-AP Poll navbox

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 ...

Yale Bulldogs football seasons College football national champions College football undefeated seasons

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