The 1901 Harvard Crimson 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 wi ...

team that 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 high ...

as an independent during the 1901 college football season. In its first season under head coach

Bill Reid William Ronald Reid Jr. (12 January 1920 – 13 March 1998) (Haida) was a Canadian artist whose works include jewelry, sculpture, screen-printing, and paintings. Producing over one thousand original works during his fifty-year career, Reid ...

, the team compiled a 12–0 record, shut out nine of 12 opponents, and outscored all opponents by a total of 254 to 24. When Harvard met Yale at season's end, it was considered to be for the national championship by the contemporaneous media. ''

Harper's Weekly ''Harper's Weekly, A Journal of Civilization'' was an American political magazine based in New York City. Published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916, it featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor, ...

'' (photo below) and the ''

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'' recognized the team as national champions. In addition, the team was retrospectively named as the national champion by two selectors, the Billingsley Report and Parke H. Davis. Three other selectors, the Helms Athletic Foundation, Houlgate System, and the

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 ...

retrospectively named

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

as the 1901 national champion. A modern authority on college football rankings said, "Indeed, had there been an

AP poll The Associated Press poll (AP poll) provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 sportswriters and broad ...

in 1901, Harvard would have been #1 by a landslide." Nine Harvard players received first-team honors from Walter Camp (WC) or Caspar Whitney (CW) on the 1901 All-America team: * Fullback Thomas Graydon (WC-1, CW-1); * Halfback Robert Kernan (WC-1, CW-1); * Halfback A. W. Ristine (WC-2); * Tackle Oliver Cutts (WC-1, CW-1); * Tackle Crawford Blagden (WC-2; CW-1); * Guard William George Lee (WC-1, CW-2); * Guard Charles A. Barnard (WC-2, CW-1); * End Dave Campbell (WC-1, CW-2); and * End Edward Bowditch (WC-2, CW-1). 1901Harvardintercollegiate

Schedule

References

Harvard Harvard Crimson football seasons College football national champions College football undefeated 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 ...

1900s in Boston {{collegefootball-1901-season-stub