1906 Yale Bulldogs football team

The 1906 Yale Bulldogs football team was an American football team that represented Yale University as an independent during the 1906 college football season. The team compiled a 9–0–1 record, shut out nine of ten opponents, and outscored all opponents by a total of 144 to 7.^[1] Four Yale players were selected as consensus All-Americans, and the team was selected by multiple selectors as the national champion for 1906.

1906 Yale Bulldogs football
"The Yale Eleven of 1906"
National champion (Whitney, Davis, Billingsley)
Conference	Independent
Record	9–0–1
Head coach	Foster Rockwell (1st season)
Captain	Samuel Finley Brown Morse
Home stadium	Yale Field
Seasons ← 1905 1907 →

1906 Eastern college football independents records

v t e	Conf							Overall
Team	W		L		T			W		L		T
Princeton			–					9	–	0	–	1
Yale			–					9	–	0	–	1
Haverford			–					7	–	0	–	2
Harvard			–					10	–	1	–	0
Cornell			–					8	–	1	–	2
Lafayette			–					8	–	1	–	1
Penn State			–					8	–	1	–	1
Washington & Jefferson			–					9	–	2	–	0
Swarthmore			–					7	–	2	–	0
Drexel			–					6	–	2	–	0
Tufts			–					6	–	2	–	0
Penn			–					7	–	2	–	3
Carlisle			–					9	–	3	–	0
Brown			–					6	–	3	–	0
Rutgers			–					5	–	2	–	2
Dartmouth			–					6	–	3	–	1
Syracuse			–					6	–	3	–	0
Colgate			–					4	–	2	–	2
Vermont			–					5	–	4	–	0
Fordham			–					5	–	3	–	0
Western U. of Penn.			–					6	–	4	–	0
Holy Cross			–					4	–	3	–	1
Amherst			–					3	–	3	–	1
Lehigh			–					5	–	5	–	1
Bucknell			–					3	–	4	–	1
Dickinson			–					3	–	4	–	2
Carnegie Tech			–					2	–	3	–	2
Army			–					3	–	5	–	1
Frankin & Marshall			–					3	–	5	–	1
Wesleyan			–					2	–	4	–	1
New Hampshire			–					2	–	5	–	1
Villanova			–					3	–	7	–	0
Springfield Training School			–					1	–	5	–	3
NYU			–					0	–	4	–	0

Schedule

Date	Time	Opponent	Site	Result	Attendance	Source
October 3		Wesleyan	Yale Field New Haven, CT	W 21–0		[2]
October 6		Syracuse	Yale Field New Haven, CT	W 51–0		[3]
October 10		Springfield Training School	Yale Field New Haven, CT	W 12–0	1,000	[4][5][6]
October 13		Holy Cross	Yale Field New Haven, CT	W 17–0	1,000	[7][8]
October 20		Penn State	Yale Field New Haven, CT	W 10–0		[9]
October 27		Amherst	Yale Field New Haven, CT	W 12–0		[10]
November 3		at Army	The Plain West Point, NY	W 10–6		[11]
November 10		Brown	Yale Field New Haven, CT	W 5–0		[12]
November 17	2:08 p.m.	at Princeton	University Field Princeton, NJ (rivalry)	T 0–0	30,000	[13][14][15]
November 24		Harvard	Yale Field New Haven, CT (rivalry)	W 6–0		[16]
All times are in Eastern time

^[1]

National champions

In the January 1907 edition of The Outing Magazine, Caspar Whitney ranked Yale first among the nation's teams for 1906.^[17][18]

Parke H. Davis selected the team as national champions in the 1934 edition of Spalding's Official Foot Ball Guide. Later, they were also selected by the Billingsley Report.

Other selectors (Helms, NCF) chose Princeton as the national champion.^[18] Yale and Princeton both finished with undefeated seasons and played each other to a 0–0 tie on November 17, 1906.^[14]

Key players

The 1906 Yale Bulldogs team.

Four Yale players were among the eleven selected as consensus first-team players on the 1906 All-America team.^[19] Yale's four consensus All Americans were: halfback William F. Knox; fullback Paul Veeder; end Robert Forbes; and tackle Lucius Horatio Biglow. Five other Yale players receiving All-American honors were quarterback Tad Jones, fullback Samuel F. B. Morse, center Clarence Hockenberger, end Clarence Alcott, and Arthur Brides.^{[20][21][22][23]}

The 1906 college football season was a year of change. Following controversies in 1905 over the increase of violence and professionalism in college football, a number of rule changes were implemented in 1906. The most lasting change introduced in 1906 was the forward pass. Yale's Paul Veeder and Bob Forbes combined for one of the first important pass plays, a play described in one history of the game as follows: "The only other significant pass that season was thrown by Yale, which gained a first down that led to victory over Harvard, when Paul Veeder threw thirty yards to Bob Forbes."^[24]

References

1. "1906 Yale Bulldogs Schedule and Results". SR/College Football. Sports Reference LLC. Retrieved February 27, 2017.
2. "Yale Easy Winner Under New Rules". The Hartford Courant. October 4, 1906. p. 8 – via Newspapers.com.
3. "Big Score at Yale: Eli Players Defeat Syracuse 51 to 0 in a Sensational Game". The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. October 7, 1906. p. 19 – via Newspapers.com.
4. "Twelve Points For Yale". Journal Courier. New Haven, Connecticut. October 11, 1906. p. 1. Retrieved March 26, 2022 – via Newspapers.com .
5. "Twelve Points For Yale (continued)". Journal Courier. New Haven, Connecticut. October 11, 1906. p. 3. Retrieved March 26, 2022 – via Newspapers.com .
6. "Yale Had To Play Hard Football". The Hartford Courant. October 11, 1906. p. 14 – via Newspapers.com.
7. "Yale's Form Holds". The New York Times. New York, N.Y. October 14, 1906. p. 11 – via Newspapers.com.
8. "Yale 17, Holy Cross 0". The Boston Globe. October 14, 1906. p. 2 – via Newspapers.com.
9. "Yale 10, Penn State 0". The Boston Globe. October 21, 1906. p. 10 – via Newspapers.com.
10. "Amherst Scares Yale". New York Tribune. October 28, 1906. p. 10 – via Newspapers.com.
11. "Yale field goal Wins Luckiest of Victories". The New York Times. November 4, 1906. p. 11 – via Newspapers.com.
12. "Yale Team Is Given Scare: Brown Holds the New Haven Players to Small Score of Five to Nothing". Chicago Tribune. November 11, 1906. p. 13 – via Newspapers.com.
13. "Princeton, 0; Yale, 0; End Of The Game". The Star-Independent. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. November 17, 1906. p. 1. Retrieved April 3, 2022 – via Newspapers.com .
14. "Big Football Battle Draw: Yale and Princeton Teams Fight in Vain to Score in Two Long Halves". New York Tribune. November 18, 1906. p. 1 – via Newspapers.com.
15. "Neither Side Could Score: The Princeton-Yale Football Game a Wonder". Chattanooga Daily Times. November 18, 1906. p. 5 – via Newspapers.com.
16. "Yale Triumphs, 6-0, By Brainy Football". The Boston Globe. November 25, 1906. p. 1 – via Newspapers.com.
17. Whitney, Caspar (January 1907). Whitney, Caspar (ed.). "The View-Point: Ranking Football 1906 Teams". The Outing Magazine. Vol. XLIX, no. 4. Outing Publishing Company. pp. 534–537. Retrieved January 25, 2024. This ranking is not based only on comparative scores, but on style of play, conditions under which games were contested, relative importance of games on the schedule—especially with regard to each teams's "big" game, for which it was particularly trained—as well as the season's all-round record of the elevens under discussion. My intent in the study is its object lesson on comparative football development throughout the country.
18. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) (2015). "National Poll Rankings" (PDF). NCAA Division I Football Records. NCAA. p. 108. Retrieved January 4, 2016.
19. "Football Award Winners" (PDF). National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). 2016. p. 6. Retrieved October 21, 2017.
20. "Walter Camp Football Foundation". Archived from the original on March 30, 2009.
21. Caspar Whitney (1907). "The View-Point". Outing. p. 537.
22. "'Bob' Edgren Picks Out An All-American Team: Yale and Princeton Predominate His Choice". The Post-Standard (Syracuse). December 3, 1905.
23. "New Football Produces Individual Brilliancy: Many Players Merit Places on Fanciful All-American Team" (PDF). The New York Times. December 9, 1906.
24. Sally Jenkins (2007). "The Real All Americans". Knopf Doubleday Publishing. p. 232. ISBN 9780385522991.