1890 Princeton Tigers football team

The 1890 Princeton Tigers football team represented Princeton University in the 1890 college football season. The team finished with an 11–1–1 record. The Tigers recorded nine shutouts and outscored opponents by a combined total of 478 to 58.^[1] The team's only loss was by a 32–0 score against Yale and they tied the Orange Athletic Club 0–0.^[2]

1890 Princeton Tigers football
Conference	Independent
Record	11–1–1
Head coach	None
Captain	Edgar Allan Poe
Home stadium	University Field
Seasons ← 1889 1891 →

1890 Eastern college football independents records

v t e	Conf.							Overall
Team	W		L		T			W		L		T
Harvard			–					11	–	0	–	0
Yale			–					13	–	1	–	0
Princeton			–					11	–	1	–	1
Franklin & Marshall			–					8	–	2	–	0
Navy			–					5	–	1	–	1
Penn			–					11	–	3	–	0
Washington & Jefferson			–					2	–	1	–	0
Cornell			–					7	–	4	–	0
Syracuse			–					7	–	4	–	0
Springfield YMCA			–					5	–	3	–	0
Lehigh			–					6	–	4	–	0
Rutgers			–					5	–	5	–	1
Penn State			–					2	–	2	–	0
Colgate			–					1	–	1	–	0
Wesleyan			–					5	–	6	–	0
Tufts			–					2	–	3	–	0
NYU			–					2	–	4	–	0
Western Univ. Penn			–					1	–	2	–	0
Lafayette			–					2	–	5	–	1
Fordham			–					1	–	3	–	1
Brown			–					2	–	5	–	0
Bucknell			–					1	–	4	–	1
Massachusetts			–					1	–	4	–	0
Columbia			–					1	–	5	–	1
Army			–					0	–	1	–	0
Geneva			–					0	–	1	–	0

Three Princeton players, fullback Sheppard Homans, Jr., end Ralph Warren, and guard Jesse Riggs, were consensus first-team honorees on the 1890 College Football All-America Team.^[3] In 1952, Grantland Rice paid tribute to Homans as the embodiment of the rough and tumble days of iron man football. Rice wrote: "Just as Ty Cobb represents the ball game of many years ago, this man represented the football that used to be."^[4]

The 115–0 defeat of Virginia is often marked as the beginning of major college football's arrival in the South.^[5][6]

Schedule

Date	Opponent	Site	Result	Attendance	Source
October 4	Franklin & Marshall	University Field Princeton, NJ	W 33–16		[7]
October 8	Rutgers	University Field Princeton, NJ (rivalry)	W 27–0	300	[8]
October 11	at Orange Athletic Club	Tuxedo Park, NY	T 0–0	500	[9]
October 15	Penn	University Field Princeton, NJ (rivalry)	W 18–0	600	[10]
October 18	at Crescent Athletic Club	Washington Park Brooklyn, NY	W 12–0	3,000	[11][12]
October 22	Lafayette	University Field Princeton, NJ	W 26–6	300	[13]
October 25	Lehigh	University Field Princeton, NJ	W 50–0		[14]
October 29	at Columbia Athletic Club	Analostan Island Washington, DC	W 60–0	3,000–4,000	[15]
November 1	vs. Virginia	Oriole Park Baltimore, MD	W 115–0		[16]
November 4	at Columbia	Berkeley Oval New York, NY	W 85–0	1,000	[17]
November 8	at Penn	University Grounds Philadelphia, PA	W 6–0	10,000	[18]
November 15	vs. Wesleyan	Eastern Park Brooklyn, NY	W 46–4	500	[19]
November 27	vs. Yale	Eastern Park Brooklyn, NY (rivalry)	L 0–32	10,000	[20][21]

Roster

• Adams, HB
• Barnes
• Black, T
• Bonner, QB
• Edwin A. Dalton, HB
• Parke H. Davis, E
• Furness, E
• Gallway, T
• Hayden, E
• Sheppard Homans, Jr., FB
• Jefferson, G
• Jones, C
• Philip King, HB
• Lewis, G
• Edgar Allan Poe, QB
• Jesse Riggs, G
• Robert Elliott Speer, T
• William C. Spicer, HB
• Symmes
• Thomas, G
• Ralph Warren, E
• Clinton Wood, T