🏈 The 1900 college football season

The champion and its path, the poll race week by week, the honours, the best games and every conference table.

Source: Citizen of Nowhere college football database · 2 conferences · 0 bowls
Jump to any season1869–2026
1900season

1900 national champion

Named by the selectors, with the road it took.

National champion
12-0HELMS, NCF

The path, Yale12-0

  1. Sep 29vs
    Trinity (CT)
    W22-0
  2. Oct 3vs
    Amherst
    W27-0
  3. Oct 6vs
    Tufts
    W30-0
  4. Oct 10vs
    Bates
    W50-0
  5. Oct 13at
    Dartmouth
    W17-0
  6. Oct 17vs
    Bowdoin
    W30-0
  7. Oct 20vs
    Wesleyan
    W38-0
  8. Oct 27at
    Columbia
    W12-5
  9. Nov 3at
    Army
    W18-0
  10. Nov 10vs
    Carlisle
    W35-0
  11. Nov 17at
    Princeton
    W29-5
  12. Nov 24vs
    Harvard
    W28-0

The 1900 Elo race

Elo by week, higher is better. There was no AP poll this year, so the ratings tell the story.

How this is measured
The chart plots the 15 highest-rated teams at the end of the season, sampled each Sunday from the first game to the last. Ratings are on the site's college football Elo scale, where the average major team finishes the season at 1500. The final top five and the champion are drawn in team colours; tap a line or pick a team to follow one.
YaleHarvardPennsylvaniaPrincetonWisconsin15 teams · tap or drag for that week · tap a line to lock it

Tap or drag on the chart to read a team's Elo in any week.

1900 Elo at season end

There is no AP poll before 1936, so the ratings stand in: the ten highest-rated major teams when the season ended.

1900 Elo at season endElo

Elo top 8

rating, z
1Yale2007 · z +2.5
2Harvard1940 · z +2.2
3Pennsylvania1898 · z +2.0
4Princeton1762 · z +1.3
5Wisconsin1758 · z +1.3
6Lafayette1732 · z +1.2
7Iowa1719 · z +1.1
8Cornell1696 · z +1.0

The 1900 honours

The Heisman vote and the major awards side by side, then the All-Americans.

The 1900 honours

Consensus All-Americans

A star marks a unanimous selection.

C
B
E
Show all 5 positions
G
T

The best games of 1900

The ten best games of the season by Game Score. Switch to the Elo score for a second opinion.

How this is measured
Game score is the college football workbook's own rating of how good a game was; it weighs a lot more than the margin. The Elo score is a second view built from the ratings alone: the two teams' average pre-game Elo, plus stakes (150 for the national championship game, 90 for a playoff game or a major bowl, 40 for another bowl or a conference title game, 15 for a rivalry), plus up to 60 for a close finish and 15 for overtime. The Elo view takes its own top ten from every game between major teams. Sort by any column.
The best games of 190010 games
Rank by
1
17-5 · 1900-11-03 · Elo score 1934
0.76
game score
2
17-5 · 1900-10-27 · Elo score 1875
0.72
game score
3
28-0 · 1900-11-24 · Elo score 1989
0.71
game score
4
6-6 · 1900-10-13 · Elo score 1695
0.71
game score
5
11-6 · 1900-11-17 · Elo score 1869
0.69
game score
6
5-0 · 1900-10-20 · Elo score 1830
0.67
game score
7
6-5 · 1900-11-03 · Elo score 1682
0.63
game score
8
20-12 · 1900-11-29 · Elo score 1551
0.63
game score
9
12-0 · 1900-11-03 · Elo score 1834
0.62
game score
10
5-5 · 1900-11-29 · Elo score 1662
0.59
game score

Upsets of 1900

The results the ratings gave the winner the least chance of, lowest first.

How this is measured
Win chance is the winner's pre-game probability from the site's college football Elo ratings, home field included, so 3% means the winner would be expected to win about one time in thirty. Games against lower-level opponents count and carry a tag for the level (FCS, Division II and so on). Where the AP poll had ranks, the rank line is shown as context. Elo gap is the loser's pre-game rating minus the winner's.
Upsets of 190010 upsets
1
HamiltonNon-major beat Williams
12-5 · 1900-10-20
8.8%
win chance
2
Physicians & SurgeonsNon-major beat Northwestern
6-0 · 1900-09-29
11%
win chance
3
12-0 · 1900-11-03
15%
win chance
4
Brown beat Chicago
11-6 · 1900-10-20
19%
win chance
5
5-0 · 1900-10-27
19%
win chance
6
Homestead ACNon-major beat Lehigh
50-0 · 1900-11-17
20%
win chance
7
6-5 · 1900-11-06
20%
win chance
8
5-0 · 1900-11-10
23%
win chance
9
Iowa beat Chicago
17-0 · 1900-11-03
24%
win chance
10
HamiltonNon-major beat Trinity (CT)
35-0 · 1900-11-03
26%
win chance

1900 standings by conference

Every conference at once: conference and overall record, and the final AP rank. A star marks the conference champion.

1900 standings by conference2 groups

Western Intercollegiate

9 teams
#TeamConfAll
1Minnesota★ conference champion3-0-110-0-2
2Iowa★ conference champion2-0-17-0-1
3Wisconsin2-18-1
4Michigan3-27-2-1
5Northwestern2-1-27-2-3
6Chicago2-3-19-5-1
7Indiana1-2-14-2-2
8Illinois1-3-27-3-2
9Purdue0-44-4

Independent

32 teams
#TeamConfAll
1Yale-12-0
2Pennsylvania-12-1
3Harvard-10-1
4Cornell-10-2
5Lafayette-9-2
6Beloit-7-1-2
7Nebraska-7-1-2
8Bowdoin-7-2
9Syracuse-7-2-1
10Princeton-8-3
11Army-7-3-1
12Brown-7-3-1
13Columbia-7-3-1
14Drake-6-3
15Navy-6-3
16Notre Dame-6-3-1
17Knox-6-4
18Carlisle-6-4-1
19Williams-6-4-1
20Trinity (CT)-4-3-1
21Wesleyan-5-4
22Holy Cross-5-4-1
23Dickinson-5-5
24Massachusetts-5-5
25Lehigh-5-6
26Penn State-4-6-1
27Bucknell-3-5-1
28Amherst-4-7-1
29Dartmouth-2-4-2
30Tufts-3-6-1
31Grinnell-3-6
32Iowa State-2-5-1

Where these numbers come from

Enough to disbelieve this page on purpose rather than by accident.

Champions, polls, standings, bowls, honours and games are read from the Citizen of Nowhere college football database, built from its own workbook one season at a time. Team colours and crests are the current programs’, so a school is drawn the way it looks today even where it played under another name.

The AP poll begins in 1936, so earlier seasons have no poll race and no final poll, but they do have an Elo race, and their champions are those the selectors named. Before 1992 there was no title game, so those seasons list the major bowls instead; from 1992 the title game is shown with the other major bowls, and from 2014 the playoff bracket. Where the database has no entry for a section, the section is left out rather than shown empty.

Elo ratings, the upsets and the best games come from the site’s college football Elo, which rates every game since 1869 and counts games against lower-level opponents. Each season’s ratings are shown on a scale where the average major team ends the season at 1500; z is the distance from that average in standard deviations.