🏈 The 1902 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
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1902season
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1902 national champion

Named by the selectors, with the road it took.

National champion
Michigan
11-0HELMS, NCF

The path, Michigan11-0

  1. Sep 27vs
    Albion
    W88-0
  2. Oct 4vs
    Case
    W48-6
  3. Oct 8vs
    Michigan State
    W119-0
  4. Oct 11vs
    Indiana
    W60-0
  5. Oct 18at
    Notre Dame
    W23-0
  6. Oct 25vs
    Ohio State
    W86-0
  7. Nov 1at
    Wisconsin
    W6-0
  8. Nov 8vs
    Iowa
    W107-0
  9. Nov 15at
    Chicago
    W21-0
  10. Nov 22vs
    Oberlin
    W63-0
  11. Nov 27vs
    Minnesota
    W23-6

The 1902 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.
YaleHarvardMichiganPrincetonMinnesota15 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.

1902 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.

1902 Elo at season endElo

Elo top 14

rating, z
1Yale2102 · z +2.6
2Harvard2045 · z +2.4
3Michigan2026 · z +2.3
4Princeton1897 · z +1.7
5Minnesota1881 · z +1.7
6Army1862 · z +1.6
7Cornell1822 · z +1.4
8Wisconsin1799 · z +1.3
9Chicago1797 · z +1.3
10Nebraska1772 · z +1.2
11Dartmouth1771 · z +1.2
12Illinois1770 · z +1.2
13Amherst1729 · z +1.0
14Carlisle1687 · z +0.8

The 1902 honours

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

The 1902 honours

Consensus All-Americans

A star marks a unanimous selection.

C
B
E
Show all 6 positions
G
T
T-B

The best games of 1902

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 190210 games
Rank by
1
Michigan beat Wisconsin
6-0 · 1902-11-01 · Elo score 1951
0.77
game score
2
Yale beat Harvard
23-0 · 1902-11-22 · Elo score 2088
0.67
game score
3
Yale beat Princeton
12-5 · 1902-11-15 · Elo score 2011
0.67
game score
4
Michigan beat Chicago
21-0 · 1902-11-15 · Elo score 1871
0.65
game score
5
Harvard beat Army
14-6 · 1902-10-18 · Elo score 1960
0.64
game score
6
Chicago beat Illinois
6-0 · 1902-10-25 · Elo score 1777
0.63
game score
7
Michigan beat Minnesota
23-6 · 1902-11-27 · Elo score 1980
0.63
game score
8
Nebraska beat Knox
7-0 · 1902-11-15 · Elo score 1743
0.61
game score
9
Harvard beat Dartmouth
16-6 · 1902-11-15 · Elo score 1948
0.61
game score
10
Auburn tied Tulane
0-0 · 1902-10-25 · Elo score 1404
0.60
game score

Upsets of 1902

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 190210 upsets
1
Troy LaureatesNon-major beat Williams
5-0 · 1902-10-15
7.6%
win chance
2
Worcester TechNon-major beat Massachusetts
6-0 · 1902-11-15
8.1%
win chance
3
Carlisle beat Cornell
10-6 · 1902-10-18
9.1%
win chance
4
WatertonNon-major beat Bucknell
6-0 · 1902-11-27
10%
win chance
5
Georgetown beat Navy
4-0 · 1902-09-27
10%
win chance
6
LawrenceNon-major beat Beloit
24-0 · 1902-11-08
11%
win chance
7
Missouri beat Iowa
6-0 · 1902-11-20
11%
win chance
8
Steelton YMCANon-major beat Penn State
6-5 · 1902-11-27
13%
win chance
9
Brown beat Pennsylvania
15-6 · 1902-10-18
15%
win chance
10
Amherst beat Dartmouth
12-6 · 1902-10-25
16%
win chance

1902 standings by conference

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

1902 standings by conference2 groups

Western Intercollegiate

9 teams
#TeamConfAll
1Michigan★ conference champion5-011-0
2Chicago5-114-1
3Minnesota3-19-2-1
4Illinois4-210-2-1
5Purdue2-27-2-1
6Wisconsin1-36-3
7Iowa0-35-4
8Northwestern0-46-6
9Indiana0-43-5-1

Independent

63 teams
#TeamConfAll
1Nebraska-10-0
2Yale-11-0-1
3Harvard-11-1
4Princeton-8-1
5Vanderbilt-8-1
6Clemson-6-1
7LSU-6-1
8Virginia-8-1-1
9Colorado-5-1
10Knox-9-2
11Army-6-1-1
12Sewanee-7-2
13Haskell-8-2-1
14Tennessee-6-2
15Carlisle-8-3
16Cornell-8-3
17Lafayette-8-3
18Dartmouth-6-2-1
19Holy Cross-6-2-1
20North Carolina-5-1-3
21Notre Dame-6-2-1
22Syracuse-6-2-1
23Colorado Mines-4-1-2
24Amherst-7-3
25Georgetown-7-3
26Penn State-7-3
27Pennsylvania-9-4
28Drake-5-2-1
29Lehigh-7-3-1
30Iowa State-6-3-1
31Texas-6-3-1
32Georgia-4-2-1
33Missouri-5-3
34Bucknell-6-4
35Kansas-6-4
36Vermont-5-3-2
37Columbia-6-4-1
38Virginia Tech-3-2-1
39Mississippi-4-3
40Brown-5-4-1
41Furman-4-3-4
42Alabama-4-4
43North Carolina State-3-4-2
44Denver-3-4-1
45Colorado College-3-4
46Massachusetts-2-3-2
47Tufts-4-6-1
48Dickinson-4-6
49Simpson-2-3
50Davidson-3-5-1
51Beloit-3-5
52Auburn-2-4-1
53Wesleyan-3-6-1
54Williams-3-6-1
55Colorado A&M-1-3-2
56Tulane-1-4-2
57Washington University-2-6-1
58Grinnell-2-7-2
59Mississippi State-1-4-1
60Navy-2-7-1
61Georgia Tech-0-6-2
62Boston College-0-9
63Union (NY)-0-6

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.