๐Ÿˆ The 1906 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 ยท 2 conferences ยท 0 bowls
Jump to any season1869โ€“2026
1906season

1906 national champion

Named by the selectors, with the road it took.

National champion
9-0-1HELMS, NCF

The path, Princeton9-0-1

  1. Sep 29vs
    Villanova
    W24-0
  2. Oct 3vs
    Stevens
    W22-0
  3. Oct 6vs
    Washington & Jefferson
    W6-0
  4. Oct 10vs
    Lehigh
    W52-0
  5. Oct 13at
    Navy
    W5-0
  6. Oct 20vs
    Bucknell
    W32-4
  7. Oct 27at
    Cornell
    W14-5
  8. Nov 3vs
    Dartmouth
    W42-0
  9. Nov 10at
    Army
    W8-0
  10. Nov 17vs
    Yale
    T0-0

The 1906 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.
YalePrincetonChicagoVanderbiltHarvard15 teams ยท tap or drag for that week ยท tap a line to lock it

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

1906 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.

1906 Elo at season endElo

Elo top 13

rating, z
1Yale2004 ยท z +2.4
2Princeton1901 ยท z +1.9
3Chicago1880 ยท z +1.8
4Vanderbilt1844 ยท z +1.6
5Harvard1841 ยท z +1.6
6Michigan1835 ยท z +1.6
7Minnesota1810 ยท z +1.5
8Carlisle1794 ยท z +1.4
9Pennsylvania1783 ยท z +1.3
10Wisconsin1748 ยท z +1.2
11Iowa State1695 ยท z +0.9
12Cornell1686 ยท z +0.9
13Sewanee1679 ยท z +0.8

The 1906 honours

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

The 1906 honours

Consensus All-Americans

A star marks a unanimous selection.

C
B
E
Show all 5 positions
G
T

The best games of 1906

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 190610 games
Rank by
1
0-0 ยท 1906-11-17 ยท Elo score 2004
0.86
game score
2
6-0 ยท 1906-11-24 ยท Elo score 1980
0.83
game score
3
4-2 ยท 1906-11-10 ยท Elo score 1930
0.74
game score
4
4-0 ยท 1906-10-13 ยท Elo score 1813
0.69
game score
5
10-4 ยท 1906-11-03 ยท Elo score 1878
0.63
game score
6
Yale beat Amherst
12-0 ยท 1906-10-27 ยท Elo score 1842
0.63
game score
7
5-0 ยท 1906-11-10 ยท Elo score 1822
0.59
game score
8
5-0 ยท 1906-10-27 ยท Elo score 1750
0.57
game score
9
10-0 ยท 1906-10-20 ยท Elo score 1791
0.56
game score
10
0-0 ยท 1906-10-06 ยท Elo score 1602
0.55
game score

Upsets of 1906

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 190610 upsets
1
WabashNon-major beat Purdue
11-0 ยท 1906-10-27
4.3%
win chance
2
Saint LouisNon-major beat Kansas
34-2 ยท 1906-11-03
7.4%
win chance
3
Notre DameNon-major beat Purdue
2-0 ยท 1906-11-03
8.0%
win chance
4
GettysburgNon-major beat Bucknell
10-0 ยท 1906-11-17
8.5%
win chance
5
Saint LouisNon-major beat Iowa
39-0 ยท 1906-11-29
9.5%
win chance
6
GrinnellNon-major beat Drake
4-0 ยท 1906-10-27
11%
win chance
7
4-0 ยท 1906-10-27
13%
win chance
8
Steelton YMCANon-major beat Bucknell
17-0 ยท 1906-11-24
14%
win chance
9
Kansas StateNon-major beat Kansas
6-4 ยท 1906-11-24
14%
win chance
10
7-6 ยท 1906-11-29
16%
win chance

1906 standings by conference

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

1906 standings by conference2 groups

Western Intercollegiate

8 teams
#TeamConfAll
1Wisconsinโ˜… conference champion3-05-0
2Michiganโ˜… conference champion1-04-1
3Minnesotaโ˜… conference champion2-04-1
4Chicago3-14-1
5Illinois1-31-3-1
6Indiana0-24-2
7Iowa0-12-3
8Purdue0-30-5

Independent

56 teams
#TeamConfAll
1Princeton-9-0-1
2Yale-9-0-1
3Harvard-10-1
4Iowa State-9-1
5Texas-9-1
6Sewanee-8-1
7Vanderbilt-8-1
8Texas A&M-6-1
9Lafayette-8-1-1
10Penn State-8-1-1
11Alabama-5-1
12Cornell-8-1-2
13Washington & Jefferson-9-2
14Colorado Mines-3-0-2
15Utah-4-1
16Clemson-4-0-3
17Swarthmore-7-2
18Carlisle-9-3
19Navy-8-2-2
20Kansas-7-2-2
21Pennsylvania-7-2-3
22Missouri-5-2-1
23Brown-6-3
24Mississippi-4-2
25Syracuse-6-3
26Virginia Tech-5-2-2
27Williams-5-2-2
28Dartmouth-6-3-1
29Colgate-4-2-2
30Georgia Tech-5-3-1
31Nebraska-6-4
32Pittsburgh-6-4
33Colorado College-3-2-2
34Davidson-3-2-2
35Holy Cross-4-3-1
36Amherst-3-3-1
37LSU-2-2-2
38Lehigh-5-5-1
39Maryville-3-3-2
40Mississippi State-2-2-1
41Colorado-2-3-4
42Dickinson-3-4-2
43Bucknell-3-4-1
44Denver-2-3
45Army-3-5-1
46Arkansas-2-4-2
47Drake-2-4-1
48Georgia-2-4-1
49Villanova-3-7
50Haskell-2-5
51North Carolina-1-4-2
52TCU-2-5
53Tennessee-1-6-2
54Auburn-1-5-1
55Massachusetts-1-7-1
56Tulane-0-4-1

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 programsโ€™, 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 siteโ€™s college football Elo, which rates every game since 1869 and counts games against lower-level opponents. Each seasonโ€™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.