🏈 The 1921 college football season
The champion and its path, the poll race week by week, the honours, the best games and every conference table.
Jump to any season1869–2026
1921 national champion
Named by the selectors, with the road it took.
The path, Cornell8-0
- Oct 1vsSt. BonaventureW41-0
- Oct 8vsRochesterW55-0
- Oct 15vsWestern ReserveW110-0
- Oct 22vsColgateW31-7
- Oct 29vsDartmouthW59-7
- Nov 5atColumbiaW41-7
- Nov 12vsSpringfieldW14-0
- Nov 24atPennsylvaniaW41-0
The 1921 major bowls
No title game this year. The big bowls of the season, by date.
- Rose BowlJan 2
The 1921 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
- Regular season ends
- Bowl season
Tap or drag on the chart to read a team's Elo in any week.
1921 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.
1921 Elo at season endElo
Elo top 20
rating, z
The 1921 honours
The Heisman vote and the major awards side by side, then the All-Americans.
The 1921 honours
Consensus All-Americans
A star marks a unanimous selection.
- Herb SteinPittsburgh
- Bo McMillinCentre
- Edgar KawCornell
- Aubrey DevineIowa
- Glenn KillingerPenn State
- Brick MullerCalifornia
- Eddie AndersonNotre Dame
Show all 5 positions
- Dan McMillanCalifornia
- Iolas HuffmanOhio State
- Herb SteinPittsburgh
- Bo McMillinCentre
- Edgar KawCornell
- Aubrey DevineIowa
- Glenn KillingerPenn State
- Brick MullerCalifornia
- Eddie AndersonNotre Dame
- Dan McMillanCalifornia
- Iolas HuffmanOhio State
The best games of 1921
The ten best games of the season by Game Score. Switch to the Elo score for a second opinion.
How this is measured
The best games of 192110 games
Upsets of 1921
The results the ratings gave the winner the least chance of, lowest first.
How this is measured
Upsets of 192110 upsets
1921 standings by conference
Every conference at once: conference and overall record, and the final AP rank. A star marks the conference champion.
1921 standings by conference7 groups
Big Ten
10 teams| # | Team | Conf | All | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Iowa★ conference champion | 5-0 | 7-0 | |
| 2 | Chicago | 4-1 | 6-1 | |
| 3 | Ohio State | 4-1 | 5-2 | |
| 4 | Wisconsin | 3-1-1 | 5-1-1 | |
| 5 | Michigan | 2-1-1 | 5-1-1 | |
| 6 | Indiana | 1-2 | 3-4 | |
| 7 | Minnesota | 2-4 | 3-4 | |
| 8 | Illinois | 1-4 | 3-4 | |
| 9 | Purdue | 1-4 | 1-6 | |
| 10 | Northwestern | 0-5 | 1-6 |
Missouri Valley
9 teams| # | Team | Conf | All | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nebraska★ conference champion | 3-0 | 7-1 | |
| 2 | Missouri | 4-2 | 6-2 | |
| 3 | Kansas State | 4-2 | 5-3 | |
| 4 | Drake | 2-2 | 5-2 | |
| 5 | Kansas | 3-3 | 4-3 | |
| 6 | Iowa State | 3-4 | 4-4 | |
| 7 | Oklahoma | 2-3 | 5-3 | |
| 8 | Washington University | 2-3 | 4-3-1 | |
| 9 | Grinnell | 0-4 | 2-5 |
Pacific Coast
6 teams| # | Team | Conf | All | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California★ conference champion | 4-0 | 9-0-1 | |
| 2 | Washington State | 2-1-1 | 4-2-1 | |
| 3 | Stanford | 1-1-1 | 4-2-2 | |
| 4 | Oregon State | 1-2-1 | 4-3-2 | |
| 5 | Oregon | 0-1-2 | 5-1-3 | |
| 6 | Washington | 0-3-1 | 3-4-1 |
Rocky Mountain
8 teams| # | Team | Conf | All | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Utah State★ conference champion | 3-0 | 7-1 | |
| 2 | Colorado | 4-0-1 | 4-1-1 | |
| 3 | Utah | 2-1-1 | 3-2-1 | |
| 4 | Denver | 2-2-1 | 4-2-1 | |
| 5 | Colorado A&M | 2-2-1 | 2-3-1 | |
| 6 | Colorado College | 2-4 | 4-4 | |
| 7 | Wyoming | 1-3-2 | 1-4-2 | |
| 8 | Colorado Mines | 1-5 | 1-5 |
Southern
14 teams| # | Team | Conf | All | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Georgia Tech | 2-0 | 8-1 | |
| 2 | Georgia | 4-0 | 7-2-1 | |
| 3 | Washington & Lee | 1-0 | 6-3 | |
| 4 | Tennessee | 1-0-1 | 6-2-1 | |
| 5 | North Carolina | 2-1 | 5-2-2 | |
| 6 | Kentucky | 0-0-1 | 4-3-1 | |
| 7 | North Carolina State | 1-1-1 | 3-3-3 | |
| 8 | Maryland | 1-1-1 | 3-5-1 | |
| 9 | Virginia Tech | 1-2 | 7-3 | |
| 10 | Auburn | 1-2 | 5-3 | |
| 11 | Mississippi State | 0-1-1 | 4-4-1 | |
| 12 | Virginia | 0-2 | 5-4 | |
| 13 | Clemson | 0-3 | 1-6-2 | |
| 14 | Alabama | 0-1-1 | 5-4-2 |
Southwest
7 teams| # | Team | Conf | All | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas A&M★ conference champion | 3-0-2 | 6-1-2 | |
| 2 | Texas | 1-0-1 | 6-1-1 | |
| 3 | Arkansas | 2-1 | 5-3-1 | |
| 4 | Baylor | 2-2 | 8-3 | |
| 5 | Oklahoma A&M | 1-1 | 5-4-1 | |
| 6 | Rice | 1-2-1 | 4-4-1 | |
| 7 | SMU | 0-4 | 1-6-1 |
Independent
48 teams| # | Team | Conf | All | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cornell | - | 8-0 | |
| 2 | Lafayette | - | 9-0 | |
| 3 | Washington & Jefferson | - | 10-0-1 | |
| 4 | Vanderbilt | - | 7-0-1 | |
| 5 | Centre | - | 10-1 | |
| 6 | Notre Dame | - | 10-1 | |
| 7 | Penn State | - | 8-0-2 | |
| 8 | Yale | - | 8-1 | |
| 9 | Navy | - | 6-1 | |
| 10 | LSU | - | 6-1-1 | |
| 11 | Syracuse | - | 7-2 | |
| 12 | Erskine | - | 6-2 | |
| 13 | Furman | - | 7-2-1 | |
| 14 | Harvard | - | 7-2-1 | |
| 15 | Mississippi College | - | 7-2-1 | |
| 16 | Sewanee | - | 6-2 | |
| 17 | South Carolina | - | 5-1-2 | |
| 18 | Dartmouth | - | 6-2-1 | |
| 19 | TCU | - | 6-3-1 | |
| 20 | Florida | - | 6-3-2 | |
| 21 | Brown | - | 5-3-1 | |
| 22 | Pittsburgh | - | 5-3-1 | |
| 23 | Princeton | - | 4-3 | |
| 24 | Idaho | - | 4-3-1 | |
| 25 | Richmond | - | 4-3-1 | |
| 26 | Oglethorpe | - | 5-4 | |
| 27 | Pennsylvania | - | 4-3-2 | |
| 28 | West Virginia | - | 5-4-1 | |
| 29 | Birmingham Southern | - | 4-4-1 | |
| 30 | Citadel | - | 3-3-2 | |
| 31 | Colgate | - | 4-4-2 | |
| 32 | Lehigh | - | 4-4 | |
| 33 | Newberry | - | 3-3-1 | |
| 34 | Spring Hill | - | 4-4 | |
| 35 | Davidson | - | 3-4-3 | |
| 36 | Phillips | - | 3-4-2 | |
| 37 | Rutgers | - | 4-5 | |
| 38 | Tulane | - | 4-6 | |
| 39 | UT-Chattanooga | - | 4-6 | |
| 40 | VMI | - | 3-5-1 | |
| 41 | Mercer | - | 3-6 | |
| 42 | Mississippi | - | 3-6 | |
| 43 | Samford | - | 3-6 | |
| 44 | Columbia | - | 2-6 | |
| 45 | Wofford | - | 2-7 | |
| 46 | Wake Forest | - | 2-8 | |
| 47 | Presbyterian | - | 1-7 | |
| 48 | Southwestern | - | 0-6-1 |
1921 bowls
One line per game, latest first. A tag marks the playoff and the other major bowls.
1921 bowls4 bowls
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.