1900 Stanford football team

The 1900 Stanford football team represented Stanford University in the 1900 college football season. The team was coached by Fielding H. Yost in his first and only season. The team played its home games at Stanford, California.

Season summary
While coaching Stanford, Yost also coached at State Normal, now known as San Jose State University. The two teams met twice during the season, the beginning of a long-running rivalry series.

The next season, Yost was hired as head coach at Michigan where he coached for 25 years, amassing six national championships along the way. In his first season with the Wolverines, he faced Stanford in the first-ever postseason college football game, defeating Stanford 49–0.

California
The 1900 Big Game was the 10th edition of the annual rivalry game between Stanford and California. Stanford won 5–0, but the game is notable primarily due to a horrific accident that occurred among the spectators. The game, which had been played on Thanksgiving Day for several years running, had become a very popular event. In 1900, the game was played at the 16th and Folsom Street Grounds, in the midst of an industrial area of in San Francisco. 19,000 spectators filled the stands, the largest crowd to witness a sporting event west of the Mississippi River. Many spectators chose not to pay the $1 admission and instead observed the game from the roof of the San Francisco and Pacific Glass Works across the street from the stands. During the game, the weight of hundreds of spectators caused the roof to collapse, plunging a large group of primarily boys and young men to the concrete floor and active furnaces of the glass factory. In all, 22 died and many more were injured, some seriously. The "Thanksgiving Day Disaster" remains the deadliest accident ever at a U.S. sporting event.