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The 1923 college football season saw several teams finish their seasons unbeaten and untied. Illinois (coached by Bob Zuppke) and Michigan (coached by "Hurry-Up" Yost, both members of what is now the Big Ten Conference, finished with records of 8-0-0 as did future Ivy League teams Yale and Cornell. Southern Methodist University (SMU) had a record of 9-0-0. Teams that had no defeats, but had been tied, were California (9-0-1), Texas (8-0-1), and Kansas (5-0-3).

Major conferences that existed in 1923 were the Western Conference (today's Big Ten), the Pacific Coast Conference (now the Pac-10), the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MVIAA, forerunner of the Big 12), the Southwest Conference, and the Southern Conference (whose members later formed the SEC and the ACC).

September[]

September 29 Notre Dame opened its season with a 74-0 win over visiting Kalamazoo College. After a warmup game against a team of Cal alumni, California beat St. Mary's 49-0. Cornell beat St. Bonaventure 41-6, Dartmouth beat Norwich 13-0, and Syracuse beat Hobart 33-0.

October[]

October 6 Illinois beat Nebraska 24-7 and Michigan defeated Case 36-0. Syracuse beat William & Mary 61-3. Notre Dame beat Lombard College 14-0. Kansas defeated Creighton 6-0. California defeated Santa Clara 48-0. Following wins over the crews of the USS Mississippi (33-0) and the USS New York (42-7), Washington beat Willamette 54-0.

Dartmouth beat Maine 6-0, Yale beat North Carolina 53-0, and Cornell beat Susquehanna 84-0

October 13 Notre Dame beat Army 13-0 Dartmouth beat Boston University 24-0, and Yale beat Georgia 40-0. Michigan beat Vanderbilt 3-0, and Illinois beat Butler 21-7 California beat the Olympic Club 16-0 and Washington beat Whitman College 19-0. Kansas beat Oklahoma State 9-0.

October 20 Cornell beat Williams 28-6, Yale beat Bucknell 29-14 and Dartmouth beat Vermont 27-2. Notre Dame won at Princeton 25-2. Illinois won at Iowa 9-6 and Michigan beat Ohio State 23-0 At Lincoln, Kansas and Nebraska played to a 0-0 tie.

California beat Oregon State 26-0 and Washington beat visiting USC 22-0.

October 27 Cornell defeated Colgate 34-7 Yale beat Brown 21-0 and Dartmouth beat Harvard 16-0 Notre Dame beat Georgia Tech 35-7. In Chicago, Illinois beat Northwestern 29-0. Michigan beat Michigan State 37-0. Kansas and Kansas State played to a scoreless tie (0-0). At Portland, Oregon, California continued its streak of shutouts with a 9-0 win over Washington State. Washington beat Puget Sound 24-0.

November[]

November 3 Yale beat Army 31-10 Notre Dame beat Purdue 34-7 Dartmouth (5-0-0) hosted Cornell (4-0-0) and in a triumph of Big Red over Big Green, Cornell won won 32-7.

Illinois and Chicago, both unbeaten (4-0-0) met at Champaign, with the Illini winning 7-0. Michigan won at Iowa 9-3. Kansas won at Oklahoma 7-3. California held visiting Nevada scoreless for its seventh straight shutout, but could not score either, suffering a 0-0 tie. Washington stayed unbeaten and untied with a 14-0 win at Oregon State.

November 10 At Boston's Fenway Park, Dartmouth beat Brown 16-14, while at New York's Polo Grounds, Cornell beat Columbia 35-0. Yale beat Maryland 16-14. Notre Dame suffered its first loss, at Nebraska, 14-7.

Meanwhile, Illinois beat Wisconsin 10-0. Michigan defeated the Quantico Marines football team 29-6. In Los Angeles, California beat USC 13-7. Washington beat Montana 26-14. Kansas beat Washington University (of St. Louis) 83-0.

November 17 California (7-0-1) hosted Washington (8-0-0) and won 9-0. Illinois beat Mississippi State 27-0, and Michigan won at Wisconsin 6-3, as both teams stayed unbeaten. Notre Dame beat Butler 34-7. Yale defeated Princeton 27-0. Kansas beat Drake 17-0.

November 24 In Pittsburgh, Notre Dame defeated Carnegie Tech 26-0. Dartmouth beat Colby College 62-0, and Cornell defeated Johns Hopkins 52-0. Yale closed a perfect season with a 13-0 win over Harvard. Illinois closed its season at 8-0-0 with a 9-0 win at Ohio State, while Michigan closed a perfect season with a 10-0 win over Minnesota. California closed its season with a 9-0 win over Stanford. Washington beat Washington State 24-7, and though it was second to Cal in the Pacific Coast Conference, received the invitation to the Rose Bowl to face (5-1-2) Navy.

On Thanksgiving Day, which was held on November 29 in 1923, Furman, which had won its first ten games, lost its final game to visiting Clemson, 7-6. In Philadelphia, Cornell closed a perfect season with a 14-7 win over Pennsylvania. Dartmouth finished with a 31-6 win over Columbia at New York. Kansas and Missouri played to a 3-3 tie, giving the Jayhawks an unbeaten, if not untied (5-0-3) finish. Notre Dame won at St. Louis 13-0

December 1 Washington beat Oregon 26-7.

Conference standings[]

The following is an incomplete list of conference standings:

1923 Big Ten football standings
v · d · e Conf     Overall
Team W   L   T     W   L   T
Illinois § 5 0 0     8 0 0
Michigan § 4 0 0     8 0 0
Chicago 5 1 0     7 1 0
Minnesota 2 1 1     5 1 1
Iowa 3 3 0     5 3 0
Indiana 2 2 0     3 4 0
Wisconsin 1 3 1     3 3 1
Ohio State 1 4 0     3 4 1
Purdue 1 4 0     2 5 1
Northwestern 0 6 0     2 6 0
§ – Conference co-champions
1923 Missouri Valley football standings
v · d · e Conf     Overall
Team W   L   T     W   L   T
Nebraska 3 0 2     4 2 2
Kansas 3 0 3     5 0 3
Drake 3 1 0     5 2 0
Iowa State 3 2 1     4 3 1
Kansas State 2 2 2     4 2 2
Missouri 1 3 2     2 3 3
Oklahoma 2 4 0     3 5 0
Grinnell 1 3 0     2 6 0
Washington (MO) 1 4 0     3 5 0
1923 PCC football standings
v · d · e Conf     Overall
Team W   L   T     W   L   T
California 5 0 0     9 0 1
Washington 4 1 0     10 1 1
Idaho 2 2 1     5 2 1
Stanford 2 2 0     7 2 0
USC 2 2 0     6 2 0
Washington State 1 3 1     2 4 1
Oregon State 1 3 1     4 5 2
Oregon 0 4 1     3 4 1
† – Conference champion

Conference Champions[]

Conference Champion Conf. record Overall record
Western Illinois/Michigan (5-0)/(4-0) (8-0-0)
Pacific Coast California (5-0-0) (9-0-1)
Independent Cornell/Yale (8-0-0) (8-0-0)
Western Illinois/Michigan (5-0)/(4-0) (8-0-0)
Southern Washington & Lee (4-0-1) (6-2-1)
Missouri Valley Kansas (3-0-3) (5-0-3)
Southwestern SMU (5-0-0) (9-0-0)

The Helms Athletic Foundation, founded in 1936, declared retroactively that Illinois had been the best college football team of 1923.[2]

1924 Rose Bowl[]

A crowd of 48,000 turned out to watch Navy and Washington play an exciting game. Ira McKee's passing put Navy ahead 14-7 at halftime, after Washington's George Wilson had tied the game at 7-7. In the fourth quarter, Washington's Roy Petrie picked off a pass at Navy's 10 yard line, setting up the Huskies' tying touchdown for a 14 to 14 finish.[3] Later, it turned out that Washington halfback Les Sherman, whose two extra point attempts had tied the game, had played with a broken toe, while fullback Elmer Tesreau had played with a fractured leg [1]

See also[]

References[]

  1. http://www.jhowell.net/cf/cf1923.htm
  2. The 2001 ESPN Information Please Sports Almanac (Hyperion ESPN Books, 2000), p153
  3. "East and West Gridiron Fight Ends With Tie," Nevada State Journal, Jan. 2, 1924, p3
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