The 1891 Stanford football team represented Stanford University in the 1891 college football season. This was the inaugural year of both the University and the football team: the University opened in October 1891 and the four-game season was played in early 1892.
Origins
Soon after Stanford opened on October 1, 1891, students set out to form a football team.[1] One transfer student, John Whittemore, had played football at Washington University. He was chosen as captain and began to organize the team.[1]
Whittemore acted as de facto coach, drawing up plays and organizing practices.[1] The team won its first two games against Hopkins Academy and Berkeley Gym before losing to a team from San Francisco's Olympic Club.[2] In its final game of the first season, Stanford upset a more experienced team from the University of California, Berkeley, setting the stage for what would become the longstanding Big Game rivalry.[1][3][4]
Soon after formation of Stanford's team, players at the University of California, Berkeley, which had been playing football for 10 years, contacted the team to set up a Thanksgiving Day game; as the Stanford team was still organizing, a spring game was eventually agreed to.[1][4]
On March 19, 1892, the Stanford and California teams met to play at Haight Street Grounds in San Francisco. Stanford's team manager was future U.S. President Herbert Hoover; Hoover had printed 10,000 tickets for the game, but soon an overflow crowd forced Hoover to collect cash payment for admission.[1] As the game was about to begin, both teams realized that no one had brought a ball. An owner of a sporting goods store who was in attendance was dispatched on horseback to retrieve a ball and the game eventually started an hour late.[1]
Stanford employed some trick plays and scored the first three touchdowns of the game (touchdowns were worth 4 points at that time) and held on to upset the more experienced California team 14–10.[1][4]
Legacy
The next season, Whittemore wrote to legendary Yale coach Walter Camp asking him to recommend a coach for Stanford; to Whittemore's surprise, Camp agreed to coach the team himself, on the condition that he coach the season at Yale first.[1]
