Our First Undefeated Season: 1899

Photo of 1899 football team from the 1900 Makio yearbook.

We have had several undefeated seasons over the last 125 years, and here is a look at our first. In 1899, the Buckeyes were coached by John Eckstorm, who was from Minnesota and went to college at Dartmouth. Eckstorm was familiar with football from his east coast Ivy League background. He was a great coach, but he only served the Buckeyes for three seasons: 1899 - 1901. He earned us our first undefeated season in 1899 and our first non-loss to Michigan in 1900 (a scoreless tie).

Back then, we were not in a conference and played other Ohio schools, like Case, Oberlin and Marietta. We had a good team, but the game was different in those days and Ohio State was certainly not a powerful program. There was no forward pass yet, so most plays involved pitches, options and various other runs and laterals. Play was more brutal, with minimal pads, leather helmets, and dangerous plays like pile-ups and wedges. Old footage from a Princeton-Yale game in 1903 can give you an idea of how football looked at the turn of the century.

We played our home games at Ohio Field back then (which was an upgrade from Recreation Park), until we got enough fans to justify building Ohio Stadium in the early 1920's. The evolution of football at OSU can be seen in the roster: our original 1890 team had 14 total players; by 1899 we had 32 players. This was coach Eckstorm's first year with the Buckeyes, who had a 31-40-4 record since 1890. Eckstorm encouraged the players to practice in the off season and kept them in good shape. He took coaching very seriously and found instant success, leading Ohio State to an undefeated season. The only points scored against the Buckeyes in 1899 came from Case School of Applied Science, in a game that ended in a 5-5 tie. Almost a perfect season.

Here was our starting roster:

Quarterback: Paul Hardy

Center: John Sigrist

Right tackle: Charles Sigrist

Left tackles: D.B. "Del" Sayers (captain) and Sherman Fay

Right guard: Josephus Tilton

Left guard: Homer Wharton

Right ends: Loren Poole and Erastus Lloyd

Left ends: Scott and Huddleson

Halfbacks: James Westwater, C. R. Wilson, Benjamin Yost and Hager

Fullback: James Kittle

I have not been able to unearth much about the lives of these players, but what I have found, I will share:

Homer Wharton was a graduate student in law school at Ohio State who had completed his bachelor's degree at Muskingom College, where he was quite the violinist. Captain Del Sayers was also a pitcher on the Buckeye baseball team. Sayers and John Sigrist were also members of the McKinley Club while at OSU. This was a political club supporting President McKinley, who was assassinated in 1901. President McKinley was one of several Ohioans to become U.S. Presidents, but I digress.

John and Charles Sigrist were brothers. Tragically, during the 1901 season, John Sigrist died of injuries suffered during a game against Western Reserve. His death cast doubt on the future of football at Ohio State. James Kittle, an Engineering major, joined the Ohio Malleable Iron Company, where he had a successful career. Erastus Lloyd went on to become a lawyer, judge and state senator. He died in 1948.

We tied Michigan the next year and again in 1910 but wouldn't actually beat them until 1919. The Buckeyes of Ohio State now have 10 undefeated seasons on record, including 6 perfect seasons (with no ties). Those in recent memory are, of course, the 14-0 National Championship season of 2002 and Urban Meyer's debut as head coach in 2012, when we went 12-0.