The 1923 college football season saw several teams finish their seasons unbeaten and untied. As such, numerous schools claim a national championship for the 1923 season.
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.
Syracuse
beat Hobart 33–0.
October
October 6
Notre Dame beat Lombard College 14–0. Kansas defeated Creighton 6–0. California defeated Santa Clara 48–0. Following wins over the crews of USS Mississippi (33–0) and USS New York (42–7), Washington beat Willamette 54–0. Vanderbilt beat Howard 27–0. 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
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
Michigan beat Ohio State 23–0. Texas beat Vanderbilt 16–0. 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 27Cornell defeated Colgate 34–7.
Yale beat Brown 21–0 and Dartmouth beat Harvard 16–0
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. Vanderbilt defeated Tulane 17–0.
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 32–7.
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. Mississippi A&M tied Vanderbilt in the rain, 0–0.
beat Colby College 62–0, and
Cornell defeated Johns Hopkins 52–0. Yale closed a perfect season with a 13–0 win over Harvard.
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,
Notre Dame won at St. Louis 13–0. Vanderbilt beat Sewanee 7–0. Texas beat Texas A&M 6–0. Florida
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.[4] 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.[5]
Conference standings
Major conference standings
For this article, major conferences defined as those including multiple state flagship public universities.