1889 College Football All-America Team

The 1889 College Football All-America team was the first College Football All-America Team. The team was selected by Caspar Whitney and published in This Week's Sports.^[1]

The team selected by Whitney in 1889 marked the origin of the "All-America" teams that have since been picked in many collegiate sports. All eleven members of the 1889 All-America team played for either Harvard, Princeton, or Yale, then known as the "Big Three" of college football. Some sources indicate that Walter Camp assisted Whitney with the selection of the 1889 All-American team, while others indicate that Camp did not become involved in the selection process until some time in the 1890s.

The first All-America team included Amos Alonzo Stagg (then a player for Yale), Pudge Heffelfinger (who later became the first professional football player), "Snake" Ames (who set a college scoring record with 730 points), Edgar Allan Poe (second cousin, twice removed of the writer of the same name), Arthur Cumnock (described as the greatest Harvard football player of all time in 1913), and Roscoe Channing (who later served with Theodore Roosevelt in the Rough Riders).