Game of the Year of the Day, 1906: Chicago 63, Illinois 0

The date: November 17, 1906

The matchup: Chicago (2-1) vs. Illinois (0-2-1)

My second book, The 50 Best* College Football Teams of All Time, came out in March. The title is a misdirection — it’s not about the best teams; it’s about college football at its best and most interesting.

Over the coming weeks, we’re going to take a look at some of the biggest games from these 50 best* teams.

Rose Bowl breakthroughs

1924 Notre Dame, 1925 Alabama, 1931 USC, 1993 Wisconsin, 2004 Texas

Offensive innovation

1906 Chicago, 1943 Iowa Pre-Flight, 1968 Texas, 1991 Florida, 2007 Oregon

Dramatic seasons

1960 Iowa, 1965 UCLA, 1978 Missouri, 1982 Pitt, 2013 Auburn

Star power

1923 Illinois, 1938 TCU, 1980 Georgia, 1984 Boston College, 1999 Virginia Tech

On the rise

1951 Michigan State, 1962 Nebraska, 1970 Alabama, 1981 Florida State, 2002 USC

Mid-majors

1930 Utah, 1970 Dartmouth, 1972 Tampa, 1974 Miami (Ohio), 2010 Boise State

Greatness denied

1941 Northwestern, 1968 Purdue, 1973 Michigan, 1988 Miami, 1990 Virginia, 1998 Ohio State

Incredible defense

1938 Tennessee, 1957 Auburn, 1959 Ole Miss, 1985 Oklahoma, 1993 Texas A&M, 2011 LSU

Perfection

1917 Georgia Tech, 1940 Minnesota, 1945 Army, 1947 Notre Dame, 1955 Oklahoma, 1959 Syracuse, 1991 Washington

The stakes: In-state bragging rights, basically.

The back story: The 1906 season was college football’s first after the legalization of the forward pass, and Amos Alonzo Stagg was one of the first coaches to truly embrace it.

After easy wins over Purdue and Indiana to start the season, Stagg intended to deploy his newly-conceived passing game in the game of the year against Minnesota on November 10. Only, the weather forbade it. It was cold and wet and sloppy, and Chicago lost an old-school slop fest, 4-2.

The next week, then, became Stagg’s first opportunity to show off his offense. And Illinois was the innocent bystander.

The game:

Chicago Finds Illinois Easy

Stagg's Eleven Simply Annihilates Team of Sucker State University.

CHICAGO, Nov. 17 -- Chicago's football eleven gave Illinois the worst drubbing it ever received this afternoon, the Maroons running up 62 points and keeping Illinois from crosing their own goal line on the one lonesome chance the State institution players had to score. Ten touchdowns were made by Chicago, nine of the goals being kicked, while Eckersall helped along the slaughter by dropping a field goal from the 20-yard line.

Illinois, badly crippled from the absence of Captain Carrithers, and with a number of other players in poor condition, sent in substitute after substitute as the regular men were injured or exhausted, but could not stop the scoring, and in the latter part of the second half the game was almost a farce. Chicago used the forward pass a dozen times, generally with success.

The box score: This was evidently too far back for box scores. You can find newspapers that listed the lineup, but that’s about it.

For more on Stagg, start here.