However, Harvard was retroactively named as the national champion by the Helms Athletic Foundation and the Houlgate System, and as a co-national champion by the College Football Researchers Association, National Championship Foundation, and Parke H. Davis.

[4] Harvard halfback Eddie Casey was selected as consensus first-team player on the 1919 All-America team.

[6] Other notable players on the 1919 team included backs Arnold Horween and Frederic Cameron Church Jr. and linemen Tom Woods, Charles Arthur "Tubby" Clark and Robert "Duke" Sedgwick.

Varsity football was discontinued during the war years of 1917 and 1918, though the school did field an "informal" team.

[9] Harvard's victory in the 1920 Rose Bowl has been called "the high-water mark" in program history, as athletics were deemphasized in the 1920s and thereafter.