The 1902 South Dakota Coyotes football team was an American football team that represented the University of South Dakota as an independent during the 1902 college football season. In its first season under head coach Arthur H. Whittemore, the team compiled a 9–0 record, shut out every opponent, and outscored them by a total of 204to 0.

The 1902 football season in South Dakota witnessed the death of Harry Jordan, a young man from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and led to the cancellation of games in that city.^[1] At the end of the season, an editorial was published in The Daily Argus-Leader from a correspondent in Britton, South Dakota, proposing a bill "to abolish football within the precincts of South Dakota." The appeal was based on the loss of life and "mutilation" during the prior football season, the loss of study time, and the game's tendency to promote "immorality", including betting, rioting, debauchery, and "the refinement of cruelty, needless senseless cruelty." The author denounced: "That so savage and barbarious a game can meet with the approvaal of Christian educators and ministers of the gospel in the year of our Lord 1902 is one of the amazing exhibitions of the century."^[2]

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