| Year: | 1940 |
| Team: | Idaho Vandals |
| Sport: | football |
| Conference: | Pacific Coast Conference |
| Short Conf: | PCC |
| Record: | 1–7–1 |
| Conf Record: | 0–4 |
| Head Coach: | Ted Bank |
| Hc Year: | 6th |
| Stadium: | Neale Stadium |
The 1940 Idaho Vandals football team represented the University of Idaho in the 1940 college football season. The Vandals were led by sixth-year head coach Ted Bank, and were members of the Pacific Coast Conference.
Idaho was ranked at No. 186 (out of 697 college football teams) in the final rankings under the Litkenhous Difference by Score system for 1940.[1]
Home games were played on campus in Moscow at Neale Stadium, with one game in Boise at Public School Field.
The Vandals were overall and lost all four conference games. They did not play any of the four teams from California or the Oregon Webfoots. In the Battle of the Palouse with neighbor Washington State, the Vandals suffered a thirteenth straight loss, falling at homecoming in Moscow on Idaho's most recent win in the series was a fifteen years earlier in 1925 and the next was fourteen years away in 1954.
A week later, Idaho continued its rare three-year losing streak to Montana in the Little Brown Stein rivalry with a ten-point loss at Missoula.[2] It improved the Grizzlies' record against the Vandals to .[3] While Montana was in the PCC (through 1949), the loser of the game was frequently last in the conference standings. This was the seventh game of the season, and the first in which Idaho scored.
Bank was relieved of his coaching duties in January 1941,[4] [5] [6] [7] succeeded by Francis Schmidt of Ohio State.[8]
No Vandals were named to the All-Coast team; honorable mention were end Chace Anderson, tackle Glenn Rathbun, and guard Len Zenkevitch.[9] [10] [11]