efore we start looking at football in 1896, let’s review what was happening to the game at the time. The big eastern schools were divided into two factions, created by controversy over using mass momentum and mass interference plays. One group, headed by Harvard and Penn, supported the use of the mass plays while another, lead by Yale and Princeton, opposed the concept, adopting new rules to outlaw it.

The result was chaos in 1895 as the sport saw two distinct sets of rules being used. What made the situation worse is that teams in other parts of the country started resenting that all the changes were being made in the East, and the schools in the "boonies," so to speak, had no say so. That resulted in even more variations of the football code! Football could not survive in this fashion, and all involved knew it. The two opposing sides decided to sit down and hash it out —  again — in the spring of 1896.

Continued...