1896 Princeton Tigers football team

1896 Princeton Tigers football
National champion (Billingsley, Helms, Houlgate)
Co-national champion (NCF, Davis)
ConferenceIndependent
Record10–0–1
Head coach
CaptainGarrett Cochran
Seasons
← 1895
1897 →
1896 Eastern college football independents records
Conf Overall
Team W   L   T W   L   T
Fordham     1 0 0
Lafayette     11 0 1
Princeton     10 0 1
Washington & Jefferson     8 0 1
Penn     14 1 0
Yale     13 1 0
Pittsburgh College     11 2 0
Buffalo     9 1 2
Villanova     10 4 0
Bucknell     5 2 1
Harvard     7 4 0
Boston College     5 3 0
Storrs     5 3 0
Cornell     5 3 1
Syracuse     5 3 2
Temple     3 2 0
Army     3 2 1
Rutgers     6 6 0
Carlisle     5 5 0
Holy Cross     2 2 2
Brown     4 5 1
Wesleyan     4 5 1
Frankin & Marshall     3 4 2
Geneva     3 4 0
Penn State     3 4 0
Colgate     3 4 1
Amherst     3 6 1
Western Univ. Penn.     3 6 0
Lehigh     2 5 0
Tufts     2 6 1
Swarthmore     2 6 0
New Hampshire     1 4 0
Drexel     1 5 0
Massachusetts     0 4 0
Rhode Island     0 4 0

The 1896 Princeton Tigers football team was an American football team that represented Princeton University as an independent during the 1896 college football season. The team finished with a 10–0–1 record, shut out 10 of 12 opponents, and outscored all opponents by a total of 266 to 5.[1] Franklin Morse was the head coach, and Garrett Cochran was the team captain.

There was no contemporaneous system in 1896 for determining a national champion. However, Princeton was retroactively named as the national champion by the Billingsley Report, Helms Athletic Foundation, and Houlgate System, and as a co-national champion with Lafayette by the National Championship Foundation (NCF) and Parke H. Davis.[2] In head-to-head competition, Princeton and Lafayette played to a scoreless tie on October 7, 1896.[3]

Four Princeton players were selected as consensus first-team players on the 1896 All-America team: halfback Addison Kelly; fullback John Baird; center Robert Gailey; and tackle William W. Church.[4] Other notable players included quarterback F. L. Smith, halfback William Bannard, end Garrett Cochran, and guard Edward Crowdis.

  1. ^ "1896 Princeton Tigers Schedule and Results". SR/College Football. Sports Reference LLC. Retrieved February 27, 2017.
  2. ^ National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) (2015). "National Poll Rankings" (PDF). NCAA Division I Football Records. NCAA. p. 107. Retrieved January 4, 2016.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference laf was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ "Football Award Winners" (PDF). National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). 2016. p. 6. Retrieved October 21, 2017.