The 1896 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing
Lafayette and
Princeton as having been selected
national champions.[1] Lafayette finished with an 11–0–1 record while Princeton had a 10–0–1 record. In the second game of the season for both teams, Lafayette and Princeton played to a scoreless tie. Both teams had signature wins: Lafayette defeated Penn 6–4, giving the Quakers their only loss of the season, while Princeton defeated previously unbeaten Yale, 24–6, on Thanksgiving Day in the last game of the season. Princeton was retroactively named the 1896 national champions by the
Billingsley Report, the
Helms Athletic Foundation, the
Houlgate System, and Lafayette and Princeton were named national co-champions by the
National Championship Foundation and
Parke Davis.