The 1896 Michigan Wolverines football team represented the University of Michigan in the 1896 college football season. They played their home games at Regents Field in Ann Arbor, Michigan and competed in the newly-established Western Conference, later to be known as the Big Ten Conference. The team, with William Ward as head coach, started the season with nine consecutive wins in which the Wolverines outscored their opponents by a combined score of 256 to 4. In the final game of the season, played on Thanksgiving Day at the Chicago Coliseum, the team lost a close game to Amos Alonzo Stagg's University of Chicago team by a score of 7–6. The 1896 Michigan–Chicago game was the first college football game played indoors, and the last portion of the game was also played under electric lights. H