The 1890s were a chaotic time for interhall football at Notre Dame. Dozens of secondary, tertiary, club, picked, and departmental teams sprang up across campus. They roamed free, playing whoever, and whenever they wanted. Then they would disband as quickly as they had formed. This makes judging whether a particular interhall game should be counted for the record books, exceedingly difficult. There are three rules (with limited exceptions) for a campus game to be considered a recognized interhall football match.

1. Both teams must represent a different hall.

2. Both teams must represent every student within that hall.

3. Both teams must represent the first, dominant, or primary team of their hall.

One notable exception to these rules is the Off-Campus team, which represents all of the students who do not live in an undergraduate residence hall at Notre Dame. However, if you consider those off-campus students as a "hall", then all three rules still apply.

In 1894, twelve interhall football games were recorded, yet none of them met all three requirements. Three of the games failed rule No. 1; they were intra-hall matchups between two teams that lived in the same hall. Six failed rule No. 3; one or both of the teams were not considered a primary hall representative.

The last three games were played between the Carroll Specials and the Ex-Carrollites of Brownson Hall. The Specials met all three requirements by representing all of Carroll Hall as its dominant team. The Ex-Carrollites met rules 1 and 3 as the primary team of Brownson, but they cannot be recognized as a match team because they only represented the Brownson students who had been alums of Carroll Hall.