Though his goal was to produce winning teams, mounting injuries and intensifying criticism of the game fueled demands for its abolition and pressured Reid into a leadership role in the momentous 1906 rule changes which defused this threat.
In football, he started at fullback his sophomore year and scored two touchdowns in Harvard's momentous 1898 victory over Yale, its first since the initial meeting of the teams in 1875.
Afterwards, Reid accepted a teaching position at his father's school in order to provide financial support for his wife and family.
Several articles in major magazines complained about the rising number of injuries, the huge amounts of money pouring into the game, and widespread recruiting abuses.
By October, President Theodore Roosevelt was sufficiently concerned about these criticisms that he summoned the coaches of the big three—Harvard, Yale, and Princeton—to a White House discussion of the situation and insisted that they sign an accord "to carry out in letter and in spirit the rules of the game."
Deciding that he needed to act, Reid gathered several supporters and drafted a public release to newspapers advocating that current rules of football be radically changed.
When a Harvard player fielded a punt, he was immediately hit high and low by two Yale tacklers, and fans attending the Cambridge event thought a penalty should have been called for unnecessary roughness.
[5] The pair roughed out a strategy whereby Reid would meet with Harvard colleagues to complete a set of new rules and Roosevelt would pressure Dashiell into supporting them.
This strategy was successfully implemented at a momentous, unanticipated amalgamation of the IFA and the fledgling alternative, a consolidation that originated today's NCAA.
[1] Harvard's Board of Overseers, strongly influenced by President Eliot, supported Reid's agenda with a vote to abolish its football team unless major reform was achieved.