Football History

Michigan Wolverines football is more than just a sport; it's a tapestry of traditions passed down through generations, binding fans together in a vibrant maize and blue brotherhood. From pre-game rituals to iconic songs, these traditions create a uniquely electric atmosphere in the Big House and beyond.

Touching the Victors Banner: Before every home game, players file past a bronze bust of Fielding H. Yost, the program's legendary coach, and touch the Victors banner hanging above. This simple act symbolizes their connection to Michigan's rich history and inspires them to carry on the Wolverines' legacy.

The 'Go Blue' Chant: Throughout the game, Michigan Stadium pulsates with the rhythmic chant of "Go Blue!" rising from over 100,000 throats. This unwavering show of support creates an intimidating atmosphere for opponents and a sense of shared fervor for fans.

Hail to the Victors: No Michigan game is complete without the iconic fight song, "Hail to the Victors." Written in 1902, this beloved anthem is sung with gusto by players, coaches, and fans alike, celebrating victories and uniting generations of Wolverines in a shared chant.

The Yost Ice Breather: On cold autumn Saturdays, a brave student volunteer takes a plunge into the icy waters of the Yost Ice Arena fountain during halftime. This tradition, dating back to the 1930s, tests the mettle of the chosen "ice breather" and fuels the crowd's energy with a dose of playful daredevilry.

The Wave: In moments of lopsided victories, the Michigan Stadium crowd erupts in a synchronized wave that rolls around the stands, a physical manifestation of the collective spirit and playful camaraderie that define the Wolverines' faithful.

These traditions are just a glimpse into the vibrant tapestry of Michigan football lore. From pre-game rituals to post-game celebrations, they bind fans together, fuel the team's spirit, and ensure that every game day in the Big House is an unforgettable experience. Whether you're a die-hard Wolverine or a casual observer, the Michigan Wolverines' traditions offer a glimpse into the soul of a program that has captivated generations with its passion, history, and enduring legacy.

---

The Big House, as Michigan Stadium is affectionately known, has witnessed countless gridiron epics since its opening in 1927. Here are some of the biggest, most memorable football games played there:

-1942: Upsetting Notre Dame and Launching a Dynasty
With legendary coach Fritz Crisler at the helm and Tom Harmon, the "Golden Tornado," throwing touchdown passes, Michigan faced undefeated Notre Dame under the glare of national attention. The Wolverines pulled off a 35-10 victory, securing their first national championship and launching a decade of dominance.

-1950: The Snow Bowl
Blistering snow and bone-chilling winds transformed the Big House into a winter wonderland for this showdown with Ohio State. With the score tied 3-3 late in the fourth quarter, Willie Heston's iconic touchdown run through the blizzard secured a 9-3 victory and the Big Ten title for Michigan. The "Snow Bowl" stands as a testament to Wolverine resilience and the magic of college football's most unpredictable weather.

-1964: The Comeback in the Snow
Another snowy clash with the Buckeyes, this time with Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler on the sidelines. Trailing 10-0 in the third quarter, Michigan staged a furious comeback, capped by Jim Harbaugh's touchdown pass with 47 seconds left. The 10-10 tie preserved Michigan's undefeated season and cemented the rivalry's legendary intensity.

There are so many more to choose from with the rich history of this program!

---

Timothy P. Brown discusses the home playing fields of the Michigan Wolverines football teams. Regents Field, Ferry Field, and finally, yes, the Big House, Michigan Stadium opened by Fielding Yost in 1927.

Find out more about the den of the Wolverines and some rich history of the program and football itself.

Enjoy this presentation that airs weekly with conversations of football antiquity with Historian Timothy Brown of FootballArchaeology.com.

The general respect that Coach Yost paid to his players made them love him. His teams were ready as Dr,. Behe points out that there were four main reasons for his and his football teams' successes: Curiosity; Risk Taking; Preparation; and Charisma.

This book, Coach Yost: Michigan's Tradition Maker, has so much football history in it, and you can tell the passion by which its author speaks that you are in for one great football history lesson from this Pigskin Professor, Dr. John Behee.

His latest, after over 50 years of research is titled Coach Yost: Michigan's Tradition Maker. Dr. Behee achieved a degree in History and then furthered his education at the University of Michigan and even got to spend some time as a graduate assistant coach for the Wolverines during his stay there.

Fielding Yost and his later years in coaching and administration with biographer Dr. John Behee. Here is our transcript of this portion of our conversation:

We are going to learn more from Dr. Behee in just a moment. This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatches, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history on a daily basis.

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hays of pigskindispatch.com. Welcome once again to the pigpen, your portal to positive football history. And we're going to go into our recent conversation with Dr.

John Behee on his excellent book Coach Yost Michigan's Tradition Maker. You can find that book at behee.com. It's B-e-h-e-e .com. Dr. John has some great lines of communication to get you through some vendors that are selling this book.

That's outstanding. I read it is a must-read for football historians out there, especially lovers of early football and some of the brilliant minds of football, like coach Fielding Yost. So make sure you get that. In our conversation, we listened to the first parts of one and two, and if you haven't listened to either one of them yet or maybe one or the other, go back and listen to them because Dr.

Behee has such exciting insight into Coach Yost. Fielding Yost is a fascinating subject to discuss and read about, so ensure you do that. Earlier, we discussed part one of his early life and how he became a football lover, player, and early coach. Some of his early assignments as a coach, and then we got into part two, a little bit about his winning ways. He caught on and was winning right away. You got Stanford Michigan and just dominating teams that his team that Michigan played, and Stanford played, and he was really developing a good routine.

Well, now we're going to get into Dr. Behee's conversation on how Coach Yost motivated his players and made them truly one of the best teams in football history. And we'll get into that here. Here's Dr Beehe.

As I went through this research, I could see Coach Yost and his trainer, Keen Fitzpatrick, who was a world-class track coach. I could see them building the mental side of it as they went along.

When Yost started teaching skills, they were not going to be doing them correctly or perfectly at all, and they might get discouraged. You know how people can be their own worst enemies. They said to find their mistakes and beat themselves up for them.

And he would never let that happen. Never let it happen, and continue the belief that you are not only going to get it, you're going to get a form of better than anyone you play against. You will demonstrate to them how smart a guy you are and how tough you are.

I mean, eventually, he continually built that self-confidence trilogy. It was easy for people who played this game. There's a lot of point scoring here. I just gave you what they did in 1901 and 1905; they had swagger.

They were so dominating that they could see the opponents as they began to crack and collapse, even in the really big games. But they they knew eventually, they would break the will of the opponents. They were so bright because they were conditioned mentally by Yost and by Team Fitzpatrick.

Now, here's another one. I'm going to get to the one you asked about here. But anyway, rules knowledge. Rules knowledge! Now, you did some officiating for about 27 years. Yes, sir. And did you witness any examples of students or athletes who did not seem to know the rules and, therefore, suffered a penalty because of it?

No, absolutely. There's a lot of – I found it very interesting that Coach Yost taught them the rule because it probably would help almost every team out there at the high school and collegiate level, with the players knowing as well as the officials.

And it definitely helps the game go much smoother, and they can find advantages within the rules to gain over their opponents. Yeah, and so they never lost games because of a lack of knowledge of the rules.

I had a good battle that they got into the Big 10. You undoubtedly read that Michigan got bumped down to the Big 10 because they didn't want to buy some of the rules that have been put in place by the faculty.

So they've got to the east to find their opponents, and they play the pin, and the Yost is up on the rule and pin is not, and he tells the officials, and officials say, you know, Yos is correct, and then the pins say, then we're not going to play.

You can take the team and go home, but I can play, okay? And so the officials return to the ocean and say that's a big problem here. They are just not; they refused. If you say they cannot run that play that way, and I know you're right, they won't play.

Let's figure out a way to get the game going. And, so, Jospy Lynch. And they wanted to plan the games. But the point is that he knew the rules better than the officials, for God's sake. He talked to the players, and there's a fascinating photo of Coach Yosh, where they're meeting at the boarding house.

They're getting their food there. They have something there on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, five days. And I've got the page. I forgot what page it is. Anyway, I have all of the agenda.

One night, it was rules. So they had to come in with the written rules and quiz each other. And it had to be fast-paced. We move quickly, and the game moves quickly, so you have to make quick decisions correctly.

That's innovative coaching. When you know the rules quickly because you've rehearsed them, you're not going to make mistakes and give games away. And they didn't. Here's another one.

Cross-training. Now, that one got me. No player would know what position he was going to be playing. Because Joost said, you will play the position where you can help our team the most. I'm going to play quarterback. I'll do this and that because I will get a lot of ink.

They won't tell you that, but that's what they think. I'll feel a lot of pressure over that. No, that's not true. I'm a receiver. No, you are where you can help our team the most. We are, first and foremost, teams.

And the other thing that did was that you couldn't hurt them with an injury, and they were rarely injured. They were in outstanding physical condition, excellent in terms of training and mechanics, and they could play almost anywhere.

So if you hit, somebody went down, somebody else was in. And the other thing too, now this is not, one of the articles that I've read in the Michigan Daily that impressed me was talking about eligibility, and sometimes when I know that this was true with Stag at Chicago, he had some outstanding players, but he also had some players who refused to go to class.

They weren't dumbbells, they were just lazy guys, and they could get by with it because Stagg would go to the professors, and of course he had a president who would back him up on anything he wanted to do, including getting faculty members to give people grades.

It's because we gotta have a football team that represents Chicago well. When that whole thing was coming up and being discussed in papers and in admission, The faculty athletic representative at Michigan said, I can't remember once when Yos had a player who had conditions and had to work them off before he got back to play.

I cannot remember when he came and said you got to give him a better grade. He took the players that were available and played with them every single time. and the guys who were not academically eligible set out until they got their conditions worked off and get back into play.

That's remarkable. That is quite a testament to the coach, that's for sure. Yeah. Now you've got game participation. He was a perfectionist, my God. He knew more about what you wanted to do than you did if you were the opposing coach.

He knew your players better than you knew them, and he taught his players to analyze the opponents. Now, the coach is the only one who can make decisions around here. You guys have to know how tough it is for your guy to get over that.

What can we do? Do you need to double up on one guy? What do you do? What does he need to make them think and continue things? Of course, you received tremendous support from the paper and student paper at the rally.

4 ,000 students would come for a rally on a Friday night. It was a university hall at first and then became Hill Auditorium after that, when that structure was built. But they've run songs, cheers, and he would say all the right things to them.

He could hold that crowd of 4,000 students in the palm of his hand. If he were quiet, taking a measured speech, they would sit on the edge of their seats, waiting for the next word. I mean, he was a master of psychology.

Doctor, can I interject in here? You have a couple of things where you show where Yost is in some uncomfortable positions, and he makes some statements that are really quite remarkable. The one you were saying with the point-of-minute teams when they were on that great winning streak that they had, and this isn't verbatim what he said, but he basically said it wasn't his job to stop his team from performing at their peak, that was his opponent's job to do.

I found that to be interesting. I guess he was running up the score he was being questioned on. Yeah, and his whole point was that all this is good. It almost sounds like all I ask of you is everything. You know, you loved me for a lot of my life. You know, that sort of thing.

That's all I ask of you. That beautiful music from Phantom of the Opera. All I ask you, man, is that you give me 100% for every single play and practice in the game. That is all that I asked. So, the concept is that you cannot take the day off.

You can't take a playoff; I need you every single play. He started telling them this at the start of the season, during spring training and fall workouts. He started to tell them, we run people off the field.

In the Iowa game, let's see, this is 1901, 1902 I think it is, yeah, in December. Now they like to play the Michigan does, the final game in Chicago because you get a good crowd. So they're going to play Iowa there.

Iowa is going be the final games of the season. I think Chicago is about game number eight in that year. So, they are going to play in Iowa. Iowa has an excellent team. Michigan runs against Iowa in 217 plays.

I mean, it is just when you talk to me all if I'm going to if we're going to be the kind of team that I want you to be, he says we do not stop for people we call the play while we were unscrambling from the previous play so we know and I and the center have got to get right back where he can set the ball and anybody who's late getting back there is going to hold the whole team up you have to get back and get in the position we're going to go and go. It doesn't take very much for a team to; he's got them all stuck in the air on defense, and his team is going wild.

That whole concept of being able to play any position, being to play fast. What was your comment that brought this on that sparked me to go in this direction? What were you just saying about this?

Yeah, he says it wasn't his job to stop his team from performing at their peak and running up the score against somebody. That's his opponent's job, to start his teams from scoring. And yeah, because all I can do is coach my team, and you see how I'm coaching my team, we are going to go, go go.

And he's in practice at Michigan. He's got them going up and down the field doing single drills, and he is shouting, hurry up, come on. Hurry up. The students nicknamed him Fielding "Hurry Up" Yost.

They found a new initial for the H—a new word for the "h" in his little name. Yeah, and so then he loved it. He just, oh, it brings a smile from ear to ear for it to be called Hurry Up Yoast. And see, I'm trying to think where I was going to go next.

Anyway, see the concept of fast, fast play. Go ahead. Well, I wanted to mention another statement that he made sort of on the other end of things when he was sort -of in a sticky situation, uncomfortable situation.

You have in the rare cases that his Michigan team suffered a loss, you have them quoted as saying, if you lose, don't find excuses; just congratulate the winners and move on. That was a powerful message to his players.

And, yeah, and I've got a page in here where I just, there are so many hurry-ups, I didn't want to put them all in the book, but I set ones that were a pretty choice, and you read those, if you're a coach or if your person who's working with youth sports, you look at that and say, I want to use that.

My goodness, one of them was that we didn't have time to get even. So if there's been an unfair situation like the last play, forget that because the next play might be the one that wins the game for us. You hear that enough.

You learn to be thick-skinned. Words of wisdom, that is, too. We could all probably use that in all walks of life, not just football. Yeah, and then back to the coaching about the officiating, one of his career officers said, you have not been assigned to referee this game.

That's in someone else's hands. We have given you other assignments. You focus on yours. I'm thinking; I've seen so many people, the teams out there where they're trying to show the official East Holding Michigan, you know it said all that gets you is some of the disappointment of the officiating crew that you have to beg and beg for God's sakes play the game pal learn to play in the games.

No, I think I bet you that's probably where coach Bill Belichick and in our modern times gets it where he just tells his players to do their job. That is all you have to just do your job. Don't worry about anything else.

Just do your job." Yeah, and the other thing, too, that I feel this is a part of Coach Joe's success formula is that the respect he had for officials, I can tell because I've watched enough sports events, I can tell when a coach has an official who will not hurt him with his calls.

You can just tell it. And you can when they're homers. Sometimes, if it's blatant, you can't tell. When they are hovering for the basketball, they call it that. There's a guy who's got four on him, and out he goes, and the game goes to the other team.

I mean, I can see that stuff. He had such great rapport with the officials that they were proud to cook to officiate his games. And he had enormous respect for the game. Did you see some examples and the coach's book where he kind of got hosed at the time by people?

They go so fast. His team does. The only way we can stop him is to fake injury. So we do that. And so then he stuck. But there are a couple of really good examples of that that I show in the book. And what did he do?

Okay, all right. Iowa went back when he was in Kansas. And so they're fending injury, and then finally, they show up late for the game. It's an afternoon game, so you're out of daylight, and they know they are going to go fast, so he has to argue every play to coach this for Iowa, has to argue every play, and delay, delay, and finally comes out at the end of the game, they all says it's too dark, Kansas is going to go back ahead, or not Kansas, I forgot, maybe Nebraska, they're going have a chance to go ahead in the games, so he comes up and says, it was too dark we've got to quit, quit.

The Yost team got the short end of a stick there in several ways throughout the game. He shakes hands and goes home. He is not going to do anything that would bring discredit to the game; he is going to preach clean football, and when it's over, it is over.

That is a lesson that we can all learn from, I think. And I think it's a good time to bring up another point that you make; you say multiple times in the book that in all those years of coaching, he never once said a curse word at a game or practice.

And that's unbelievable for what he was teaching and these men that are aggressive and doing aggressive actions and probably did some things that he didn't like and never to have a poor choice of words that would offend anybody.

I thought that was a remarkable attribute of Coach Yost. He's really a classy guy. A braggart, my God, yes, and he just beat you to death because he's so much better than you are. You don't even get a chance to lick your wounds; he is already getting press releases.

So there are a lot of reasons to not like the guy, but no cuss words. In the 26 years I've been on coaching programs where, I don't think the guys could go 26 minutes without coaching. And their feeling is that this is a part of the way you inspire athletes to do something difficult.

Well, I know some coaches who can't go 26 words without saying a curse word. Jared, you got it right. So that's a remarkable, remarkable record. No one keeps records like that. And then also drinking.

He was a teetotaler without questions the whole time. Interesting guy and very remarkable. Okay, now before I let you go, I want you to tell me in your own words you've written a biography on this man twice, so you were the foremost expert, I think, on Fielding Yost that is around, that's ever been probably, besides Field in Yos himself.

So what is maybe the one quality? Could you just say one thing about Coach to somebody to sort of sum him up? What would that be? Or one story, you know, however, you want to sum it up? First of all, he was a perfectionist.

He left nothing to chance that he could influence in a positive way. He was remarkably flexible in his approach to the game while people would come up with an offense that someone was doing really, especially some of the East, Harvard, and Yale, that they were doing very well.

And then they just copied that. He didn't copy anybody. He was as innovative as they come. Looking back over 29 years of coaching, four major traits, calm strengths that we will can be seen in Coach Yost.

They seem to be replicated in most high achievers in many different occupations. First, curiosity. Yost had an insatiable desire to learn. It drove him from a country schoolhouse to a law degree. From the East Coast to the far West, a trip he would eventually take 20 times from his father's outfitting supply store to a deep understanding of mineral exploration.

From preparing a young team for a football game to building a program that would produce national champions. He never stopped thinking and learning. Second, risk-taking. As a college athlete, Yost chose to test his athletic and mental skills against the best.

He made mistakes, learned from them. And incidentally, that's why risk -taking is so important to high achievers. because you then learn how to handle defeat and come back in a different way, learning, having learned more, and overcome the the loss.

He chose an occupation, the hunt for veins of minerals, a business fraught with risk. Then he said about to learn enough to turn risk into profit. And setting a schedule at Michigan, he loved the high stakes big games.

Third, preparation. He learned that his success was coarsely aligned with the thoroughness of his preparation. Fourth is charisma. Back in 1970, when Vinnie Ustrand, Michigan's great, great all-American, read my manuscript of the Oost, the host and his coach.

I asked him, what was it about Coach Yost that you were most impressed with? He did not hesitate. He said when Coach Yost entered the room, he had a commanding presence. He had charisma. When he put pen to paper, he made his ideas clear and convincing.

His self-assurance moved our teams from We should do it; we can do it in practice to We will do it by game time. Looking back on Coach Yost, he gave evidence of that leadership quality even in those early coaching years.

I don't think I'm reading this now correctly. I am getting a little bit of an error here. And then, of course, well, I think that's it: curiosity, risk-taking, preparation, charisma. Wow. That is really some great wisdom for coaching in any sport in an era that could be very valuable to anybody out there.

And I thank Coach Yost for sort of learning that on the fly in from some great people that he was around, and you know his great networking ability, and I'm going to get on my soapbox here for a little bit because you doctor your book is so filled with information about Coach Yost, but at the same time it preserves such a great period in football history, and there there are so many little stories and tangents that we could have gone on in this conversation, and I think I'll save that for your readers to get a copy of the book and get this and once again you can get that it's called Coach Yost Michigan's tradition maker behe .com and he's got some information here where you can go to, and you'll learn all these little stories and the ins and outs not only about Coach Jost but some of the other aspects of football it goes into a lot with you know like Coach Amos Alonzo's stag and some rivalry he had with there.

There are so many little stories that I'm going to treasure and probably read again here real soon because it's just such a fascinating book, and the readers will find that excessively satisfying to their football appetite as I have.

And just one of those books is great. And Dr. Behee, I appreciate you coming on here and sharing with us this incredible story of Dr. Jocelyn for sharing and writing this second book to give us this information on this great man in football history and preserving the football industry.

So thank you, sir. You're welcome, and Darin, thank you for having me. And if we get some conversations going later on, you and I, there were some exciting things we need to discuss. First of all, in that 1903 game, We had one of our students in Michigan who was really good at telegraphy; the telephone company built him a 40-foot tower near the 55-yard line, which was Midfield, and he sent back information to the students gathered at the university in the hall, so they had ten telephones.

Well, anyway, it was very interesting how they got some play-by-play in 1903. And then we got sophisticated enough. One of the Ohio State faculty fellows in the 1910s and 15s came up with a grid grab.

It was a big football clock. It had all kinds of information on it, like the game, you know, the scoreboards today. And that thing—we didn't have about 4,000 students sitting there watching that game.

They couldn't get up to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to play, to see the game, so there were a number of things there that I think were really interesting that would surprise people who did not know what those innovations were.

We will have you on again. And we can do some other things for your listeners. Okay, I find that they gotta get your book. That's for sure. That's for Sure, Dr.

Thank you again, and we will talk to you again soon. I'll get you on another podcast here. Thanks.

Thanks, Darren. That was a great conversation.

We have Dr. John Behee, a great biographer, writing about Coach Yost, Michigan's tradition makers, the book's name for the second time. You can get it at behe .com, B -E -H- E -DOT -COM. You could look for the links here in the show notes or go to pigskindispatch.com for any one of the three parts that we've had with Dr. John Behee talking about his Coach Yost book. A great coach, part of football history, and some of the traditions that Michigan has been carried on through all, even to this day, some a hundred-odd years later. So, it was a great book and a great conversation. Thank you Dr. Behee.

---

Despite what people may have thought of him as a politician and President of the United States, Gerald Ford had great integrity and discipline. Perhaps this quality never shined as brightly as it did when he was the Michigan Wolverine's football team captain.

Timothy P. Brown joins us to tell the tale of the student having more integrity and conviction than the institution he played for.

Tim's original post can be found at Michigan Football, Gerald Ford, and Idealism.

-Transcription of Gerald Ford's Inegritty with Timothy Brown

Hey, it's Tuesday, and we have Tim Brown. Now, Tim, welcome to The Pigpen.

Hey, Darin.

Thank you much. Always, I look forward to my Tuesday evenings and sharing football time with you. Yeah, it's a great time and we have, you know, a great story this evening to share with everybody.

This is one that's, you know, it's almost 100 years old, but it's really pertinent to today's social environment that's going on around the world. And it's also about a former president. And I will let you set that up for you to take hold then.

Yeah. So, you know, this is one where I, you know, I guess the story is I kind of rag on the University of Michigan. And it's not so much them specifically, although this incident did involve them, certainly.

There were lots of people at fault here, you know. So this is, it's just, they're an example. And, you know, for a university, I think typically is, you know, reasonably stand up, you know, group of folks.

But so the whole thing here is it's about, you know, standing up for one principle, but not another. This occurred in 1934 when Jerry Ford was a senior and the captain of Michigan's football team, you know, played center. And so, and they were national champs in 33 and 34.

So, you know, this is, they were big time stuff. They enter the season though, and they lose to Michigan State, which is not a good thing. And then they, and they didn't even score.

They play the next week, and they play Chicago. They lose, and they don't score. So, in the third week of the season, they're playing Georgia Tech. And again, you know, at that point, there weren't a lot of intersectional games, but you know, this is one.

And so, but at the time, Georgia Tech had a rule in place that they did not play games against teams that had black players. Michigan had one black player, and his name was Willis Ward, who, it turned out, was Gerald Ford's good friend. So Ford and Ward were buddies and, you know, and they were both starters for the football team.

And so there was going to be, there was controversy, and this happened all the time when Northern teams were going to play Southern teams and Southern, that borderline, you know, moved about a bit, you know, so Missouri was, you know, didn't, didn't play, you know, teams with black players and there were others, you know, Kansas. As the week progressed, it became apparent that Michigan was not going to play Willis Ward. And so, you know, Gerald Ford is looking at it saying, look, I'm the captain of this team, and this is my teammate, and he's a friend.

If we're not going to play Willis Ward, then I'm not going to play either. So he goes into the, into the coach's office, Harry Kipke at the time, and he told him he was quitting the team and it was because of that specific issue. So, you know, he leaves and everything, and then kind of word gets around what's happening and this Willis Ward basically asked Ford to go ahead and play.

You know, he didn't want, you know, I mean, it, you know, it was a very noble gesture on his part, but he wanted, he didn't want the rest of his teammates to be hurt and Jerry Ford to be hurt because of this policy and the decision that the university administration made. So anyways, it turns out then that they, you know, Ford plays, and he was apparently rather fired up for the game, and they beat Georgia Tech 9-2. And it turned out to be Michigan's only win of the year.

You know, they lost the first two, they beat Georgia Tech, and then they lost the rest of the game of their season. So that's, you know, there's kind of that, but so the standing, you know, they didn't stand up for one principle. And then there was a little bit later in the year when Michigan's athletic department learned that there was somebody out there who was basically making bootleg programs.

So they would, you know, use last week's program or whatever names and numbers of all the players. And, you know, they'd sell programs outside the stadium, and Michigan didn't want to lose that money. So they notified these people that they were copywriting the rosters and player numbers so that they could potentially, you know, go after them, you know, from a copyright infringement standpoint, which apparently, you know, led to them stopping selling programs.

So, you know, on the one hand, hey, Michigan has certainly had the right to do that. But, you know, they're chasing this money-oriented issue and out of, well, somewhat out of principle, but they didn't follow up on a more important principle earlier in the year. So it's just, you know, it's an example of just people being kind of two-faced, saying one thing, doing another, you know, that kind of thing.

And so, and the other side of it is, I mean, the broader theme is, you know, a lot of times we, people kind of, you know, if you're out of college and you've been working for a while and you've seen the world and you're one, you know, you have that kind of an attitude, it's easy to take this perspective that these idealistic college students are just, you know, kind of don't know what they're talking about. They haven't really been out there. And yet here's one where this college kid named Gerald Ford was far wiser than these administrators, whether it was Fielding Yost, the AD, or whomever it was at the time.

He demonstrated a hell of a lot more wisdom than his supposed elders, who were supposed to teach him something at the university. So that's just a bit, you know. But another thing that I take from that is, you know, you have, here you have the only man that served as president that was not elected some 40 years later, you know, or 40 years earlier, had the integrity as a teenager, probably, or early 20s to stand up for the rights of somebody else and, you know, make a, you know, sacrifice himself to do so.

And that gives me a whole new respect for Gerald Ford. Not that I disrespected him before, but that's quite a testament to his fortitude over his lifetime. So.

Yeah. And I think, you know, generally, you agree, disagree with him on political issues and things like that. I think most people felt, you know, he was an honorable man, right?

And he kind of played fair and square and all those kinds of things. And so, you know, this is just an early illustration, like you said, of him, of him doing that, you know, basically is what, what was he, 21 or 22 or something like that at the time. Yeah.

If we only had honest politicians like that these days, it's a better place. Don't go hoping for things you're never going to get. That's true.

That's true. Tim, you know, that's one of your great tidbits from back in February. And if you would, if you could share with the audience where they, too, could learn your tidbits on a daily basis?

Yeah. So, you know, you can find me on my website, footballarchaeology.com. I use the same name on Twitter. It's not the com part, just football archaeology.

So, you know, if you want to follow me on either, either mechanism, do so. And you can subscribe on football archaeology and that, you know, gets an email into your inbox every night. And then, you know, I've got a couple of books out there.

If you like the kind of stuff I write about, then you can find those on Amazon and most of the other, you know, major platforms. Okay. And on Amazon, they want to search under your full name, Timothy P. Brown.

Yeah. Timothy P. Brown or, or look for, you know, one of my book titles, like How Football Became Football. And you'll, if you search for that, you'll, it'll pop up this first thing that shows up.

And I can highly recommend, you know, the books too, because they are some great pieces of work and you learn a lot from them as a football, a person interested in football history. So I recommend those. So Tim Brown, thank you very much from footballarchaeology.com. And we will talk to you again next Tuesday.

Very good, sir. Look forward to it. Thanks.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

---

Bennie Oosterbaan's name is synonymous with excellence at the University of Michigan. Not only was he a legendary player, but he also went on to coach the Wolverines to glory. To understand Oosterbaan's impact, we must explore both facets of his football career.

On the field, Oosterbaan was a force to be reckoned with. Ultimately, he led the Big Ten in scoring in 1925, showcasing his offensive prowess. He earned three All-American selections and established himself as a critical contributor to Michigan's success, playing alongside another legend, quarterback Benny Friedman. Oosterbaan's athleticism was wider than football. He was a three-time letterman in basketball, leading the Big Ten in scoring in 1928, and a talented baseball player, leading the conference in batting average the same year. This versatility solidified his reputation as one of the most gifted athletes in college sports history.

After graduation, Oosterbaan chose to stay at Michigan, not as a player, but as a coach. He began his journey as an assistant, learning the ropes under the legendary Fritz Crisler. Oosterbaan's dedication and strategic mind were evident. In 1948, he was tasked with succeeding Crisler, who had just led Michigan to an undefeated season and a national championship.

Oosterbaan's debut as head coach was nothing short of spectacular. He led the 1948 team, known as the "Goofus Galore" squad, to another undefeated season and a national championship. He became the only coach in NCAA history to achieve this feat in his first year. He built a successful coaching career, winning three Big Ten titles and finishing in the top 20 in the polls most years.

However, Oosterbaan was known for more than wins and losses. He emphasized discipline, sportsmanship, and character development in his players. His quiet leadership style, emphasizing "poise" over yelling and screaming, earned him the respect and loyalty of his teams. He believed in his players and empowered them to excel on and off the field.

Bennie Oosterbaan's legacy extends far beyond wins and championships. He is a symbol of dedication, athletic prowess, and exceptional leadership. He was a role model for generations of players and coaches, proving that success can be achieved through hard work, humility, and a genuine love for the game. His name will forever be etched in the annals of Michigan football history as a true legend.

---

Take a trip back through Blue and Maise's history through the collection of author Ken Magee and others. The book title of Michigan Football Programs and Ticket Guide, along with some expertly written snippets for each, tells the tale of Michigan Wolverine history.

The Big Ten Conference Football Championship game is a must-see on many fans of college football's annual watch lists. The schools' traditions and football programs are almost as old as the game itself. These title games had to start somewhere, and in this edition, we peek back into a post our guest Tim Brown wrote a while back on the inaugural Big 10 Championship game titled The Big Ten's First Conference Championship Game (in 1931) .

-1931 Big Ten season, I can share some interesting facts:

-There were no true "champions" that year, as three teams, Minnesota, Michigan, and Northwestern, shared the title after ending with identical conference records (5-1).

-Purdue boasted the best overall record (9-1), but their lone conference loss, to Wisconsin, prevented them from claiming a share of the crown.

-The season also saw the first-ever Big Ten Conference Championship game, a three-way match between Ohio State, Michigan, and Purdue. Ohio State prevailed in that one with a 19-17 score.

-Some notable individual players included Clarence Munn (Minnesota), who was awarded the conference's MVP title, and Paul Moss (Purdue) and Ookie Miller (Purdue), who were recognized as All-Americans.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on the Big 10's 1st Championship Game

Hello, my football friends; it's Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to another Tuesday with FootballArcheology.com's Timothy P. Brown. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Thank you, sir. Looking forward to talking about old-time football and sometimes what's old is new again.
And I think this is one of those instances.

I think you're absolutely correct because, of course, our topic tonight is a tidbit you put out in December of 2022 called The Big Tens First Conference Championship Game. And we're just coming out of these championship games and getting ready for the bowl season as this is airing. And so, what an appropriate time of the year to talk about the Big Ten Championship.

-Story of the First Big 10 Conference Championship Game

So what do you get on this? Yes, this is one. So this occurred in 1931. And, you know, I've written a couple of things about 1931.

Recently, I wrote a story not too far back about Wisconsin and Minnesota, and they were playing a game, you know, at the end of the season game in 1931. And I mentioned that that was a season where a couple of Big Ten teams, including Wisconsin and Minnesota, started the season playing doubleheaders. And I've got another tidbit written on that so people can find it.

But, you know, back in the mid-20s to mid-30s, there was this whole slew of people, you know, teams playing doubleheader football games. And, you know, what they do is they kind of had one game set up against a lesser opponent that their second team would play. And then they play the varsity against, you know, also a lesser team.

So it's like basically two bye games for the price of one is what it came down to. So it's just, I mean, that really doesn't have anything to do with the story other than to just set the stage that scheduling and, you know, the game was just different back then. You know, they did some things that we would never think about doing today.

No one would schedule a doubleheader. But that 1931, you know, still, you know, depths of the depression. So there were a fair number of college teams, and pro teams did this as well.

They play exhibition games to try to, you know, raise money and they donate all the proceeds to charity. And so the Big Ten that year decided, and I think they decided real close to the end of the season, they just, they decided that they were going to extend the season by one game and play, every team would play another game. And so they took against 10 opponents.

And so, you know, those were the days where teams didn't, you know, they didn't play round-robin schedules or anything approaching that. Everybody scheduled themselves independently. And so the regular season ended with Purdue at 4-1 and losing to Wisconsin.

At least in conference, Michigan was 4-1, having lost to Ohio State. Then, they tied Michigan State in the non-conference because Michigan State wasn't in the conference. And there we had, and finally, we had the Northwestern Wildcats at 5-0.

They had tied Notre Dame, not a Big Ten team. So the regular season ended with Northwestern as the undisputed champs, you know because they just based it on win percentage at the time. But when they decided to play, you know, they collectively, yeah, we're going to play another game.
And at the, they also decided what we're going to do is these games are going to count. We want them to be meaningful. So they're going to count as a regular season game, at least, you know, in terms of determining the conference championship.

So they scheduled, you know, with ten teams, they set up Ohio State at Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Northwestern and Purdue at Soldier Field. And then the other four teams played that Saturday at Chicago's Ag Field, but they only played a half a game. So, you know, it's one of those kind of goofy things, you know, today, you know, preparing, you know, for this, I went back and looked at the official conference results, like, you know, just to see like the all-time results, Michigan just won their 1000th game, right? First college team to do that.

And so I was just looking at things like, wait, did the game after the season count or not? These doubleheader games always counted, but in those half-games, none of the teams that played the half-games counted towards their all-time record. But the 14 or the six teams that played the full games that last, you know, that extra week. So Michigan technically might have like 1000, one and a half wins to their credit or something.

Well, no, because they played one of the full games. Oh, okay. They played a full game.
Okay. All right. Yeah.

So some other teams could have half a game, but others would have lost half a game. And then there were ties. One of those games was a tie.
So it was a tied half-game. It was a tie-half game. Oh boy.

Good thing it's not like hockey. How would you score that in hockey? Because you wouldn't get half a point for that winner in the tie. So anyways, you know, they play these games, and it turns out that Purdue beat Northwestern seven to nothing.

So Purdue enters the game undefeated. They lose. So then they end up in a three-way tie.
Northwestern, Purdue, and Michigan all are five and one at the end of the season. And so it's still kind of one of those things where, you know, you never know how a season is going to end up until all the pads are put away one last time. Right.

You know, you never know if a team's going to come back if they're going to win a bowl game unexpectedly, you know, upset, you know, somebody who should have beaten them. You never know. So, Northwestern thought they were Big 10 champs, and it turned out that they weren't.

Well, you started off by saying the more things change, the more they stay the same. And I think that, going into next year, the Big 10 will become the Wild West again, of, you know, teams from coast to coast in a conference. I think we should start a petition right now that we want the end-of-year exhibition half-games brought back to the Big 10.

So it's just like it was, you know, 90 years ago. Yeah. The half games.
I mean, I'm not sure exactly why they decided to go that route. I'll actually have to go back and reread some of that stuff. But you know, to play a half-game, you know, for most of them at a neutral site, makes it even more amusing.

I wonder if tickets were half-priced to get into those half-games. Well, you know, they, so they, they still fans saw a full game because they saw two half-games. But maybe what they did was they played them early enough.

Like you, Chicago's Stagg Field is a, if you really wanted to, you could walk to Soldier Field from there. So maybe they played those games early in the morning on Saturday so that everybody could run over to catch the, to court, to catch Northwestern and Purdue at Soldier Field. Wow.

That is, that is quite the story. There's a lot going on in that one. That's for sure.
Yeah. I've got even more here on this sheet of paper that I'm looking at, but I didn't raise those issues.

It's great stuff, Tim.

And you have these fascinating stories from, from yesteryear in football that you're really enjoyable and fun to read. And, you know, some like this, so you can sit back and laugh at it and say, you know, what were they thinking type of things? But it's kind of interesting. I'd be, if, if somebody advertised that right now that, Hey, we're going to have a couple of half games that done at the local stadium, I'd, I'd buy a ticket and go see four football teams.

So, so that'd be good stuff. But you do this every day on your tidbits and it's just so fascinating and sometimes makes you think and scratch your head all at the same time. Maybe you could share with the rest of the world here how they, too, can get involved with the tidbits and read these on a daily basis.
Yeah. So, you know, the simplest thing is just go to footballarchaeology.com, hit subscribe, it's free. And if you do that from then on, you'll get a, get an email every night at seven o'clock Eastern with that day's story.

And, you know, otherwise, you can follow me on Twitter, Substack, or Threads, or, like I've said before, just bookmark it and come and visit whenever you're of a mind. All right. Well, his name is Timothy Brown, and his website is footballarchaeology.com. Tim, we thank you once again for sharing with us this Tuesday, and we look forward to next Tuesday to talk to you once again about football's antiquity.

Very good. Thank you, sir.
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

---

Before Brady, before Montana, before Lombardi's Lombardi, there was a gridiron titan whose story predates the glittering trophies and billion-dollar contracts. Meet Willie Heston, a name lost to time for many, but one that once resonated as powerfully as any in the budding lexicon of American football.
Imagine a world before forward passes, where brute force and relentless ground attacks ruled the gridiron. In this primordial era, a halfback emerged from the heartland, a whirlwind of speed and cunning nicknamed "The Human Hurricane." With a deceptive jitterbug and a cannon for an arm, Heston carved his legacy on the hallowed turf of Ann Arbor, becoming the first true superstar of the college game.

He led Michigan to four undefeated seasons and four national championships, a feat unmatched even in today's age of dynasties. He single-handedly rewrote the record books, his name synonymous with rushing touchdowns and bone-crunching hits. He shattered stereotypes, a beacon of hope for Western teams in the East-dominated landscape.

The University of Michigan did leave the Big Ten Conference once, back in 1906.
The reason for leaving was due to a conflict between the conference's faculty members and the university's students and administration over the role of football.
The faculty members wanted to sideline football and its coaches and players, while the students and administration wanted to protect their football team and coach Fielding Yost.
Michigan's decision to leave the Big Ten may have helped to preserve college football as the great spectacle it is today.