football history

Matt Demorest of HomeSure Lending and Seth from the internet go back to school to talk about where linebackers come from, and where the way Michigan currently plays its linebackers comes from. If you're looking to buy or refi, Matt's the guy.

There is nothing after the jump because it's video content.

WITH SPECIAL GUEST JOHN NAVARRE

The Sponsor: If you're buying or reselling, talk to Matt Demorest at HomeSure Lending now and see if you can't lock in a low rate while it lasts. In addition to being more ethical, knowledgeable, hands-on, intelligent, and fun to work with, Matt's cool.

Previously: 1879, 1901, 1918, 1925, 1932, 1940, 1947, 1950, 1964, 1973, 1976, 1980, 1985 p.1& p.2, 1988, 1991, 1999, 2011 p.1 & p.2

[Writeup and player after THE JUMP]

Any conversation with an Ohio State partisan is only going one way because who won most recently is the only truth in the world. What day is it?/December 10th./No it isn't./Look on a calendar!/Look at the scoreboard!

As much as recent history sucks, history is still so much in Michigan's favor that other college football fans argue it doesn't matter. I take issue with that, yes because my team won the first college football game and more than anyone else since and I'm a biased fanboy, but also because any slicing of dates to create a "modern" period is a repudiation of the process of change, and the normality of more of it.

Take the "Integration Era" since that's a popular one. George Jewett integrated college football when he joined Michigan in 1890, but in 1934 Michigan still had one Black guy, whom they sat when they played Georgia Tech. The Civil Rights Era had landmark moments: Texas Western started five Black players and won the 1966 men's tourney, Florida A&M (an HBCU) beat all-white Tampa in 1969, USC blew out Alabama in 1970, and two Black quarterbacks started the Michigan-Ohio State game in 1973. But it would be another 20 years before D-I rosters were a majority non-white, almost 40 years before Denard Robinson and Braxton Miller followed in the footsteps of Dennis Franklin and Cornelius Greene, and 2019 before Michigan ended a three-year run when not a single Big Ten head basketball coach looked like 75 percent of players have since before the coaching pool played. There is no date in there when past became modern, just an accumulation of decisions that add up to an uneven progress.

The Stone Age Game

That said, jumping from the only modern moment to when the Michigan-Ohio State series began requires some orientation. Teams around 1900 didn't have access to the forward pass, or platoons, or scholarships, or hash marks. Their touchdowns were worth five points instead of six, but their field goals were worth four, and placed at the front of the endzone, not the back. Though their training regimens differed vastly from the average student's, they were nothing like today. The players were much smaller, especially Yost's because he liked them that way. Scheduling was…well it was a lot like 2020: if you were lucky you had a conference organize a bunch of games that might be played, saving room for a surprise at the end. The Big Ten (the "Western Conference" then) was the first such organization, and only a year old when Michigan-Ohio State began.

It wasn't completely foreign. Both schools were also surprisingly modern in their football attitudes. They got up for rivalries. They had blue chip recruiting battles that went on for years. They had massive alumni networks who handled illegal payments to facilitate those recruiting battles. These fans and bagmen would get furious at their coaches when they lost big games, and schools relied so much on these people to fund and promote their school parts that they'd often capitulate, then launch searches as desperately insane as today's.

Specifically, Ohio State at the turn of the century was much more OHIO STATE than they'd like you to believe. Their resources didn't differ that much from Yost's, their fanbase was comparable to most of the schools that were in the original Big Ten, and their football team's interest in academics was as perfunctory as ever. These games counted. They count now. And if you just haven't heard about them, that can be remedied.

[After THE JUMP]