cover art by MonuMental. Sorry Jen, it’s just that Kipke is super tall.

Attention holiday shoppers: You could get your family hats for Christmas this year. Like a cute Michigan beanie they can wear to games. Hats are nice. They’re in the right price range, you can never really have enough of them, and surely there will be a Michigan fan in your white elephant group who’ll want one again this year.

Or, you know, you could give them a highly entertaining 128-page history of Michigan football stories that cover most of the important traditions and people they need to know about, and finally have them understand why you spend so much time on MGoBlog. And you could pre-order it NOW. And it will ship from Ann Arbor (with tracking) on/around December 12th, a good two weeks before you’d have been running to the store to buy a last-minute hat.

Unlike previous books published by MGoBlog, HAIL TO OLD BLUE: Stories of Michigan Football 1879-2017 won’t have half of its content rendered inert by football events a month after you purchase it, so you can buy this and give it to someone this Christmas, or next Christmas, or three Chanukahs from now, or just stock up a pile of them for birthday gifts until you’re the guy who gives out those fascinating Michigan stories instead of the hat guy.

Also I’m pretty sure you got them the same hat last year.

THIS IS NOT A HAT

We bring up things that we learned in old HTTV features all the time, but given the exponential growth of this site I’m pretty sure only a bare handful of you have every copy going back to 2007. Do you know how Yost got Michigan Stadium built? How Craig Ross bumbled his way into a Carr-era quarterbacks meeting? Why OSU is full of the bird poop on their helmets when they claim responsibility for inventing stickers? What role Lloyd played in hiring his successor? How Bo beat Ohio State his first year?

Yes, those were all HTTV features, and today you can’t even buy them online—I’ve tried, and after a month Amazon just quietly removes it from your orders.

Bearing that in mind, we’ve grabbed 18 of the best evergreen stories from past HTTVs and compiled them into a single collection of historical vignettes, because I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’re already starting to get a reputation as the guy who always buys everyone hats.

The topics:

THIS MICHIGAN OF OURS (1879 through Bump):

• Michigan played in the first actual football game (by Craig Ross, 2016)
• The story of Fielding Yost (John Kryk, 2013)
• How Michigan Stadium was built (Greg Dooley of MVictors, 2010)
• The first great passing team (Ross, 2014)
• The Harry Newman/Gerald Ford-era champs (Dooley, 2012)
• Ron Kramer, the uncensored version (Dooley, 2013)
• The 1964 team, the uncensored version (Dooley, 2014)

TWISTED BLUE STEEL (Bo):

• The story of 1969 (Joel Pennington, 2008)
• Helmet Sticker history (Kryk, 2010)
• The 1973 Screw Job (Kryk, 2013)
• How Michigan invented the dime defense (Dr. Sap, 2016)
• When Texas A&M made their run at Bo (Seth Fisher & Mel Newman, 2016)
• The 1985 Season (Kryk, 2015)

NECK SHARPIES (Moeller to the modern day):

• Interview with Jerry Hanlon (Dooley, 2015)
• Craig Ross sits in on a 2005 QB meeting (Ross, 2008)
• Lloyd-sided take on the Rich Rod controversies (Ross, 2012)
• Denard (Brian Cook, 2013)
• The 3-3-5 then and now (Chris B. Brown of SmartFootball.com, 2010)

Go get your book.