Nebraska "Unflatterting" to Fielding Yost
I'm currently taking a Leadership in Sport class, and we're writing reports on -- try not to guess it -- leaders in sport. The leader I chose to do was the Old Man, Fielding Yost. You probably all know that professors won't allow you to cite your brain in research papers, so I did a quick google search to find some sources for my facts. One of the pages that came up was Yost's profile on the Nebraska athletic site.
As some of you may know, Yost made quite a few stops before landing at Michigan in 1901. His second stop was Nebraska in 1898 where he led the Bugeaters (yes, that was their nickname then) to an 8-3 record. This marked the first time a Nebraska team had ever won eight games. Yost later was inducted into the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame in 1971.
The bio goes on to detail Yost's coaching career at Michigan, giving praise to his teams and success. However, they choose a peculiar way to describe his six national titles:
He guided Michigan to four consecutive mythical national championships as head football coach in his first four years in Ann Arbor from 1901 to 1904. Overall, he coached the Wolverines for 25 seasons from 1901 to 1923 and again in 1925 and 1926. He led Michigan to eight undefeated seasons, and they claimed six mythical national titles during his tenure.
Now I know that Yost's national championships weren't won in "the modern era" of football, but I don't think that deserves the distinction of being "mythical," especially for someone inducted into your own hall of fame. Naturally, the bios for Devaney and Osborne simply state they had won national titles.
EDIT: The term "mythical national championship" definitely has grounds for being labeled as such, with many supporting facts listed below. Perhaps instead of "snubbing" Coach Yost, NU is more "flattering" their other coaches by not adding the same distinction to their accomplishments.
October 7th, 2012 at 6:01 PM ^
October 7th, 2012 at 6:10 PM ^
October 7th, 2012 at 6:31 PM ^
a bug with IOS6. Elaydin is aware of problem and presumably looking into a solution.
October 7th, 2012 at 7:15 PM ^
Ought to get the Nebraska Bugeaters to work on that problem.
October 7th, 2012 at 6:37 PM ^
October 7th, 2012 at 6:33 PM ^
October 7th, 2012 at 5:54 PM ^
Maybe they meant mythical more in the legendary way. Still odd.
October 7th, 2012 at 5:57 PM ^
that consumption of many species of Great Plain bugs induce psychedelic visions. For example, Nebraska briefly experimented with a return to bug eating in 1997 -- which led to visions of their mythical national championship.
Eat and bug and enjoy the ride.
October 7th, 2012 at 5:59 PM ^
October 7th, 2012 at 6:20 PM ^
We shouldn't feel so bad. By this standard, Alabama has 41 mythical national championships.
October 7th, 2012 at 6:29 PM ^
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October 7th, 2012 at 6:33 PM ^
Well played, sir. I hope for a similar score in Lincoln this year. It does appear that Nebraska has no problems giving up points.
October 7th, 2012 at 6:37 PM ^
October 7th, 2012 at 6:42 PM ^
of an improvement over Bugeaters.
October 7th, 2012 at 6:45 PM ^
I believe "mythical national championship" is a pretty standard way of referring to football championships of the pre-poll era, and it's actually sometimes used for all Division 1 football championships given the lack of a playoff.
Even Brude Madej used the term in reference to Yost in his book Michigan: Champions of the West (screenshot from this Google Books page):
October 7th, 2012 at 6:56 PM ^
Good find. That definitely may be the case, then. Guess I should've looked more into the "mythical national championship" term.
October 7th, 2012 at 7:00 PM ^
Ok, but that doesn't explain why they insert the term for Yost's championships but not Osbourne's. This can only be settled by a duel. Or a football game.
October 7th, 2012 at 7:21 PM ^
are snubbing Fielding Yost.
October 7th, 2012 at 6:51 PM ^
October 7th, 2012 at 6:53 PM ^
October 7th, 2012 at 7:40 PM ^
This. The money quote, from Bo Schembechler no less:
If there are any Big Ten teams that shoot for a national championship, they're damn fools...You play to win the Big Ten championship, and if you win it and go to the Rose Bowl and win it, then you've had a great season. If they choose to vote you number one, then you're the national champion. But a national champion is a mythical national champion, and I think you guys ought to know that. It's mythical.
October 8th, 2012 at 1:23 AM ^
October 7th, 2012 at 7:32 PM ^
I'm sorry, I'm the douche that negged you. I did so because you improperly made NU look like they were being disrespectful to Yost, when they were in fact doing no such thing. Mythical National Championship is actually a very common and accepted term for sports that don't have some sort of definitive playoff, or where other media outlets crown a team a champion. This is especially more common in older college football championships because just any group would name who their winner was for the year and that team would take credit for it in their record books. Check it out for yourself. I'm sure there are plenty of years that we claim a national championship that other teams do as well (as there are a few mythical championship years we haven't claimed for some reason also...).
October 7th, 2012 at 7:47 PM ^
Yeah, I totally understand, and seeing some of the facts now it makes sense. I suppose the part that got me a little riled up was the fact they called all of Yost's championships as mythical yet made no attempt to say that Nebraska's were in the same category as well.
October 7th, 2012 at 8:29 PM ^
Well, there is one clear difference: none of Yost's titles were based on polls, and all of Nebraska's were (their earliest title was from 1970). That's not to say that Nebraska's are any more legitimate than Yost's.
Take a look at the NCAA FBS Record Book, page 70 forward for a list of all the national championships awarded by various entities, many of which--especially from the early years--were determined retrospectively. There's also a list of "consensus national champions" which begins with 1950, the year the UPI poll began (the AP and UPI were for many years the two main polls).
October 7th, 2012 at 8:27 PM ^
You rang?
October 7th, 2012 at 10:18 PM ^
Whether mythical is the proper term or not, I don't think much of anybody can dispute our claims as national champions those years considering how badly we usually beat everybody we played.
What's even more mind-blowing is that I seem to remember reading in Bacon's class that Yost liked to punt on 3rd down in case anything went wrong on the attempt. We put up 100+ on people working with two downs...
October 7th, 2012 at 11:08 PM ^
Fourth down actually didn't exist until 1912, but the part about scoring points on two downs is correct. Yost was one of the big advocates for adding a fourth down even though he didn't always use it.
October 7th, 2012 at 10:40 PM ^
I find it hilarious that Nebraska highlights Yost the way they do at all. All his glory and national championships happened elsewhere. It reminds me of when I was in grad school at Purdue and the Indiana sports reporters, when discussing any exploits of Wayne Gretzy, would refer to him as "former Indianapolis Racer, Wayne Gretzky." It's factually correct, but Wayne Gretzky being in Indianapolis and Fielding Yost being in Nebraska had little or nothing to do with their reputations: their stops in Indiana and Nebraska were short pit stops in long careers, and their exploits and accomplishments all happened elsewhere.
October 8th, 2012 at 7:40 AM ^
Bill Jennings, who led the Huskers to a 15-34-1 record in the late 50's. And who can forget legendary coach Adolph J. Lewandowski, the Nebraska basketball coach who took over the football team during World War II at 4-12-0.
October 8th, 2012 at 10:30 AM ^
Until the NCAA institutes a bona fide playoff, all "National Championships" were, are, and will continue to be mythical.
October 8th, 2012 at 10:31 AM ^
earned a mythical championship in '97.