Shenanigans!--This Date in Michigan Football History, 1892 edition.
Ohio State spent much of the 2010 season demonstrating that it was possible for both teams to lose a football game. But can both teams win a game?
Visitors to Oberlin, OH on an autumn Saturday who happen to join the throng of hundreds at Savage Stadium and spend some time perusing the program for the day's football game might be surprised, if they're Michigan fans, to learn that Oberlin's all-time record against Michigan is 1-8-0. Oberlin is, after all, one of the 85 opponents Michigan claims an unblemished record against.
The late Geoff Blodgett, professor of American history at Oberlin and before that a wide receiver on the football team, spent some time in the archives and wrote a brief article on the disputed game in the Oberlin Alumni Magazine.
I recommend the piece. It's a great window into the world of college football in the 1890s--one part cutthroat mercenary competition in the style of Vonnegut's Player Piano (Oberlin had hired John Heisman away from the University of Pennsylvania not just to coach but to play!) and two parts glorified backyard pick-up game, officiated by subs from the two sides and with rules made up on the fly ("guys, we need to shorten the second half--the last train home leaves at 5 and we aren't going to be done in time to make it." "ok, we'll stop playing at 4:50.").
The latter went about as well as you'd expect. With the 4:50 deadline approaching and Michigan up by 4, Oberlin's Fred Savage ripped off a 90-yard run from scrimmage, tackled from behind by George Jewett at the Michigan 5. Blodgett picks up the story:
Two plays later Oberlin made its final touchdown. Score: Oberlin 24, Michigan 22, with less than a minute to go. As Michigan launched its last drive, the referee (an Oberlin sub) announced that 4:50 p.m. had arrived, time had expired, and the Oberlin squad trotted off the field to catch the train. Next the umpire (a Michigan man) ruled that four minutes remained on the game clock, owing to timeouts that Oberlin's timekeeper had not recorded. Michigan then walked the ball over the goal line for an uncontested touchdown and was declared the winner, 26 to 24. By that time the Oberlinians were headed home clutching their own victory, 24 to 22.
To Oberlin, well, damn it, a deal is a deal, the train is leaving the station and it's not as if there were alternate transportation options in 1892. To Michigan it must have seemed a lot like the guy that wins a big pot at the poker table, stuffs the winnings in his pocket, checks his watch and says "oops, gotta go."
I don't know how the dispute could have been adjudicated then--it's not as if there were any established procedures for it--and it's surely impossible now that all the relevant facts have been buried with the participants (what was really agreed at halftime? when did 4:50 really strike? what was the deal with the missing timeouts?).
As far as I can tell, the NCAA has recognized both team's claims to the victory. That seems fair--it makes a better story, and the double victory helps restore a little balance to the football universe after all the vacated wins of recent years.
November 19th, 2012 at 11:43 AM ^
Thanks for sharing -- very interesting, but unfortunately it has nothing to do with B1G expansion and apparently that is all that is allowed to be discussed. Mods please delete.
November 19th, 2012 at 11:44 AM ^
Better than reading about Maryland joining the Big Ten
November 19th, 2012 at 12:15 PM ^
This is an awesome read, thanks for sharing!
November 19th, 2012 at 12:19 PM ^
...to schedule Oberlin and settle this for good.
November 19th, 2012 at 12:38 PM ^
Add them before we add Rutgers!
November 19th, 2012 at 12:49 PM ^
The last in-state school to
BEAT OHIO!
November 20th, 2012 at 6:01 PM ^
was the origin of some basic rules, like: when does the game end?
When the clock hits zero you let the down in progress, if there is one, be played out to completion. That seems natural to us now, but how did it get that way? As far as I can tell it's unique to American/Canadian football--no other timed sport does this. All other timed sports that originated in North America end when the clock hits zero (unless you count basketball allowing the ball to come back to earth if it's in the air when the horn goes off). And the sports most closely related to football found other solutions: when the siren goes in rugby play continues until the team in possession loses the ball; in soccer it's left to the referee to decide when the game is over, and by custom he typically treats it like rugby and allows the team in possession to complete its move. In Australian football it's over when it's over, like basketball or hockey.
I suppose once we started playing quarters and flipping the field after the first and third, there was no choice but to do it this way. You have to have a stable situation, between snaps, to know how to reset play (no other sport does this as far as I know, try to restart play for the next period by recreating the situation in place when the prior period expired).
But in 1892 the game was still two 45-minute halves, just like soccer. When did the rules for ending the half diverge from soccer, or from rugby?
...was why it mattered so much to Oberlin to make that train. This wasn't the only road game that year that they put a time limit on to make sure they made their transportation home. But why? If they'd missed the train and had to find lodging in Ann Arbor, so what?
I've just learned they had damn good reason.
Oberlin's student body had fought a long struggle to get the school's approval for intercollegiate football. When the college faculty finally, grudgingly, consented, part of the deal was that football must never, ever, be allowed to interfere with any student's attendance at compulsory chapel. Sunday football was unthinkable, of course, but the students had wanted to schedule a game for Thanksgiving, which was also a day of compulsory service. So the law was laid down.
If they'd missed their train and spent the night in Ann Arbor, they'd have missed Sunday morning bible class, their prayer meeting, the chapel service. And that would have meant an instant death penalty for the football program, and probably for intercollegiate athletics at the school altogether.
That's how tenuous college athletics was, at the start. The same year Oberlin's students finally got permission, Ohio State's president relented as well: he'd been refusing to allow students to play football on the grounds that it might interfere with their studies!
We've come a long way in the last 125 years, and not all the changes have been for the good.