Who should/will get the next statue at Michigan?

Submitted by Wolverine Devotee on

My answer: Yost

He built the football program and really the athletic department. Created The Big House.

M Ascending

August 14th, 2017 at 9:02 AM ^

Yost, maybe, but one would have to consider his social views. Does his immense success as a football coach outweigh his overt racism?  

But I would definitely erect one of BOB UFER, right outside the entrance to the Big House Press Box -- bless his cotton pickin' Maize and Blue heart.  With audio loops of his greatest calls playing before each game.  

Bleedmaizeblue

August 13th, 2017 at 5:00 PM ^

Obviously Yost should've had a statue by now. My opinion is that a Yost statue should be built at the football stadium, as a centerpiece somehow, the name should be changed to Yost Stadium and Yost Arena should be recommissioned to Berensen Arena with a Red statue out front. Can we please make this idea happen?!

Michifornia

August 13th, 2017 at 5:51 PM ^

Has only been here a couple of years but if he stays 5-10 and we do as well as I think we will...In the grand scheme of things I've only been a diehard for a little over 40 years and I gotta say, I don't know another coach who has a faster and greater (positive) impact not only on the football program, but athletics.

We've been fortunate to have a lot of incredible coaches; Red, Beilein, Hutch etc.

GO BLUE!!

Mr Miggle

August 13th, 2017 at 6:14 PM ^

and Hutch whenever she retires.

Having your name on an arena is a much higher honor. Next would be on a building. Then a statue. We may not see any new buildings named that way, not unless a donor insists on it. So I'm okay with how Yost, Crisler, Canham, Fisher and Keen have been honored. I know Bo got both, but if we're just going to have a handful of statues, I'd stick with my list above.

BlueInWisconsin

August 13th, 2017 at 6:19 PM ^

I don't know way but I just feel like statues of coaches are kind of gross. Yost Ice Arena yes, statue of FH Yost no. Shembechler hall is good. Statue of Bo is creepy.



Just one man's opinion.

ST3

August 13th, 2017 at 8:00 PM ^

I'm starting to think that forgiveness is a concept you are not familiar with.

Despite Yost’s error in judgment in 1934, Ward believed Yost had successfully “flip-flopped from being a segregationist” two years earlier when Ward made the team.

Ward recalled his first trip to Chicago with the team in 1932. At the time, black players usually stayed with local families because the pricier hotels still did not accept black guests. Sure enough, when the team tried to check in, the hotel manager told Yost they did not admit blacks, and they weren’t about to start now.

According to Ward, Yost became outraged. “‘We’ve been staying at this hotel since 1900,’” Ward recalled Yost saying, “‘and we’ll pull every [Michigan] team and I’ll get other Big Ten teams to not stay here!’” The angry appeal to their financial interest was enough to desegregate the hotel for one night. Ward became only the second African-American to stay in the hotel, the first being the singer Marian Anderson.

There are other examples of Yost’s surprising change of heart from his racist past. He successfully lobbied to get black track star DeHart Hubbard into the university; he volunteered his influence and field house to support an athletic exhibition to raise funds for the Dunbar Center, a local organization that promoted social betterment for African-Americans; and he started Benny Friedman, a practicing Jew, at quarterback in the mid-1920s, then helped him become athletic director at Brandeis University.

http://annarborchronicle.com/2012/03/16/column-the-other-side-of-fieldi…