Flattening the Mountaineers (1904) | This Week in Michigan Football History

Last week for TWIMFbH we shot back to 1901, Fielding Yost’s perfectly perfect first season in Ann Arbor.   For Saturday’s edition, we march a mere three years forward to 1904 when on that day in Michigan Football history we welcomed the spring lambs from the American Medical School (Chicago) to Ann Arbor.   Just three days later on Saturday that followed Michigan faced West Virginia and unleashed a batch of whoop-ass not seen before or since:

Yes, I said “Yostmen”.   The beating put down that day was truly epic – Michigan scored 22 touchdowns in the 130 to 0 humiliation.   I read a portion of the hilarious report from The Daily New Dominion (Morgantown WV); here’s more for you via the Michigan Alumnus archive:

West Virginia Paper

Bahahaha. When the jokes stopped they got an actual quote from one of the Mountaineer players who was clearly stunned by how Yost’s machine operated.   Keep in mind this was 1904:

“The signals were given for the next play when the preceding one started.  Sometimes the play was off before we got lined up.”

The Alumnus also had the note about Baird’s unfortunate bicycle crash after the game and Yost’s contract extension:

image

2 Comments

  • Dimitri

    OK but $3500 in 1913 (the furthest back I can find online) would be worth $82,683.79 in 2013. Still a lot less than $2,500,000!

  • Alton

    Awesome find; thanks!

    The sources I have say to convert 1905 dollars to 2013 dollars using a 26:1 ratio, so $3500 in 1905 would have about the spending power of $91,000 today. Take that for what it is worth.

    I found an article (from the September 1905 Popular Science magazine) that stated the average salary of a full professor at Harvard was $4,000, and an associate professor’s average salary was $3,000. From the looks of the article (which also shows average salaries at several Western Conference universities but unfortunately not Michigan), I’m guessing Yost was being paid more than most of the full professors at Michigan.

    http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_67/September_1905/State_University_Salaries