• Kenn Domerese – Michigan Memorabilia Super Collector

    Recently I had a chance to visit the incredible personal U-M memorabilia collection at the home of Kenn Domerese. In Part I we start with a brief interview followed-up by a look at a few items from his collection. This episode includies Michigan helmets from the 1910s and 1930s, a vintage cane that once belonged to Irving Pond (the man who scored the first touchdown in U-M history), original sheet music from The Victors, a 1930s "Schedule Bot", a 1901 cloth item dedicated to Fielding H. Yost's first team, and much more:

  • The Tinseltown Victors

    Readers of this site might be familiar with this collectible poster for the 1941 Columbia film ‘Harmon of Michigan’: So you may know the poster, but I finally had a chance to watch the film.  More on that later but I thought I’d pass this along—the intro to the film contains a Hollywood-style rendition of The Victors, a mandatory addition to your Rose Bowl roadtrip mixtapes: [display_podcast] While we’re on Harmon, one other nugget from the archives.  Not too long before he made this film, The Hoosier Hammer played in the 1941 East-West Shrine Game.  His equipment order for that game: Helmet size 7 3/8 Pants 32 Shoes 9 1/2 D Jersey size 42 Jersey number 98 (naturally) Follow MVictors on Twitter

  • Enhancing the Heisman Triple Play

    Back in June 2010 I spotted a photo of Old 98 dropping what looked to be a Heisman pose for the cameras.   Well, up on eBay right now is a shot of Tom Harmon donning the winged leather doing a Denardesque in-game Heisman with some styling block ‘M’ socks: I like this one better.  While Terrible Tommy’s pose in the 2010 photo looks more like the actual Heisman Trophy (ball tucked away in left hand; right arm extended), the pic above fits better with best Howard & Woodson thank-you-ma’ams on file: You can pick up the photo of Touchdown Tommy on eBay right now, bidding starts at $24.88.

  • Harmon of Michigan–on DVD? Indeed.

    Tip of the hat to reader Jeff for this tip.  You may have seen this movie poster around town or on this site or on eBay: Well, it actually is a real film from 1941 featuring Tom Harmon himself and even 1940 team captain Forest Evashevski.  Summary: A football coach, riding high and feeling bulletproof, begins to have his life unravel after a series of his own arrogant blunders. He orders an illegal "flying wedge" formation in a game (which costs him his job) and ruins his marriage over more loutish behavior before coming to his senses. Harmon, the loutish brute. Now for the news–turns out a DVD version of Harmon of Michigan is being released next week and you can order it on Amazon.   Looks like it’s a program where they will re-issue old films on demand (they’ll cut and ship the DVDs as folks order them).   That’s good by me. Jeff added, “I doubt the film is particularly good, but it’ll be fun to watch Ol’ 98 portray himself.”   Yes, I’m guessing this is just about the worst film ever made but it would be interesting to see 98 and Evashevski fumbling around trying to act. You can order it now for $20.95 on Amazon for its December 6 release.   Like the movie poster?  Pick it up on…