On May 1st of this year the athletic department published a press release announcing that the 2007 game at Illinois would be played at night. The presser also listed the history of Michigan’s games in prime time. It all started in 1944 with a game under the lights at Marquette and the Blue didn’t play another for nearly 30 years.
Digging further, I bought an archived copy of the 1944 Chicago Tribune which published a piece covering the game. The article provided a summary of the game and provided a glimpse at sports writing back in the day. Written by Charles Bartlett, the Tribune piece reads more like a play-by-play than a modern game summary. Here’s the headline and a small taste of Bartlett’s writing style:
Call to Marquette Sports Information
I contacted the Marquette sports information department. One of the challenges in digging up data on this game is that Marquette stopped playing football in 1960. Michael Whittliff of MU suggested I try looking at the library’s collection of yearbooks. Expecting to find nothing, a review of the 1945 ‘Hilltop’ yearbook paid off big time & yielded a game photo:
In case you can’t make it out, the clowns on the yearbook department added the caption “May I have the next Waltz, please?” under that photo.
Bentley Museum Comes Through
Greg Kinney, the curator of the Michigan football archives at the Bentley wrote to me: “After checking a bunch of sources, I finally found a newspaper article that offers some rationale for the night game. Michigan was host to the Navy V-12 program and so had many Navy and Marine recruits on the team.”
Here’s the deal on the V-12 program:
The V-12 Navy College Training Program was designed to supplement the force of commissioned officers in the United States Navy during World War II. Between July 1, 1943 and June 30, 1946, over 125,000 men were enrolled in the V-12 program in 131 colleges and universities in the United States. When the draft age was lowered to 18 in November 1942, the Navy quickly foresaw a shortage of college-educated officers for its operations. Likewise, hundreds of the nations colleges and universities feared economic collapse without students to fill suddenly empty classrooms. All those in V-12 were on active duty, in uniform and subject to a very strict form of military discipline.
Kinney found additional articles on the game including one in particular which provided the reason for the nighttime start. Kinney wrote to me:
The team left Ann Arbor at 1:30 Friday afternoon and arrived in Milwaukee at 7:40 and had a brief workout under the lights. The article states; “Michigan meets Marquette University at Milwaukee tonight and the opening kickoff is scheduled for 7:00 o’clock to enable the Wolverines to catch an early train out of Milwaukee and have the navy and Marine players back here within the 48-hour limit.
Greg Kinney, U-M BHL
So…it was the V-12 program and the time limit that made for the unique start time. There must have not been a train that left Saturday evening to get the players home within 48 hours.
