Has there been a bigger jump in fan sentiment season-to-season than 2020 to 2021? I don’t need to remind you of the mess that was last season, and granted COVID had something to do with that. But it’s fair to say the program was in full-on crisis mode. Future jeopardized. Dogs and cats living together.
Twelve months later we were drowning in Lucas Oil confetti and passing around a silver pigskin:
One possible candidate might be the contrast between 1900 and 1901. Don’t necessarily look at the 7-2-1 record in 1900. We were trounced in the big games against Iowa and Chicago and managed a painful tie against nascent Ohio State. The wins over Illinois, Indiana, and Purdue were lackluster as these teams mustered just two conference wins between them. The rest of the games were against patsies.
Thankfully a Daily writer captured the mood following that year. The young man seemingly fought through tears to hammer out this piece following the 12-6 drubbing at the hands of Amos Alonzo Stagg’s Chicago in the 1900 finale:
The mood on campus is summed up thusly:
…the anvil chorus is out in full force at Michigan, and the knock-knock of hammers, great & small, is heard all over the campus and will continue so until a winning team can get back the fickle sympathies of her student body.
Michigan Daily, December 4, 1900
Michigan actually led 6-5 at the half, but Stagg’s men tallied a pair of second-half scores (TDs worth 5 points). As the Daily writer put it: “the [15-6] score stands for future historians to peruse and explain.”
Then you have 1901. Readers of this site don’t require a refresher, but this season marked Fielding H. Yost’s arrival and arguably the finest football season ever played. Undefeated, unscored upon, and capped in the 1902 Rose Bowl:
The mood? Well, before they set off for the Rose Bowl the season scoring tally was 501-0. Yost had already signed a new contract to keep coaching. So naturally, in early December, the campus gathered and held a glorious 501-0 Barbeque bash:
A roast Ox was the subject of the BBQ, fine cider the drink, and the event promised to be, “an evening of rip-roaring fun and jollification over the Wolverines’ record mark and the season’s success. The heroes of the gridiron will be present and every student will have an opportunity of meeting these distinguished gentlemen.”
