[Ed. 10/1/2021 – A repost ahead of the Wisconsin @ Michigan game this weekend. Originally posted in 2018.]
In our long history, three Michigan-Wisconsin games featured major incidents in the stands where hundreds, in one case thousands, of fans were crushed during or just after the game. Three times! This is not completely random of course as many of the Michigan-Wisconsin games in history were pretty big events with fans packed in to watch..but still. Here’s a rundown of each incident –>
1993 – Madison (Camp Randall) – Wisconsin 13, Michigan 10. Some of you out there might remember this one.
Twenty-five years ago Badger students tried to storm the Camp Randall field at the end of their big win over your beloved Wolverines. From the LA Times:
Spectators in the end-zone portion of Camp Randall Stadium pushed forward as the game ended. The metal rail fences lining the front of the stands collapsed, and a chain-link fence about five feet high separating a walkway from the playing field also went down, pulling up its concrete footings.
The cheering ceased within 10 minutes as a public address announcer alerted the crowd to the injuries.
“We tried to get some of the people back so the people below them who were getting trampled could get out,” said John Brogan, a Dane County deputy sheriff. “It was just too loud for them to hear. People kept falling on top of each other.”
Said freshman Jennifer Hartzell, 18: “People were pushing down. I was pushed down, too, but the people in front were mainly the people who got trampled. Everyone rushed onto the field and maybe seven people were on the goal post rocking it.”
1902 – Chicago (Marshall Field) – U-M 6, Wisconsin 0. In a massive game held in the Windy City, trains full of fans from Madison and Ann Arbor descended on Chicago to be there. According to John Kryk’s epic Stagg vs. Yost, both schools agreed to construct temporary stands to meet the demand for a few hundred additional fans. Unfortunately it seems many more than could fit hopped aboard the stands…and it got ugly. Kryk:
In the middle of the first half, timbers in the grandstand suddenly began to creak–then snapped. The whole stand swayed to the north then collapsed, dropping hundreds. Incredibly, no one was killed and only a few were seriously injured.
The game was interrupted for fifteen minutes as stunned, scared, and some bloodied spectators flooded onto the northeast corner of the playing field to escape the woodpile wreckage.
A lighter note: during the hysteria following the collapse, with the guards distracted & tending to the mess, hundreds of ticketless fans rushed in to the field to grab of a view of this huge game.
And no, things never change as a big legal mess ensued between Wisconsin, Michigan and even Chicago (whose Marshall Field was used to stage the big game), with fingers pointing in all directions.
1905 – Ann Arbor (Ferry/Regents Field) – U-M 12, Wisconsin 0. Just three years after the Chicago incident tragedy struck again. At the tailend of Yost’s Point-A-Minute reign of terror, the Badgers traveled to Ann Arbor for another massive tilt between our schools. Sure enough, just two minutes into the second half screams were heard from one end of the gridiron. One of the Ferry Field grandstand collapsed sending a few thousand fans to the ground. Both teams (sans one prominent U-M player, more later) rushed to help the panicking fans.
As described by the November 19, 1905 Michigan Daily:
…a crash was heard and the whole west bleachers, which contained about five thousand spectators, became a mass of ruins in the short space of a minute. Judging from the appearance of the wreck immediately after the accident, everyone believed there would surely result a number of fatalities. Both football teams with the substitutes immediately hastened to the rescue and the wire fence at the end of the field was torn down and the work of rescuing began.
Once again thankfully there were no fatalities but a few folks were messed up pretty good.
We know a few more things about the 1905 collapse thanks to the U-M Bentley Historical Library and other sources:
- Get the Engineers: An investigation was conducted immediately with findings submitted to the dean of the U-M School of Engineering. The report’s findings in a nutshell: The designs for the temporary stands that were put in place during the season weren’t reviewed and once erected, not properly inspected. They inadequately slotted the temp seats on top of an existing structure and — sure enough — it wasn’t ready for prime time. When the mass of fans started moving around, as Meechigan fans tend to do, the bleachers folded “like a deck of cards.” Here’s a diagram included in the report:
- NEVER Discuss This Again, Oh, and Go Blue! The U-M Bentley Library’s Brian Williams shared with me some of the archived data from the whole incident – and there’s plenty. The Ferry Field authorities actually recruited whomever they could to help get fans to the hospital–even coffin-carrying morticians–and later reimbursed them for their services. [The Bentley has the receipts, bro.] On the legal side, U-M worked diligently to track down the victims of the collapse. In exchange for a payment (different sums were negotiated) Michigan was released from any further legal responsibility. Here’s one that’s housed at the Bentley for one fan #1000SSS finally chased down in June of 1906:
- Schulz Stays Put. This is all horrific and all, but I can’t help it but drop in a hilarious sidenote for y’all. According to a story reprinted in the Daily in 1932, Yost had his badass, man-mountain All-American Germany Schulz focus on other matters in the critical seconds after the 1905 collapse:
…two football teams raced to the spot and pulled the cement posts out by the roots and prevented a catastrophe–and how when the excitement quieted down, one turned back to find Germany Schultz [sic] in the midfield guarding the ball. Yost had told him to stay with the ball.”
That’s classic Yost–concerned about the outcome of the game amidst the chaos–you’ve gotta love it.
A final subnote, to allow you to file this under ‘It’s-not-Us-It’s-Them’, Badger fans were actually involved in another grandstand-collapse in 1915 while playing the Gophers. Be careful out there, Bucky.
