[Originally posted in 2014, bumped given the mention of Yost’s “noisy yellow and blue sweater vest” ahead of Saturday’s maize for the Washington game.]
Holy moly. Have we merely scratched the surface on the gems out there in Michigan football lore? Methinks.
Via the great Greg Kinney, archivist at the U-M Bentley Historical Library, I present an Arkenstone of sorts. Via the October 9, 1904 edition of the Michigan Daily:
Sadly Kinney hasn’t found a photo of young Yost donning the righteous sweatervest* in this game, a 95-0 humiliation of our friends from K-Zoo.
Speaking of 1904, on the ebay right now there’s an impressive slew of items from that era up for bid, leading off with this – a menu from a postseason banquet. This type of meal was presumably the predecessor to annual football Bust, and was funded by “The Business Men of Ann Arbor”.
The cover reads “A Hard Nut to Crack” and those feeble squirrels were indeed dealing with an impenetrable pigskin-shaped nut. At this point Yost was still undefeated since he stepped off the train in Ann Arbor in 1901 and had pissed off just about everyone outside of Ann Arbor, especially Chicago’s “saintly” Amos Alonzo Stagg.
Here’s the menu, along with the speakers, including outgoing senior superstar Willie Heston:
Any serious collector will tell you that Point-A-Minute era memorabilia fetches a pretty penny, and this is no exception. The seller is asking just under a cool grand for this beauty.
*P.S. Here’s young Yost if you need him. Anyone: Feel free to photoshop a maize and blue hoodoo sweatervest on the old boy:
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