November 20, 1917 marks the official anniversary of The University of Michigan rejoining the Western Conference. By getting back in we gave the league a new nickname, ‘The Big 10’. After becoming a founding member of the Western Conference in 1896, the next two decades were a bit rocky. Here’s the short version of on-again, off-again, on-again conference affiliation for TWIMFbH:
For more on Michigan leaving the conference – click here! And a bit of Michigan football What If…What if Michigan never returned? My Q&A on this notion with SBNation’s Matt Brown in 2017.
As always, join Ira, Sam, and Steve and listen to This Week in Michigan Football History on the WTKA 1050AM Keybank Countdown to Kickoff starting four hours ahead of each game. This week you can watch them LIVE inside Jim Brady’s restaurant in downtown Ann Arbor.
Full script:
Good day to the maize and blue faithful out there! Michigan is very proud of our LONG affiliation with the Big Ten conference. We’ve seen many changes, including the most recent additions namely Rutgers, and today’s opponent Maryland. In 1896 Michigan became a founding member of the league, then called the Western Conference. The decade that followed saw a rapid rise in the popularity of football. For fans, Saturdays were met with a frenzy, and the small midwest stadiums were overloaded with folks trying to get a firsthand glimpse of these gridiron heroes and coaching superstars.
While this was fun for many, it also created a problem. The game started to take attention away from the primary purpose of these colleges – namely, to educate students! And as the Saturdays rolled on, and the fervor around football exploded and the ticket money rolled in – the power of the athletic departments around the conference grew. This irked the faculty and academic elite at the Big Ten schools – and they decided to do something about it.
The administrators proposed tough rules to restrict the sport: including restricting the schedule to a mere 5 games, limiting player eligibility, taking control of the ticket revenue. And one rule change was aimed directly at Michigan and head coach Fielding H. Yost – they wanted to outlaw the existence of “professional coaches” like Yost, who was not on the U-M faculty.
Michigan’s academic elite supported the measures, but the athletic department viewed the proposed rules as a punishment. They said “no way” and The Wolverines LEFT the BIG ten behind and became an INDEPENDENT for nearly a decade. While we avoid all these restrictions, going it alone was tough – especially scheduling and traveling to find opponents in all of our sports. So in the end, we decided to return and it this day, November 20, 1917, that Michigan was welcomed with open arms to rejoin the conference. By doing so, we officially made it an even TEN teams giving the Western Conference a new nickname — ‘The Big Ten’ It DID NOT take Yost long to get back to his winning ways as in 1918, in the midst of a global pandemic, Michigan ran the table and claimed Yost’s FIFTH NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP.
Go Blue, Beat the Terps! And for more check out MVictors.com and WTKA.com – for the KeyBank Countdown to Kickoff this is Greg Dooley
