Check out this 1905 petition asking the athletic department to address a few questions about the idea of withdrawing from the Western Conference–a debate that was burning hot on campus obviously: The questions translated, as I see it: 1. Is there any meaningful/tangible penalty (if we leave)?  2. Can we still play conference rivals like Minnesota and Chicago?  3. Whoa – does this mean we can play teams like Penn, Harvard, and Yale?  4. Will people think we are a-holes if we leave?  Good questions.  Answers in hindsight (knowing how this played out once we did indeed leave the Western Conference) IMHO: 1. Not really.2. Not really. (We did play the occasional conference opponent – see Minnesota in 1909 and 1910).3. Kind of.  Michigan did start to schedule some cool eastern schools (we consistently played Penn, Cornell and Syracuse) but overall filling the schedule with quality opponents was a struggle, as was consistently beating the eastern schools.4. Kind of. Note the letter above also makes reference to a student petition specifically asking for Michigan to leave the conference (that would be cool to see as well). In this old post I broke down what happened, and here’s a summary of the provisions/demands put down by the conference a few months later, and a bit on how that affected Michigan: ..Finally,…