This Week In Michigan Football History, as played during the WTKA 1050AM ‘Countdown to Kickoff’ held November 21, 2020 before the Michigan-Rutgers game.
Topics: We start with the finale of the glorious 1964 Michigan Wolverines regular season and the 10-0 triumph over Ohio State, as well as their dominant 34-7 conclusion over Oregon State in the Rose Bowl. We then roll back to 1903 with a brief review of the beating of Oberlin College that set up the Thanksgiving Day battering of Amos Alonzo Stagg and the Chicago Maroons, 28-0 at Marshall Field.
“Dig it”:
This post is brought to you by my friend Nick Hopwood, CFP at Peak Wealth Management.
Full script:
Good afternoon – did you know that November 21st is a glorious day in Michigan football lore, as it was on this day in 1964 that coach Bump Elliott and Captain Jim Conley stifled Woody Hayes 10 to nothing down in Columbus to capture the Big Ten title and send the team to the Rose Bowl. And we won that too, crushing Oregon State 34-7 in Pasadena.
It’s also the anniversary of a game deeper in history, all the way back to 1903. It was the final home game in Fielding H. Yost’s third season in Ann Arbor when Meechigan faced the men from Oberlin College. Yost actually rested the big guns for this one, saving them for the huge upcoming Thanksgiving Day game against rivals Amos Alonzo Staff and Chicago. As expected, the Victors Valiant crushed Oberlin 42 to nothing in a game mercifully shortened. Stagg himself was in Ann Arbor on this day 117 years ago scout Michigan ahead of the big showdown in the Windy City.
The short week that followed brought a blizzard to the Midwest, but the snow let up the morning of the highly touted match-up. Marshall Field was cleared of 7 inches of snow before the game and as it turned out, that seemingly was the final obstacle in Yost’s way as he unleashed a world of hurt on the Maroons.
Meechigan scored on nearly every drive of the first half, gained over 300 yards while the defense gave up just a single first down. Though Stagg’s 1903 team featured three future College Football Hall of Fame inductees the Wolverines continued the domination in the second half and sealed the 28-0 shutout.
Unfortunately for Stagg the beating only lingered as the newspapers piled on. The Free Press called it “he most severe drubbing ever administered to the Maroons”, another writer observed, “Chicago was not beaten – it was run over, buffeted about, almost made sport of”.
Yost himself, whose teams had pummeled opponents since 1901, called the effort the best he had ever seen by a Meeechigan team and the Yostmen captured their 3rd straight national championship.
So Go Blue, Beat Rutgers (please!) and for more, checking MVictors.com and WTKA.com – for the KeyBank Countdown to Kickoff this is Greg Dooley.
