When people hear “Michigan played the Marines,” they assume it was a casual intramural base squad. It wasn’t. The Quantico Marines were a national powerhouse, essentially functioning as an elite, semi-professional traveling team of grown men, many of whom were rugged World War I veterans. This bulletin is signed by Commandant John A. Lejeune himself. Lejeune used the football team as a massive public relations weapon to keep the Marine Corps relevant and well-funded in the peaceful 1920s. Sending 1,500 armed, uniformed Marines and their legendary band into Ann Arbor via a dedicated train was a calculated show of military pageantry. The article mentions Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby (the former Michigan center from 1895). What it doesn’t mention is that at the exact moment he was sitting in the stands watching his alma mater play the Leathernecks, Denby was secretly drowning in the biggest political scandal of the century: The Teapot Dome Scandal. Denby had recently signed over control of emergency naval oil reserves to the Department of the Interior, which secretly leased them to private oil companies for bribes. Within a few months of this game, Denby would be forced to resign in disgrace under threat of Senate impeachment. And he wasn’t the only big name in the crowd. Look closely at who else showed up to…