If you read this site somewhat regularly you’re familiar with the work of my pal and football historian (Natural Enemies) John Kryk. Well, in good news for football fans everywhere, Kryk recently was named as the NFL columnist for the Toronto Sun, & according to the paper he’ll be “the first full-time, year-round NFL beat columnist in Canadian sports journalism history.” So what can we expect from Kryk? We’ll see—but based on the evidence his first few columns there’ll be the occasional nugget of Michigan football history. Check Kryk’s piece on Tom Brady this week that focuses in on a single moment of brilliance in the ‘99 Penn State game. It wasn’t a TD toss or a sharp pass or even the start of a key drive. It was a critical, seemingly unconventional decision to do nothing…that is, just let the play clock run out despite having a couple timeouts. Kryk explains here. And yesterday Kryk took us back a century ago Friday when football enacted sweeping rules changes (including the opinion of Fielding Yost) that altered the face of the game forever : It was exactly 100 years ago Friday — Feb. 3, 1912 — that the U.S. college football rules committee (there was no pro league yet) agreed to pass the last of a series of sweeping, epochal…
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Yost and Ohio Wesleyan (1897)
Ohio Wesleyan was Yost’s first head coaching job and he led the Battling Bishops to a 7-1-1 record. I don’t believe they were part of a conference (they would be part of the formation of the Ohio Atlantic Conference in 1902) so as Yost tended to do, he simply declared his fine team “Champions of Ohio”. Good on you, FHY.
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Michigan Stadium Construction Photos, and The Buried Crane Myth (1927)
A few rare, possibly never seen before by the public, photos of the Michigan Stadium construction (1927):
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Fielding Yost’s New Packard (1927)
Check out this wonderful signed photo of Fielding H. Yost posing next to a vintage car in front of the original Michigan Stadium press box (photo above).