Had a great time joining my man Rishi Narayan on his fresh new podcast, South U Stories. I nutshelled a few fun stories involving Chicago's Amos Alonzo Stagg and Michigan's Fielding H. Yost, check it out:
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Where is Willie?! Kryk on Heston, Carter, Woodson
Super pissed. ESPN's CFB150 list snubbed a bunch of all-time greats. But Willie Heston? John Kryk explains how bad of a snub this really was.
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Michigan’s Most Painful Moments
With Colorado visiting Saturday and their choice to supposedly wear 1994 throwback jerseys, I’ll revisit the top moments where the Wolverine faithful were punched in their collective giblets. The focus is on specific devastating moments in games, not necessarily the totality of the game. First off, sadly enough and while certainly devastating, here are the honorable miserable mention moments: 2001 Spartan Bob stops Clock/TD pass to TJ Duckett (East Lansing vs. MSU) 1990 Desmond mugging (Ann Arbor vs. MSU) 1973 Mike Lantry misses 44 yard FG (Ann Arbor vs. OSU) 2013 Failed/intercepted 2 point conversion to win The Game (Ann Arbor vs. OSU) 1980 Harry Oliver nails 51-yard FG into the suddenly still wind (South Bend vs. Notre Dame) HT: John Kryk 2016 “JT was short” The list: #6 ‘The Catch’ (vs. Colorado @ Michigan Stadium, 1994) The Moment: With six seconds remaining down 26-21, Colorado’s Kordell Stewart hurls the pigskin 70 yards and finds Michael Westbrook: Why it sucked so hard: It was a big game, at home, and Michigan seemingly had the game sealed.Why it might not be as bad as (see #1): While Michigan seemingly had the game sealed, Colorado still had the ball in their hands. As brutal as that was, Hail Mary’s happen. They even have a name for them. Stewart made a perfect…
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TWIMFbH: Let’s Finally Play (Most of) A Football Game. Fergodsakes. (2011)
Brady trots out of the tunnel for the first time (& leaves headset in locker room by mistake) To kickoff the sixth season of This Week in Michigan Football History we dip back to 2011, to the official start of the last glorious period of redemption for Michigan football. Yes, our friends from Kalamazoo visited the Big House for a bizarre and historic day, when an otherwise obscure figure in Wolverine history made history as did Mother Nature. Dig it: [display_podcast] Don’t forget to catch the whole KeyBank Countdown to Kickoff on WTKA starting 4 hours before each game, and of course live in the Bud Light Victors Lounge when they lace them up in Ann Arbor. For those so inclined, here’s a little more from my 2011 post on the history of games ending early: It’s certainly not the first Michigan football game to end before the planned allotted time. Most notably two of the most famous games in college football history ended early: The 1902 Rose Bowl (the first bowl game ever played) ended with plenty of time on the clock because Yost, Heston and crew were putting a colossal smack down on Stanford. From the Bentley: With eight minutes remaining in the game, Stanford captain Ralph Fisher approached the Wolverine bench and offered to concede; Michigan consented.…
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The Brilliance of 1901, Michigan Football
Friends, fans, or mere passers-by of this site. Read this excerpt. Buy Stagg vs. Yost. This is a masterpiece that will be read and taught through the ages, and Kryk has offered up an exclusive morsel to you – the readers of MVictors. A huge thanks to John and his publisher and the U-M Bentley Historical Library for this exclusive including several of the photos – I know you will love it: – – – – Yost’s 1901 Wolverines: perfection and roses Fielding H. Yost’s first Michigan team in 1901 smacked Amos Alonzo Stagg’s Chicago Maroons by the largest score so far in the 10-year series, 22-0 — the Wolverines’ eighth win in eight tries, all by shutout. Afterward, Stagg acted as he usually did after a team clobbered him on the field: he counter-punched as hard as he could off it. Days after the Nov. 16 game, Stagg filed a protest to UM authorities, charging that starting Wolverine left end Curtis Redden was a professional, for evidently pocketing an $11 prize as a youth after having won sprint races at a town sports meet. UM authorities mulled the matter while Redden on the following Saturday played in Michigan’s 15-touchdown, 89-0 destruction of Beloit in 30-minute halves — a near repeat of the 128-0 University of Buffalo slaughter. Upon launching…
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TWIMFbH – The RichRod Era and To Hell With Notre Dame (2008+)
This Week..heads back to September 6, 2008 with RichRod looking for his first win in Ann Arbor against Miami, OH. For obvious reasons we quickly spin away from 2008 and take a little Notre Dame/Michigan history, specifically to the cancelation of 1910 that tossed gasoline on the rivalry: [display_podcast] You can catch all of the This Week in Michigan Football History clips here…And don’t forget to catch it live Saturday on the KeyBank Countdown to kick-off on WTKA 1050AM or inside the Bud Light Victors Lounge starting at 8am. For more on the Notre Dame Rivalry: Teaching Notre Dame Modern Football (1887) When Michigan Canceled The Notre Dame Series | 1910 Yost Gets a Dog to Get Shorty’s Goat (1910) Get Natural Enemies (by John Kryk) #THWND! Follow MVictors on Twitter
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Marooons In Memoriam
From the front page of September 24, 1940 edition of the Michigan Daily, announcing the demise of the once-great University of Chicago football program: So why did one of the original members of the Big Ten, who brought us the heralded Coach Amos Alonzo Stagg (and Fritz Crisler, for that matter), ditch football? This issue of Sports Illustrated from 1954 put it nicely: The University of Chicago abandoned intercollegiate football in 1939 because the game hampered the university’s efforts to become the kind of institution it aspired to be. The university believed that it should devote itself to education, research and scholarship. Intercollegiate football has little to-do with any of these things and an institution that is to do well in them will have to concentrate upon them and rid itself of irrelevancies, no matter how attractive or profitable. Football has no place in the kind of institution Chicago aspires to be. It has been argued that Chicago is different. Perhaps it is and maybe it is just that difference that enabled the university to separate football from education. That’s sweet and all, but methinks the 85-0 beating at the hands of Tom Harmon’s Wolverines in 1939 had a hand in it as well. Here’s one of my favorite all-time photos featuring Tom Harmon cooling off on the sidelines during…
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Fritz Gives Reader’s Digest the Gas Face
I always like to check out the old letters that pop up on eBay for stuff just like this. Back in 1962 athletic director Fritz Crisler submitted a story to Reader’s Digest on his college coach and mentor, Chicago legend Amos Alonzo Stagg. [As an aside, there’s a copy of the story at the Bentley Library in Crisler’s archives and I plan to check it out.] Fritz clearly had a deep admiration for his former coach. Heck, Sports Illustrated, in its wonderful 1964 piece on Crisler ‘The Man Who Changed Football’ even suggested the ‘1’ in the Michigan Stadium attendance might actually be reserved for Stagg!: It was his secret. But anyone is entitled to guess, and one guess might be that somewhere in that vast stadium there is this one seat, and perhaps it is never sold. Perhaps it is reserved, now and forever, for someone who taught Fritz Crisler a way of coaching football and a way of life. For the Old Man, Amos Alonzo Stagg. So coupling Crisler’s demeanor, his air-tight professionalism, and his admiration for his mentor I’m guessing Fritz put a lot of thought into the words he chose for this story for Reader’s Digest. So what could go wrong? Well thanks to Mr. Myron Green of Worcester, Mass, we know that Crisler was none-too-happy…
