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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TWIMFbH: Stanford, ‘73 and a Salute to the Big Ten
Salute! via Dr. Sap’s archives The Stanford Cardinals (yes, s) came to town exactly 39 years ago Saturday and surely braced themselves to face Bo Schembechler in the 1973 home opener. TWIMFbH gets into that game and much more. Have a listen…includes a couple salutes to the great Bob Ufer: [display_podcast] As discussed in the clip, the boys from Palo Alto hold a special place in Michigan football history as they were the lambs opponents vs. Fielding Yost’s undefeated, untied, and unscored upon Point-A-Minute crew in the 1902 Rose Bowl. Staring at a 49-0 deficit with eight minutes still left in the game, the Indians found the only white towel that wasn’t blood-stained and waved it, begging for mercy. It was granted. Fast forward nearly four decades and it was once again Stanford who faced another one of the finest Wolverines squads in history—this time Fritz Crisler, Bob Chappuis and the Mad Magicians of 1947. Once again Michigan hung 49 (to Stanford’s 13) on October 4, 1947. Bo Schembechler didn’t hold back either when the Cardinals visited in ‘73, thirty-nine years ago this Saturday, in fact he practically beat the “s” of the Stanford nickname (although that wouldn’t officially happen until 1981), winning 47-10. But ‘73 is better remembered by U-M fans by the vote of Big Ten commissioners that…
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Can you Spot the Ringer? (1899)
Listed on eBay as a 1936 wire pic featuring the great Point-A-Minute back Willie Heston, it’s actually an 1899 team photo of the team from San Jose State: Someone went through a little process of elimination to identify Heston: It’s the first time I’ve seen Heston photographed in his pre-Wolverine days. Arguably the finest back in Michigan history, it’s true that he didn’t start his collegiate days as a Wolverine. He played two seasons in San Jose before following Yost to Ann Arbor. Yost discovered Heston on his short coaching stint in California 1899, where apparently he coached anyone with a pigskin in the gym. As I understand it, Yost not only coached the collegians at Stanford but also helped out on Heston’s San Jose squad, at local Lowell High school and taught the Stanford freshman team as well. Heston wasn’t the only fellow that seemed to have caught Yost’s eye out on the west coast. He also convinced San Jose prep star George Gregory to come to Ann Arbor and some claimed Yost offered Gregory cash, as much as $1500, to come to Michigan. His old boss, Stanford President David Jordan, was the primary accuser and it apparently played out for nearly a decade. Check out this entertaining news clipping from many years later, January 3, 1908, in fact,…
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Forty-Nine More to the Left Column (1939)
Look at this 1939 wire photo of Michigan’s Grand Old Man, Fielding H. “Hurry Up” Yost looking at a team photo of his dominant 1901 squad. Yost is pointing to the great Willie Heston but it’s not clear why: Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time a wire shot has shown up on eBay featuring someone holding a photo of Yost’s dominant 1901 squad. Back in March, I did a short post on a Rose Bowl beauty queen from 1938 holding a large photo of the point-a-minute squad: Here’s one thing I didn’t notice in that March post. In the team pic featured in the wire photo of the beauty queen and in today’s auction with Yost, the writing on the ball held by captain Hugh White reads “550-0”. But in the official team photo (obviously the original) at the Bentley Library page for the ’01 squad, that ball reads “501-0” (right): Back in those days, the team gathered for the team photo after the season, to not only take the picture but also to select the captain of next year’s team. Michigan was undefeated and outscored its opposition by the 501 to nothing margin—at least up to that point. So they snapped the photo but they had one more game to play that year and which was…
