In this post last week I mentioned that I contacted the Big Ten about their listing of the all-time conference coach rankings by winning percentage. I noticed that Jim Tressel (.823) was on the right on the heels of Fielding Yost (.833): But Yost’s record included all 25 years that he was a coach but we know that Michigan wasn’t in the conference for a big chunk of his tenure. I reran the numbers after removing the years the athletic department lists as out of conference (1907-1918), and the Yost’s winning percentage jumped to .888—a tad out of reach of The Sweatervest. I shot an email to the Big Ten and was told they would look into it. This afternoon Scott Chipman, Assistant Commissioner of Communications, got back to me: We made the change in the weekly release and for next year’s media guide. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. My pleasure! The new weekly release is out and here’s the updated listing: Much better, no? Side note: my pal, writer & historian John Kryk (Natural Enemies) knows his history and argues that Michigan didn’t officially leave the conference until January 1908 (and thus the 1907 should be considered as in conference). The athletic department and the Bentley Library list 1907 as out of conference. I asked Greg…
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Conference Records and The Yost Gap
Jeff Arnold of AnnArbor.com mentioned this in his game notes from Saturday: The 132 points that Michigan and Illinois combined for set a record for a Big Ten conference game. The previous mark was set in 1902 when Michigan and then-Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State) scored 119 points in a 119-0 Wolverines victory. I read that in the paper Sunday but missed this error that MVictors reader "jmblue" points out: By the way, we’ve been told repeatedly that the "highest-scoring Big Ten game" before this was our 119-0 win over Michigan Agricultural College, but that’s not accurate since M.A.C. wasn’t in the conference at the time. Any idea what the highest-scoring actual conference game was? Yes, according to the Big Ten weekly release it was this game: Last Saturday at Michigan Stadium, Illinois and Michigan went to triple overtime and piled up 132 points to shatter the record for combined scoring in a conference game. … The previous Big Ten record for combined scoring in a conference games was 115 points when Minnesota defeated Purdue, 59-56, on Oct. 9, 1993. Other Stuff While browsing through that release I stubbed my toe on a few other items of note. Check these out starting on Page 7 at the bottom under "Current Players Amount Or Nearing Single-Season Leaders". You knew that…