• 1902 Usher’s Ribbon (Michigan-Minnesota)

    August 21, 2012 /

    So you don’t see many authentic items on eBay that fall inside the Yost Point-A-Minute era from 1901 to 1905.   There’s one up now. So check out this Usher’s ribbon for the Thanksgiving day game held on November 27, 1902.  It’s the last game played between the Gophers and Wolverines that didn’t involve a certain water crock.  It wasn’t until the following year, 1903, that the Little Brown Jug was purchased in Minneapolis, left behind after the game, and reclaimed by Michigan in 1909…and the rest is college football history.  Looking at the Usher’s ribbon, it looks to be authentic, although I’m not suggesting that someone would have the stones to forge such a thing, but you never know.  Having written on this stuff for a while now when I first spotted the ribbon I knew I’d seen that font style before.  Sure enough, on this vintage MVictors post from 2006, you clearly see the athletic department favored that print type on official materials including this 1901 season athletic pass that I’d give my right pinky to have on my wall. The usher who donned this silk ribbon watched Michigan take down the Gophers 23-6 in the ‘02 season finale.  Yost and crew once again ran the table finishing the season a perfect 11-0, outscoring opponents 644-12 to claim the…

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  • Can you Spot the Ringer? (1899)

    April 24, 2011 /

    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)

    October 4, 2010 /

    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…

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  • Vintage Rose Bowl Cheer (1902)

    December 23, 2009 /

    Here’s a pic currently for sale from the turn of the last century at the inaugural Rose Bowl and more specifically, from the actual “Floral” Parade prior to the game.  Funny, it looks like Willie Heston and crew are decked in their game uniforms and presumably taking the wagon directly from the parade route to the game!:

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