Today (9/28/2020) would have marked Tom Harmon’s 101st birthday. Here’s my salute to Michigan’s great 1940 Heisman Trophy recipient, Old 98.
What better way to mark this occasion than to relive this incident during the 1940 Cal game? After deking out several Bear defenders, Harmon faces one more “Cal” man near the endzone. It’s a half-pickled fan named Harold Brennan who had enough of Terrible Tommy and decided to take matters into his own hands.
This all went down 80 years ago this Saturday as well on Harmon’s 21st birthday:
A funny thing happened after I first posted this years ago. I noticed that at around 00:57 seconds in, the choir sings the words “Down the Field” in Varsity just as the #2 photo from Life appears with the caption “Down the Field.” Creepy weird, man. Like watching-The-Wizard-of-Oz-while-playing-Dark-Side-of-the-Moon weird.
An interesting outtake – it turns about Brennan and Harmon actually stayed in touch years after this incident, even exchanging Christmas cards!
Here’s just the video of clip of Harmon vs. Cal from 1940:
8 Comments
Brad
Great Post !!!!!!
What a special player he was. I wish that I knew more about him. Did he play offense and defense? I think he did. What position did he play on defense? Or did he just line up anywhere?
I think I have an old Life magazine around here with him in it.
Do you know if he appeared in Life magazine more than once?
Thanx, Brad
medals
fantastic work. I never heard that story before.
John Lofy
There’s a great story about Harmon’s record at UM and in World War Two in the Michigan Today archives (click here)
Greg (MVictors)
@John Lofy
Thanks guys – and thanks for the link John.
Greg (MVictors)
Thanks Stan – there’s actually two typos on that slide. I don’t have an editor. Glad you got a LOL out of that.
C. Fries
Harmon was great – he was great to watch. I lived in Ann Arbor at that time – saw every home game. He played both offense and defense. The “two platoon” system came later. He had help – We must not forget Forest Eveshevsky (sp) who blocked for him. He too was great. On more than one occasion I saw him block three at a time. He was a part of Harmon’s success.
aawolve
Fantastic, thanks for that piece of comedy history that I absolutely would have missed if not for your site.
Kevin
I did not know about the mace not being a baton. Or if it is fumbled (the best word I can think of) throwing it through the goal posts is bad luck. I never heard the story about some guy trying to tackle Harmon. Nor had I heard of getting a 2 John Daly cocktail penalty before. I quit drinking a very long time ago and shudder to think what that would do to my golf game. I learned a lot today and can’t wait to share with my UM family and friends,