SPORTS
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
The Michigan Daily
michigandaily.com
6A
1865
The University
introduces baseball as
the first competitive
varsity sport.
1901
The football team wins its
first national championship.
1879
game, beginning a rich
tradition.
1902
Michigan football
Bowl.
1908
The men’s basketball
team is formed.
Inside 125 years of Michigan sports history
By JAKE LOURIM
Managing Sports Editor
The
history
of
Michigan
athletics
is
told
through
moments.
People remember where they
were when the Michigan football
team outlasted Notre Dame
under the lights at Michigan
Stadium in 2013, one of the
greatest games in Michigan
Stadium’s storied history. They
remember watching as the Fab
Five rose to prominence in the
early
1990s,
captivating
the
nation in the process. They even
remember tragedy, like the day
legendary football coach Bo
Schembechler passed away on
the eve of the historic matchup
between No. 2 Michigan and No.
1 Ohio State in 2006.
Bob Ufer’s radio call of John
Wangler to Anthony Carter in
1979 still rings through people’s
minds.
Photos
of
Charles
Woodson’s No. 1 salute in the
1998 Rose Bowl hang on walls
throughout America. Desmond
Howard’s Heisman pose during
the 1991 Michigan-Ohio State
game is a fixture on college
football highlight reels even
today.
These moments have filled the
pages of The Michigan Daily for
125 years now. Hundreds of Daily
sports writers have been inside
all the action in all that history.
Arguably, nowhere is that
tradition more important than
Michigan. This is a school that
holds onto memories of past
glory as a standard for the future.
It cherishes the connections
forged between teammates and
coaches over the years. It even
measures current success in
relation to the past, most notably
by comparing football coaches
to Schembechler, the program’s
patriarch.
Over the years, Michigan has
laid a foundation of remarkable
consistency. At present, three
varsity coaches are in their 32nd
year at the University: hockey’s
Red Berenson, softball’s Carol
Hutchins and women’s track and
field’s James Henry. From 1921
until 1988, Michigan had just
three total Athletic Directors —
Fielding H. Yost, Fritz Crisler
and Don Canham. The Daily
provided
consistent
coverage
of their rise to the stature they
occupy today.
* * *
The
University’s
athletic
history predates even the Daily’s
by
a
quarter-century.
This
year, Michigan Athletics will
celebrate its 150th anniversary
while the Daily celebrates its
125th.
But the Daily has documented
sports from its outset. It covered
Yost’s famous “point-a-minute”
teams in the early 1900s, back
when a printing press below the
newsroom was used to set type.
A Nov. 12, 1905 story headlined
“SUBSTITUTES
SCORE
FORTY POINTS ON OHIO
STATE” details one of Yost’s
teams’ victory.
“The
most
brilliant
run
ever seen on
Ferry
Field
and the longest
run ever made
anywhere
…
was the one
feature
of
yesterday’s
game with Ohio State,” the Daily
wrote about a long touchdown
run by Al Barlow. “Two forty-
yard
runs
for
touchdowns
made by Garrels complete what
was
undoubtedly
the
most
spectacular game ever seen in
Ann Arbor.”
Circumstances have changed
immeasurably
since
then.
Football is different, the Daily
is different, the writing style
is different, and the University
is different. But the concept
of recording the highs and
lows of Michigan athletics has
remained constant.
Many more stories since Yost’s
teams have garnered much more
attention as the media and the
sports landscape have expanded.
One of the highest-profile stories
was the rise of the Fab Five and
their success during a two-
year run from 1991 to 1993. In
their second year together, they
started
the
season ranked
No. 1 in the
country
and
took opponents
by storm.
“It
was
one of those
situations
where
their
experience
just whipped our behinds,”
legendary Purdue coach Gene
Keady said after the Wolverines
beat
his
ninth-ranked
Boilermakers on Jan. 8, 1993.
“I would not under any
circumstances want to play
Michigan again if they were
playing like that,” said another
legendary coach from the same
state, Bob Knight, after his top-
ranked Hoosiers squeaked past
Michigan a month later.
The Fab Five rolled into the
NCAA Tournament and past
Kentucky in the Final Four.
“A-MAIZE-ING,”
read
the
headline on the front of the
SportsMonday section on April
5, 1993, with a photo of Chris
Webber embracing Jalen Rose
after the game.
The next day, the headline
read “TIME TO LOSE,” with
Leon Derricks consoling Webber
after the star tried to call a
timeout in the final seconds of
the
National
Championship
Game.
So it has gone for the
Daily’s coverage of Michigan’s
triumphs and struggles every
day for 125 years.
* * *
The Fab Five era was a
momentous
period
in
the
University’s history, but the
moments
extend
to
many
different ages, sports and issues.
There have been moments
of pride. In 1989, near the end
of the men’s basketball season,
Schembechler fired coach Bill
Frieder for agreeing to become
the head coach at Arizona State
after the season. “A Michigan
man will coach Michigan!”
Schembechler said.
There have been moments of
change. In 1934, Michigan had
scheduled a football game at
Georgia Tech, but the Yellow
Jackets refused to compete if
the Wolverines played Willis
Ward, a black player on the
team. Michigan forced Ward
to stay home and traveled to
Atlanta for the game, sparking
outrage on campus.
There have been moments
of redemption. In 1968, Ohio
State routed Michigan, 50-14,
when Buckeyes coach Woody
Hayes opted for the two-point
conversion late in a 48-14 game.
He said he did it “because I
couldn’t go for three!” The
next year, Schembechler’s team
stunned No. 1 Ohio State to win
the Big Ten and make the Rose
Bowl.
The rest of Schembechler’s
tenure went down in history
just like the beginning, as he
went 194-48-5 in 21 seasons
and served as an icon for the
Michigan program.
Those icons are all around,
both the presence of current
ones and the memory of past
ones. The Daily has always told
their stories, and will continue
to do so as long as there are
stories to tell.
“A Michigan
man will coach
Michigan!”
FILE PHOTO/Daily
FILE PHOTO/Daily