Best of the 1900s: Michigan scores a point a minute, Chicago answers and the East monopoly is challe

October 15, 2024

Editor’s note: Throughout the offseason, The Athletic is celebrating the 150th anniversary of college football, one decade at a time. For more on the 1900s, read Michael Weinreb on Saint Louis and the first extensive use of the forward pass.

As the 20th century began, college football entered another decade of crisis, but also one of explosive growth in which challengers emerged to the traditional Eastern powers.

Once again, questions about violence threatened to break apart the sport, so much so that President Teddy Roosevelt got involved to facilitate changes. Numerous new rules enacted in the middle and at the end of the decade were designed to open up the game and tone down the over-the-top physicality. They most notably included the 1906 legalization of the forward pass (albeit with significant restrictions), changing of the first-down distance to 10 yards in three downs, establishment of a neutral zone and shortening of games to 60 minutes.

It would take time for college football to fully evolve with the rules, but it managed to survive the 1905 crisis and find a path forward. Meanwhile, Yale, Princeton, Harvard and Penn continued to win championships but finally got more consistent competition as the game spread.

As Alexander M. Weyand wrote in “The Saga of American Football,” the Big Four had been “an aristocratic little group to which the football world looked for example and guidance.” After the turn of the century, however, “They had served their purpose.” That was due in part to the emergence of teams like Army and Carlisle in the East, but also the rise of Michigan, Chicago and others in the West, with the game starting to grow in the South, as well.

All-1900s team

B: Walter Eckersall, Chicago. After a whirlwind recruitment that illustrated the intense rivalry between Chicago and Michigan, Eckersall was, according to Robin Lester in “Stagg’s University,” stopped by Amos Alonzo Stagg from boarding a train to join Michigan at practically the last minute and enrolled with his hometown Maroons. Despite earning a reputation for being less than studious in the classroom, he lived up to the recruiting hype on the field.

“No quarterback has shown a greater number of qualities than Eckersall showed in his all-around play,” wrote Grantland Rice in picking Eckersall as his all-time All-American quarterback in 1927.

A three-time All-American, Eckersall ushered Chicago into the passing age as a senior but was most known for his kicking prowess, his tackling in the open field and his explosiveness and elusiveness as a runner, which he showed off on a 105-yard kick return against Wisconsin in 1904. Chicago went 39-4-2 in his four years, including his perfect junior season that ended with a championship victory against Michigan in 1905.

B: Willie Heston, Michigan. The defining player of Michigan’s point-a-minute teams under Fielding Yost, Heston began his career at San Jose State before joining Yost in his first season at Michigan in 1901. In Heston’s four years as a halfback, Michigan had a 43-0-1 record and outscored opponents 2,326 to 40.

“Heston was as hard a man to stop as football has ever known,” wrote Rice. “He was off like a flash, starting at top speed and driving through with terrific force. He could break through a line, run an end or hold his own in any broken field. For combined speed and power, Heston has never been surpassed.”

B: Bill Hollenback, Penn. Hollenback began playing as an end in 1904, then missed the 1905 season and returned as a fullback from 1906-08. He earned All-America honors each of those three seasons, including an 11-0-1 campaign as a senior in which the lone blemish was a 6-6 tie against Carlisle. Jim Thorpe gave high praise to Hollenback after both were left injured and physically drained from meeting on the field.

“To my mind Bill Hollenback of Pennsylvania was my greatest and toughest opponent,” wrote Thorpe, according to “The History of American Football.” “I played against him only once, but that was enough to earn him my undying respect and admiration.”

B: Ted Coy, Yale. A three-time All-America fullback from 1907-09, Coy was known for his powerful running but had a well-rounded skill set that allowed him to stand out in the kicking game, too. “He was harder to pull off his feet than a buffalo,” wrote Rice, “and when he hit a tackler in the open field, the tackler usually took out time.” Though Coy was limited after dealing with appendicitis, he captained a perfect team to a championship in 1909.

Ted Coy led Yale with his running and kicking from 1907-09. (Courtesy of the Ivy League)

E: Albert Exendine, Carlisle. Carlisle took advantage of the legalization of the forward pass like few others in the decade, innovating on offense under Pop Warner. Jim Thorpe was on the team in 1907 and ’08, but his brightest years on the football field were still ahead of him. Exendine, who arrived at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School as a teenager in 1899 and began playing football in 1902, proved to be the most effective weapon in the passing attack in 1907.

The highlight of his career was a game at Chicago in which he also shined as a defender. In Carlisle’s 18-4 win to finish a 10-1 season, the Maroons devoted substantial defensive attention to slowing down Exendine. On one play, however, he let Chicago direct him out of bounds, then ran down the sideline, returned to the field and caught a long touchdown pass from Pete Hauser. Exendine went on to a long coaching career.

E: Tom Shevlin, Yale. Shevlin narrowly edges Harvard’s Dave Campbell for this spot. Weyand described Shevlin as a “swashbuckling millionaire from Minnesota” and “one of the most colorful figures in Yale history.” Shevlin captained the undefeated 1905 Yale team and was a first-team All-American in both 1902 and 1904, as well. He was known for his physicality on defense and his big-play ability on kick returns.

L: Paul Bunker, Army. Bunker has the rare distinction of being an All-America tackle in 1901 and halfback in 1902. He gets a spot on the All-1900s team on the line, as he spent the first three years of his career starting at tackle before shifting to the backfield, where he scored two touchdowns in a win against Navy in his final game.

L: Hamilton Fish, Harvard. Born into a prominent New York political family, Fish himself went on to become a longtime U.S. congressman. First, he was a decorated member of the Harvard football team, earning first-team All-America honors in 1908 and 1909 as a 6-foot-4, 200-pound tackle. The Crimson went 17-1-1 those two years, the first seasons under legendary coach Percy Haughton.

L: Adolph “Germany” Schulz, Michigan. Schulz made an immediate impact as a freshman for the Wolverines’ unbeaten 1904 team and starred in 1905, 1907 and 1908, though he often found himself in eligibility controversies. He sat out the 1906 season and had to fight to play in 1908, a debate at the center of Michigan’s ongoing split with the Western Conference. A 1907 All-American, Schulz — listed as big as 6 feet 2, 245 pounds — was regarded as an innovative center credited with roving on defense, like a linebacker, and using spiral snaps on offense.

“He stands as the fastest giant that ever played football,” wrote Rice in 1927, “a human bulwark fast enough to tackle at either end as he brought down his man after the manner of a hawk snaring a quail.”

John DeWitt captained Princeton’s unbeaten 1903 team. (Courtesy of the Ivy League)

L: John DeWitt, Princeton. DeWitt began his career as a tackle and became a two-time All-American guard, captaining Princeton’s undefeated team in 1903. DeWitt was the biggest reason for that unbeaten record, as he returned a blocked kick 80 yards for a touchdown and kicked the game-winning field goal against Yale, in addition to numerous other big plays as a runner and kicker.

“Whenever I think of DeWitt, I think of his great power of leadership,” wrote former Princeton guard William Edwards. “He was an ideal captain. He thought things out for himself. He was the spirit of his team.”

L: Jim Hogan, Yale. The New York Sun’s George Trevor once described Hogan as a “barrel-chested, ox-necked, gorilla-armed tackle” who “had a flair for showmanship.” Hogan starred in Yale’s tackle-back tandem attack, and Walter Camp named him All-America three consecutive seasons from 1902-04, years in which Yale went 43-3-2.

“If you tackled Jim Hogan head on, he would pull you right over backward,” DeWitt once said. “He was the strongest tackle I ever saw. He seemed to have overpowering strength in his legs.”

Best teams of the 1900s

1. 1909 Yale. The way Yale end John Kilpatrick told it, his team barely had to try when shutting out all 10 opponents.

“It may seem a strange thing to say of a team that scored more than 200 points and did not give up a single point in 10 games,” Kilpatrick told football historian Allison Danzig, “but we never played within 40 percent of our potential. We didn’t have to. We knew we could lick anybody and we loafed all the time, particularly in our early games.”

Yale coach Howard Jones later claimed that no opponent crossed Yale’s 28-yard line. Captain Ted Coy was one of six Yale players Walter Camp placed on his 11-man All-America team. In the final game, Yale shut out fellow unbeaten Harvard, 8-0.

Yale did not allow a point in 10 games in 1909. (Courtesy of the Ivy League)

2. 1901 Michigan. Fielding “Hurry Up” Yost upended the Western Conference when he arrived in 1901. The Wolverines had tasted success in the 1890s, with a 10-0 season in 1898, but the run under Yost after the turn of the century far surpassed anything that came before. Though Michigan’s schedules were not particularly strong, the dominance of Yost’s teams was impossible to ignore, even in the East.

Yost’s 1901 team did not allow a point, crushing 11 opponents by a total score of 550-0. Michigan scored 128 on Buffalo in 50 minutes (“Was it football?” read the headline in the Buffalo Express), shut out four conference opponents and ended its season by throttling Stanford 49-0 in Pasadena in the first and only Rose Bowl until the 1915 season.

3. 1900 Yale. After losing a previously unheard of two games in two consecutive years, Yale reclaimed its throne atop college football by outscoring 12 opponents 336-10 in 1900. Yale installed the tackle-back tandem system and wreaked havoc with it, leading to a 28-0 win against Harvard, a 29-5 win at Princeton and a 35-0 win vs. Carlisle. Only Columbia came close, in a 12-5 Yale win.

Walter Camp was never shy about picking Yale players to his All-America team, but 1900 took his hometown favoritism to an extreme: His first team featured two players from Harvard, one from Columbia, one from Penn and seven from Yale, with three Elis on the second team and one on the third team. Thus, every member of the Yale starting lineup received All-America accolades. But given how far Yale was ahead of the pack in 1900, it might not actually be much of a stretch.

4. 1905 Chicago. An intense rivalry developed between Chicago and Michigan and their coaches in the early 1900s. For four years, Yost’s Wolverines got the better of Stagg’s Maroons. That changed on Thanksgiving 1905, when a 2-0 Chicago win on a safety secured an unbeaten championship season. Yale’s perfect record in the East prevented Chicago from claiming an undisputed national championship, but for the first time, the biggest game of the year in all of college football was played in the Midwest.

With a lineup featuring captain Mark Catlin at end, All-American Walter Eckersall at quarterback and future Hall of Fame coach Hugo Bezdek at fullback, the Maroons outscored their 11 opponents 271-5. Only Indiana scored against them, and the Maroons went 7-0 in Western Conference play.

5. 1901 Harvard. On Nov. 24, 1900, Harvard took a 10-0 record to New Haven, only to be humiliated by Yale, 28-0. The Crimson got revenge a year later. Again, they were undefeated heading into the Yale game, with an 11-0 record after beating Penn 33-6 and Dartmouth 27-12. Yale was unbeaten with a tie against Army. The Boston Globe’s headline said it all: “Harvard 22, Yale 0 … Crimson gives the Blue saddest surprise in history.”

Led by captain Dave Campbell, Harvard delivered Yale its most lopsided loss until 1914.

“Never before since time began was there such a rip-roaring, halcyon celebration of anything in downtown Boston as there was last night,” wrote the Globe. One famous fan regretted not being able to attend: “There is but one objection to being president,” Teddy Roosevelt telegraphed Harvard, “that I could not have been to the game today or to your banquets tonight.”

All-America end Dave Campbell (Courtesy of Harvard Athletics)

6. 1905 Yale. Amid a brutal year of football that led to substantial rule changes, Yale pulled off one last undefeated season in the pre-passing era. Though it played only two games away from home, it navigated a difficult schedule in which it outscored 10 opponents 227-4 under coach Jack Owsley and captain Tom Shevlin. The season ended with a 23-4 rout of Princeton and a 6-0 shutout at Harvard, and Yale can claim a co-championship for the season with Chicago.

7. 1902 Michigan. The Wolverines of 1901 set an almost impossible standard, but Yost’s second team in Ann Arbor continued to blow away just about all competition. Though they actually gave up 12 points, they averaged 58.5 points per game, a number boosted by a 119-0 win vs. Michigan State, a 107-0 win vs. Iowa and an 86-0 win vs. Ohio State. Michigan edged Wisconsin 6-0 in its only close game (the Badgers crossed midfield only once) and gave both Chicago and Minnesota their only Western Conference losses. Willie Heston and quarterback Boss Weeks were both given some All-America recognition.

8. 1903 Princeton. Led by captain John DeWitt, the Tigers smothered teams with suffocating defense, shutting out 10 consecutive opponents before beating Yale, 11-6, in New Haven to end a perfect season. That win at Yale was no small feat, given that the Elis were otherwise unbeaten. Earlier that season, Michigan finally stumbled in a tie against Minnesota, and thus the Tigers stand out as a clear-cut champion, given that 11-0 Nebraska’s schedule was not yet in the same ballpark.

9. 1904 Penn. The Quakers’ last unbeaten, untied championship team barely escaped Swarthmore, 6-4, in the second game, a performance that led to The Philadelphia Inquirer writing, “Probably a more wretched exhibition of generalship was never given on Franklin Field.” Penn soon found its form under coach Carl Williams. The Quakers didn’t allow a point the rest of the season, beating Harvard 12-0 and Carlisle 18-0 before thumping Pop Warner and Cornell 34-0 on Thanksgiving. The backfield was led by All-American quarterback Vince Stevenson, known for hurdling opponents, and fullback Andy Smith, who would become a Hall of Fame coach at Cal.

10. 1901 Wisconsin. The Badgers were overshadowed by Yost and Michigan, and the fact that they played only two Western Conference opponents lowers their stock (as it does for 1904 Michigan, which could also be in this spot). But Phil King’s run of success deserves recognition. From 1896-1902, Wisconsin went 57-9-1, peaking with a 9-0 record in 1901. With a team featuring Eddie Cochems, who kickstarted the passing era as coach at Saint Louis, the Badgers outscored opponents 317-5, including consecutive road routs of Minnesota (18-0) and Chicago (35-0) to end the season, plus one of only three losses dealt to Nebraska in a four-year period.

Michigan at Chicago, 1905 (Geo. R. Lawrence photo, retrieved from the Library of Congress)

Best games of the 1900s

1. 1905: Chicago 2, Michigan 0. With 27,000 fans packed into Marshall Field on Thanksgiving, Amos Alonzo Stagg and Chicago shut down Fielding Yost’s dynasty. Though 1905 was a tumultuous year for football, particularly in the East, debates about the future of the game were an afterthought on the holiday in Chicago, where the undefeated Maroons met the undefeated Wolverines in a tense showdown that acted as the early 1900s version of LSU’s win vs. Alabama in 2011.

Chicago had an advantage with the spectacular punting and decision-making of quarterback Walter Eckersall. At one point in the second half, with Chicago backed up near its own goal line, Eckersall faked a punt and ran out of danger to the 22-yard line. Stagg called it “the most daring play I ever saw in a championship game.” Eckersall also made several key tackles. With about 10 minutes left and Chicago around midfield, Eckersall launched a punt that carried into the end zone, where Denny Clark fielded it. Clark made the mistake of taking it out across the goal line, and he was soon thrown back over by Mark Catlin for a safety, the only two points Chicago would need to vanquish Michigan — the Wolverines’ only loss in 57 games in Yost’s first five seasons — and claim a championship.

“The scene which followed was a mad one,” wrote the Chicago Tribune. “Chicago men fairly tore down the fences around the enclosure to get at their players. Instantly Catlin and his men were surrounded by a howling, pushing throng, and as fast as they could be reached, the players were lifted on the proud shoulders of their admirers and carried in triumph from the battlefield.”

2. 1907: Carlisle 23, Harvard 15. Carlisle had pushed Harvard in 10 previous meetings, but the Crimson remained unbeaten in the series. Carlisle vowed to change that in Pop Warner’s return to the sideline in 1907, a year in which the team, led by end Albert Exendine and quarterback Frank Mount Pleasant, unleashed an innovative passing attack. Though Carlisle lost to Princeton, 16-0, after winning its first seven games, it went to Cambridge the next week confident it could finally beat the undefeated Crimson. A crowd of 30,000 watched Carlisle put the future of football on display.

“It was a game in which the Indians, playing the best football they ever have played, showed the wonderful possibilities of the new game,” wrote The Boston Globe.

Carlisle passed its way to the first touchdown and led 12-10 at halftime, and it took control of the game when Mount Pleasant ran a kick back 75 yards for a touchdown. Harvard cut the lead to 18-15, but with injuries mounting, it couldn’t keep up, and another Carlisle pass set up the game-sealing touchdown.

“Forward passes, double passes, delayed passes and fakes, crisscrosses, quarterback runs, dives through the tackles and mad dashes at the ends were reeled off in bewildering succession,” the Globe wrote. “Harvard was simply phased.”

3. 1903: Princeton 11, Yale 6. Undefeated Princeton and Yale met for the championship in New Haven in a game that lives on more than others from those days because Thomas Edison had a cameraman there, filming the scene.

The star of the day was Princeton All-American John Dewitt, who, despite missing a few field goals, allowed the Tigers to overcome what may have been a superior Yale team. Yale, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, “was the aggressor throughout the greater part of the game and the feeling on the Princeton side of the field was hope rather than confidence.”

But with Yale leading 6-0, DeWitt broke through the line, blocked a field goal and returned it about 80 yards for a touchdown, tying the score at 6 just before halftime. The game turned into a stalemate in the second half until the closing minutes, when DeWitt booted a five-point 43-yard field goal to give Princeton the 11-6 win.

4. 1904: Army 11, Yale 6. The Cadets had previously given the Elis problems, but they had yet to taste victory against college football’s preeminent program. For Army, it didn’t matter how a win was achieved; it did not matter that, after the game, newspaper accounts agreed that Yale mostly outplayed Army, and that, according to the New York Tribune, “It would, indeed, be fair to describe the Army’s victory as won by a fluke, or to be more accurate, two flukes.”

Early in the game, Yale punted from its own 35-yard line. It was blocked by Army, and William Erwin gathered the ball and outran Yale All-American Tom Shevlin on the way to a touchdown. It did not take long for Yale to respond with a touchdown of its own, tying the score at 6. Late in the second half, Yale advanced toward what could have been its winning points. Instead, at the 7-yard line, James Bloomer was hit hard and fumbled the ball. Army’s Henry Torney recovered and burst into the open field, running 103 yards for the game-winning touchdown.

5. 1903: Minnesota 6, Michigan 6. From 1901-05, Michigan played 57 games: It won 54 times by double digits, it won once by single digits (6-0 vs. Wisconsin, 1902), it tied once and it lost once. When the Wolverines went to Minnesota on Halloween 1903, they carried with them a 29-game winning streak in which they had allowed only 12 points, six of which were scored by Minnesota in a 23-6 Michigan win in 1902.

Under Dr. Henry L. Williams, Minnesota finished 14-0-1 in 1903 and 13-0 in 1904, and the peak of the era may have actually been the one tie, given the stature of Michigan and the dramatic way it happened.

After a scoreless first half, Michigan All-American Willie Heston took charge, carrying the Wolverines to a touchdown that gave them a 6-0 lead. It appeared that Michigan would win with that margin until a final desperation drive that ended when Minnesota substitute Egil Boeckman plunged over the goal line and the Gophers successfully converted the goal after for a 6-6 tie, sending the crowd spilling onto the field. The Detroit Free Press wrote that there were actually two minutes left, but the combination of the crowd rushing the field and the approaching sunset ended the game.

In the aftermath, Michigan left behind its water jug. Minnesota kept it, saying that Michigan would need to win it back. It did so the next time they met in 1909, and the Little Brown Jug rivalry was born.

6. 1907: Yale 12, Princeton 10. Double-digit comebacks were rarities in the early days of football, and the drama in New Haven on Nov. 16, 1907, was even more pronounced because of the stakes: Though Princeton had a loss and Yale had a tie, the door was open for Yale to claim a championship in a year in which no other major teams had zero losses.

A win appeared hopeless for Yale after a first half in which Princeton’s Albert Booth blocked a kick and ran 70 yards for a touchdown — the team’s first against Yale in four years — and the Tigers added a field goal to lead 10-0. But the Elis had a budding star in their backfield: Ted Coy took over the game, along with quarterback Tad Jones making an impact as a runner and passer. Coy went over the goal line for both Yale touchdowns, and both extra points were converted to give Yale a 12-10 comeback win.

7. 1904: Navy 10, Princeton 9. Navy had put together a few stellar seasons, but it had not won games against the top programs like Princeton. Fortunes changed after Paul Dashiell became head coach in 1904. When the Tigers traveled to Annapolis on Oct. 15, they were the defending national champions, boasting a 16-game winning streak. They left with a shocking upset loss.

“The game abounded in an abundance of sensational and hair-raising plays,” wrote The Baltimore Sun.

Princeton led 4-0 early after a field goal, but the Midshipmen took the lead by recovering a fumbled punt return behind the goal line for a touchdown. The Tigers then retook the lead late in the first half with a touchdown, though Navy came up with a crucial block on the extra point. With five minutes left, substitute Navy quarterback Homer “Kid” Norton sailed a field goal through the uprights for four points and a 10-9 lead. Navy then blocked two Princeton field goals in the final minutes to secure the win.

8. 1906: Michigan 10, Vanderbilt 4. Dan McGugin, who played for Yost at Michigan, spent one year as an assistant, then took the South by storm as head coach at Vanderbilt. In his first season, the Commodores outscored teams 474-4. The next year, Yost and Michigan played host to McGugin, a game the Wolverines won 18-0. In 1906, however, a season in which Michigan played just five games amid rule changes, McGugin nearly beat his mentor, friend and brother-in-law at his own game.

The Commodores were otherwise unbeaten, and Michigan had lost one game since Yost took over in 1901. The teams played a tense contest, with the Detroit Free Press writing that “each team once had the ball within two yards of its opponents’ goal” in the first half without scoring. But John Garrels made a field goal for Michigan in the first half, and Dan Blake finally made one for Vanderbilt amid several misses. The score held at 4-4 until late, when Garrels faked a punt, picked up blocks, ran free and then dragged Blake the final few yards past the goal line for a 70-yard game-winning touchdown.

9. 1908: Chicago 18, Wisconsin 12. By 1908, Michigan had left the Western Conference amid eligibility disputes. With a shortened schedule, the championship ran through Madison: Wisconsin was merely 2-0 in conference play, and Chicago was 4-0-1, its lone blemish being a tie vs. Cornell. The famed career of Walter Eckersall — who had tormented Wisconsin in his career — ended in 1906, but the Maroons unleashed a new All-American quarterback as his replacement, Wally Steffen.

In his final game, Steffen returned the opening kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown, nearly matching Eckersall’s 105-yard punt return four years earlier. Wisconsin soon answered, with future Hall of Fame Ohio State coach John Wilce scoring a touchdown, but the Maroons added two more touchdowns to lead 18-6 at halftime. In the second half, Chicago nearly put the game away but turned the ball over after reaching the 1-yard line. Wisconsin responded by putting on an impressive passing display with John Messmer, and a Wilce touchdown cut the lead to 18-12. The Maroons finally adjusted and held on to claim the Western championship.

10. 1909: Lafayette 6, Princeton 0. One play can make an entire game worth remembering, and it’s especially true in the years when final scores were routinely in the single digits. For nearly the entire afternoon, Princeton and Lafayette appeared destined for a repeat of their scoreless meeting in 1908, thanks to timely defensive plays by Lafayette and superb punting by third-team All-American George McCaa. Frank Irmschler, a backup senior halfback, had other ideas.

On the final play of the game, Princeton’s Logan Cunningham set up for a drop-kick for the win. (Cunningham had previously hit the goal post on a long field goal attempt.) The ball barely got off his foot. Irmschler rushed in and stole the ball, then sprinted 85 yards for a touchdown and Lafayette’s first win against Princeton. Led by McCaa — who had a 110-yard touchdown against Swarthmore — the Leopards went on to finish 7-0-1, the lone blemish being a tie against Penn.

Fielding Yost and star halfback Willie Heston (U-M Library Digital Collections. Bentley Image Bank, Bentley Historical Library)

Best coaches of the 1900s

1. Fielding Yost, Michigan. Yost arrived in Ann Arbor in 1901 prepared to revolutionize football. Passing was not legal until 1906, but Yost was so far ahead of the curve with the Wolverines that only one opponent seriously threatened them in his first two and a half years. From 1901-05, Yost’s fast-paced teams won 55 games, tied one and lost one, the only loss coming in the last game of the five-year stretch. During that time, Michigan outscored opponents 2,821 to 42, giving the program its “point-a-minute” moniker. In the decade, Yost went 75-6-2 and is credited with the first four of his career total of six national titles.

“Speed and more speed was continually emphasized,” All-American Willie Heston told historian Allison Danzig.

2. Amos Alonzo Stagg, Chicago. After helping build the University of Chicago from scratch and establishing the Maroons as a budding football power in the Midwest in the 1890s, Stagg reached the prime of his long coaching career in the 1900s. Though Yost’s presence at Michigan was a roadblock, Stagg had a record of 81-18-8 in these 10 years, peaking with the 11-0 season in 1905 in which the Maroons ended the Michigan dynasty. On and off the field, Stagg became widely recognized as one of the most influential coaches in sports history.

3. Pop Warner, Carlisle/Cornell. Warner, one of the most innovative coaches ever, was ahead of the curve in taking advantage of the forward pass. He coached at Carlisle from 1898-1903, returned to his alma mater, Cornell, for three seasons, and then went back to Carlisle through 1914. In this decade, Warner had a record of 79-30-7, but he hit his stride in the second half, particularly in unleashing a wide-open offense at Carlisle that led to a 10-1 mark and wins at Harvard and Chicago in 1907.

4. Henry L. Williams, Minnesota. Before taking over at Minnesota in 1900, Williams — a meticulous tactician — helped install his tackle-back tandem offense at Yale, and Yale used it to run roughshod over most of the opposition. Meanwhile, Williams went to the Midwest, where he was overshadowed by Chicago and Michigan but nevertheless achieved success. His Golden Gophers were the only team to even tie Michigan from 1901-04, and he posted a record of 80-10-7 in the decade, including a 27-0-1 run in 1903-04.

5. Dan McGugin, Vanderbilt. Just two years after his playing days at Michigan ended, McGugin took over at Vanderbilt in 1904. He coached Vanderbilt for 30 seasons, initially overwhelming the opposition in the South with Yost’s system. McGugin started with a 9-0 season in which Vandy allowed four points in 1904, and from 1904-09, he compiled a record of 51-8-3, making him the foremost coach in the South in the decade, though John Heisman would soon catch up.

(Top photo of 1901 Michigan team: U-M Library Digital Collections, Bentley Image Bank, Bentley Historical Library)

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