Perfection has a lengthy and storied history at Michigan even though national championships have avoided the program for nearly 50 years. Remember, Michigan is the winningest team in Division I history with 775 victories over the 118 years of the program's existence, and this year's undefeated season is the school's 17th.
Sort of makes the song "The Victors" even more appropriate for this school.
Not only have past Michigan teams swept through the regular season unfettered, but some have done so in manners that were uniquely dominant.
Michigan built one of college football's, and for that matter, all of sports' first true dynasties at the turn of the century. Led by first-year coach Fielding Yost, the 1901 Wolverines may very well still be the greatest team ever, although it is difficult to compare football from that era to the way it is played today.
Still, Yost's Wolverines that year not only went 11-0, but did not allow a single point to any opponent, while piling up 550 for themselves. The campaign was capped by Michigan making a joke out of its opponent, Stanford, in the inaugural Rose Bowl, handing the Cardinal a 49-0 walloping.
The dynasty grew in magnitude over the next four seasons. 1902 saw Michigan duplicate its record from the previous season, while scoring even more - 644 points, including two games where the Wolverines surpassed the century mark. Although Michigan did allow single touchdowns to Case and Minnesota, the Wolverines easily won their second consecutive national championship.
The 31-game winning streak came to an end on Halloween of the following season in a game that began another monster tradition in college football.
Yost's team had won its first seven games - all by way of shutout - before traveling to Minnesota, where the Gophers gave Michigan its toughest challenge thus far that century. With two minutes left in the game, Michigan led only 6-0. Moments later, the Gophers scored, sending the Minnesota crowd into a frenzy as it stormed the field.
The game was called a tie at that moment, as Michigan was forced from the field by the barrage of fans. In his haste to leave town, Yost left his team's water jug on the sidelines. When he wrote Minnesota athletic director L.J. Cooke to ask for the jug back, Cooke said that he would have to come back and beat the Gophers for it. This dispute created what is now known at The Little Brown Jug.
But Michigan was unaffected by that tie, and started a new winning streak; this one lasted 26 games, giving the Wolverines their fourth consecutive national title by the end of 1904. The streak was ended in the final game of 1905, when Michigan lost to Chicago, 2-0, despite shutting out all 12 of its previous opponents that season.
Undefeated seasons under Yost's leadership followed in 1910, 1918 (without a tie), 1922 and 1923. But only the 1918 team was crowned national champs.
Perhaps the one statistic most indicative of Yost's teams domination on both sides of the ball is this one: in Yost's 25-year coaching career at Michigan (204 games), his teams allowed just 800 points. The 1902 team, alone, scored 644 during its 11-game slate.
Harry Kipke took over in 1929, two years after Yost stepped down, and led Michigan to its next batch of undefeated seasons in 1930, 1932 (no ties) and 1933, with national titles coming in the final two years, running Michigan's all-time total to eight. Included in this run was the career of an all-America center named Gerald Ford, who had a pretty good career off the gridiron as well.
Next came the teams of 1947 and 1948, Michigan's last two national champions, coached by Fritz Crisler and Bennie Oosterbaan, respectively. Both units possessed suffocating defenses, although not at the level of Yost's dynasty, but still very impressive for its era.
The 20 years after that last national title, Michigan hit a valley in the success of its football program, winning more than six games only four times during that span.
With the formation of the modern Big Ten in 1953, when Michigan State joined, the conference became increasingly competitive and perfect seasons became, at best, a rarity. Only the Ohio State teams of 1954 and 1968 and Penn State's 1994 squad had gone wire to wire without a blemish on their records.
Then came Bo.
Bo Schembechler, who, along with Yost, are the two most influential figures in the history of Michigan football, revived the program. But his teams appeared in 10 Rose Bowls during his 21-year tenure and garnered at least a share of the Big Ten title 13 times.
As for undefeated seasons, Schembechler had but one - 1973's 10-0-1 squad. That tie came in the Ohio State game and cost the Wolverines a trip to the Rose Bowl and a national championship because the Buckeyes went by way of a vote of Big Ten athletic directors, who chose the Buckeyes because Michigan quarterback Dennis Franklin was injured. Schembechler's 1971 team ran the table in the regular season, only to fall to Stanford in the Rose Bowl, 13-12, in the game's final minute.
Now it is Lloyd Carr's team that has broken the 26-year span of Michigan going without a perfect regular season. Carr's team that has ended the five-year Rose Bowl drought. Carr's team that went undefeated the traditional Michigan way - a stifling defense.
| Year | Record |
|---|---|
| 1901#* | 11-0 |
| 1902# | 12-0 |
| 1903# | 11-0-1 |
| 1904# | 10-0 |
| 1910 | 3-0-3 |
| 1918# | 5-0 |
| 1922 | 6-0-1 |
| 1923# | 8-0 |
| 1930 | 8-0-1 |
| 1932# | 8-0 |
| 1933# | 7-0-1 |
| 1947#* | 10-0 |
| 1948# | 9-0 |
| 1971@ | 11-1 |
| 1973 | 10-0-1 |
| 1992* | 9-0-3 |
| 1997 | 10-0 |
* - won Rose Bowl
# - National Champions
@ - went undefeated in regular season but lost in Rose Bowl
11-22-97
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