1901 Michigan Wolverines football team

}} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} ==Preseason==

1900 season The 1900 Michigan team compiled an overall record of 7–2–1 under first-year head coach Langdon Lea. However, the season was considered a disappointment as the Wolverines finished in fifth place in the Western Conference with a 3–2 record against Western Conference opponents and a loss to rival Chicago. In January 1901, coach Lea resigned from Michigan to accept a position as the head football coach at Princeton. Yost's arrival took over as Michigan's coach in 1901. Fielding Yost was hired as the new coach at Michigan in the spring of 1901. He traveled to Ann Arbor in early April to evaluate the talent pool with which he would be working. After sizing up the players, Yost asked for early practice in the fall. Whitmore Lake Several starters from the 1900 team returned to Michigan to participate in the 1901 team, including Boss Weeks, Everett Sweeley, Curtis Redden, Hugh White (the 1901 team captain), Ebin Wilson, Bruce Shorts, Neil Snow, Arthur Redner, and Albert Herrnstein. On September 9, 1901, Yost and captain White gathered a small squad of men at Whitmore Lake; the squad grew over the next two weeks to nearly 20 players. Training continued for nearly two weeks, and "cold baths in the lake soon toughened the men." In addition to training, Yost spent time at Whitmore Lake evaluating his talent to fit particular positions. He soon shifted players around. He moved the team's only All-American, Neil Snow, from end to fullback on offense, keeping him at right end on defense. Yost moved Arthur Redner from center to right guard and George W. Gregory to center. He also brought Willie Heston with him from California at the halfback position. In a 1952 letter, Heston later recalled: "He brought to Michigan an entirely new brand of football, not known in the Big Ten nor to the Middle West. Particularly, that was true of his offense. Speed and more speed was continually emphasized. Boss Weeks was instructed to call his signal for the next play while the team was getting up from the last play." A new freshman, David Banks, wrote a letter to his mother about his experience in trying out for the football team in the fall of 1901:"I am not sure whether I ought to play football or not. ... I put on Tom's suit one night and went down to the field to meet Yost and a few other men. They made me run around the track a couple times to try my wind. Then they rolled me around the ground and sat on me a while. I did not understand the necessity of all they did to me, but the boys say every great player must begin that way." On September 24, 1901, the Michigan Daily-News correctly predicted that "Hurry up" would become the future title of Michigan's new coach, Fielding Yost. ==Game summaries==

Week 1: Albion Michigan opened the 1901 season with a 50–0 win against Albion, a team that won the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association championship in 1900. The game was played in 20-minute halves at Regents Field in Ann Arbor on September 28. Michigan scored nine touchdowns (worth five points each in 1901), including three by Hugh White, two by Walter W. Shaw, and one each by Neil Snow, Willie Heston, Bruce Shorts, and Everett Sweeley. Shaw also kicked three goals from touchdown with Herb Graver and Sweeley adding one each. Heston's first touchdown as a Wolverine came on a defensive take-away described as follows: "Once when Albion had the ball on her 25-yard line, Heston broke through between guard and center, got possession of the ball before it left the quarter back's hands, and made a touchdown." Heston and Sweeley were singled out for praise in the account of the game published in The Michigan Alumnus:"Two men, Sweeley and Heston, constantly won the plaudits of the rooters by their long gains around the ends. Sweeley is fleet, and he kept his feet in a way that reminded the wise ones of McLean's remarkable performances. Heston proved himself the ground gainer that he has given evidence of being during the daily practices." In its coverage of the game, the Alumnus also noted that Michigan's new coach Yost "refuses to have a man on the field who [is] 'yellow' or who is not willing to work and to take his fair share of knocks." The game was played on a field that had undergone steady rain for 24 hours and had been reduced to "a sea of mud." Michigan's starting lineup was Curtis Redden (left end), Hugh White (left tackle), Dan McGugin (left guard), George Gregory (center), Ebin Wilson (right guard), Bruce Shorts (right tackle), Albert Herrnstein (right end), Boss Weeks (quarterback), Willie Heston (left halfback), Everett Sweeley (right halfback), and Neil Snow (fullback). Left halfback Willie Heston scored three touchdowns, with Neil Snow and Walter Shaw scoring one each. Bruce Shorts added four goals from touchdown. Michigan's starters in the game were Curtis Redden (left end), Hugh White (left tackle), Dan McGugin (left guard), George Gregory (center), Ebin Wilson (right guard), Bruce Shorts (right tackle), Albert Herrnstein (right end), Boss Weeks (quarterback), Willie Heston (left halfback), Everett Sweeley (right halfback), and Neil Snow (fullback). The game was scheduled to be played in 30-minute halves, but Buffalo's coach asked at halftime that the second half be reduced to 20 minutes, and so the game was limited to 50 minutes of playing time. The Detroit Free Press noted that Michigan scored more points against Buffalo than it had during the entire 1900 season, averaging more than two points per minute played and a touchdown every two minutes. and added, "Michigan can defeat any team in the East." Buffalo had defeated the team from Columbia University, one of the stronger teams in the east, by a score of 5–0 earlier in the season. The 1901 Columbia team defeated Eastern "Big Four" power Penn, 11–0, and narrowly lost a game to Yale, 10–5. Several newspapers used the Buffalo game as a point of reference in assessing the strength of Michigan's 1901 team. The Pittsburgh Press reported that Michigan's big victory over a "fairly strong" Buffalo team "shows that Michigan has a remarkable team." The Daily Review from Decatur, Illinois, observed: "Considering the fact that Buffalo trimmed Columbia rather easily, making a larger score against the college than did Harvard or Yale, there seems some justice in" Coach Brown's comments that Michigan could defeat Harvard, Yale or Princeton. In 1916, Coach Yost shared his recollections of the Buffalo game with Big Bill Edwards: "Buffalo University came to Michigan with a much-heralded team. They were coached by a Dartmouth man and had not been scored upon. Buffalo papers referred to Michigan as the Woolly Westerners, and the Buffalo enthusiasts placed bets that Michigan would not score." The score at the end of the first half was 65 to 0. About fifteen minutes after the second half had started, Yost discovered a Buffalo player, Simpson, "on Michigan's side of the field, covered up in a blanket." The game drew a crowd of 8,000 spectators, "[t]he largest crowd that ever turned out to a football game in Michigan." Bruce Shorts led the scoring with 12 points on a touchdown, a field goal, and two goals from touchdown. Ebin Wilson and Willie Heston also scored touchdowns. Carlisle in 1901 also played several of the major Eastern teams, losing a close game to Penn (14–16), and also losing to Cornell (0–17) and Harvard (0–29). Accordingly, the Michigan-Carlisle game triggered a debate as to whether Michigan's football team was as strong as Harvard and the other leading teams of the East. Carlisle played the Michigan game without its star tackle, Martin Wheelock, who was injured one week earlier against Harvard. Michigan, too, played without a key player, Curtis Redden. After the game, Pop Warner, who had predicted a victory before the game, asserted that his team was depleted by injuries and opined that Michigan was not as strong as Harvard. Following Warner's claim, the Detroit Free Press published a position-by-position analysis purporting to show that Warner used his best team against Michigan. The New York Times pointed to the Carlisle game as evidence that Michigan's remarkable season was not limited to small institutions. Coach Yost later wrote that he believed Michigan would have won by an even larger score if Redden had not been injured. Michigan's starters in the game were Curtis Redden (left end), Hugh White (left tackle), Dan McGugin (left guard), George Gregory (center), Ebin Wilson (right guard), Bruce Shorts (right tackle), Albert Herrnstein (right end), Boss Weeks (quarterback), Willie Heston (left halfback), Everett Sweeley (right halfback), and Neil Snow (fullback). Michigan won the 1901 game, 21–0, at Ohio Field in Columbus, Ohio, in front of a crowd of approximately 4,000 persons. A special train carried 375 Michigan students to the game on the Ann Arbor and Hocking Valley railroads. Ohio State held the Wolverines to their lowest point total of the 1901 season. Prior to the game, the head coaches argued over the length of the game, Yost insisting on regulation halves of 30 minute and Ohio State's John B. Eckstorm insisting that the first half be limited to 25 minutes. When the umpire threatened Ohio State with a forfeiture, coach Eckstrom agreed to play regulation halves of 30 minutes. The Detroit Free Press noted that Ohio State's players sought to slow the pace of Michigan's "hurry up" style of play. The paper noted: "On almost every scrimmage some Ohio man would stretch out on the ground and take his full time. This playing for wind was so apparent that the Michigan players finally burlesqued it. The Ohio men could not stand the gaff, and their doctors and trainer ran more yards than both teams put together." White scored Michigan's fourth touchdown and Shorts kicked goal at the 7:30 mark of the second half. The game was played on a wet field that was "practically a pond in the centre, filled in with sawdust before the game started." The Beloit team managed to gain the five yards required for a first down on only one drive late in the game. The New York Times reported that "Michigan scored almost at will" and "outclassed" a "sturdy, plucky" Iowa team. Willie Heston and Bruce Shorts scored four touchdowns each for Michigan and "played a spectacular part for the Wolverines." Shorts added five successful extra point kicks giving him 25 points in the game. Neil Snow also scored a touchdown for Michigan. Michigan's starters in the game were Herb Graver (left end), Hugh White (left tackle), Dan McGugin (left guard), George Gregory (center), Ebin Wilson (right guard), Bruce Shorts (right tackle), Albert Herrnstein (right end), Boss Weeks (quarterback), Willie Heston (left halfback), Everett Sweeley (right halfback), and Neil Snow (fullback). ==Postseason==

Rose Bowl After the conclusion of the 1901 football season, Michigan, was invited to play against Stanford in the first Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena, California. Michigan won the game on New Year's Day 1902 by the score of 49–0. Neil Snow scored five touchdowns. The players that traveled to California were starters, Hugh White, Curtis Redden, Dan McGugin, George Gregory, Bruce Shorts, Albert Herrnstein, Boss Weeks, Everett Sweeley, Willie Heston, and Neil Snow, and substitutes Arthur Redner (back), Benjamin Harrison Southworth (guard), James E. Forrest (tackle), and Paul J. Jones (back). "Point-a-Minute" teams The 1901 Michigan team was the first of Yost's "Point-a-Minute" teams, so named for their high scoring offense. From 1901 to 1905, Yost's Michigan teams compiled a record of 55–1–1 and outscored their opponents by a combined score of 2,821 to 42. The race to continue the point per minute scoring remained a topic of reportage for the remainder of the season. After six games, the Wolverines had scored 319 points in 280 minutes. At the end of the regular season, Michigan had fallen slightly short of the point-a-minute mark with 501 points in 540 minutes. Accolades . At the conclusion of the 1901 season, team captain Hugh White gave head coach Fielding Yost and trainer Keene Fitzpatrick substantial credit for the performance of the 1901 team. He credited the coach with "inoculating into the men some of Mr. Yost's own spirit, impulsiveness and optimism," and with having the "faculty of adapting his plays to the material at hand so that he got the best there was out of every one of the eleven men." With respect to the trainer, White noted:"An equally strong element, and one many are apt to overlook, was the work of Keene Fitzpatrick. Consider a team training nearly four months, without a man going stale, and but one injured so that he had to be taken out of the game! Then in addition a trip of nearly 3000 miles, from a climate where the thermometer registered 10 degrees below zero, into one of summer weather, and eleven men playing through an entire game and finishing it with faster and stronger play than at the beginning! Such were the results achieved by our trainer. ... Too much praise cannot be given him." Snow was selected as an All-American by Caspar Whitney for Outing magazine, and four Wolverines were selected for the All-Western team: Snow (fullback/end), Heston (halfback), Boss Weeks (quarterback), and Bruce Shorts (right tackle). from Iowa was considered one of the best punters in the country in 1901. At the end of the 1901 season, team captain Hugh White wrote: "The fall of 1901 will go down in the history of Michigan athletics, not only as the most successful football season the University has ever had, but also as establishing the most wonderful and unique record in the history of the game." The accomplishments of the 1901 team, wrote Yost, included "the highest number of points ever rolled up in a season by a recognized team." The punting of Everett Sweeley was also an important element in Michigan's success in 1901. Sweeley was regarded by Yost as "the best punter in the country." Ten men, all but the center, carried the ball in turns. Yost highlighted that Michigan ran 219 plays in the Iowa game, compared to 149 run by Harvard in the Harvard–Yale game of 1901. The fast pace of Michigan's play on offense earned Yost the nickname "Hurry Up." Yost described the 1901 team as a speedy group "composed of muscular, wiry men who had no superfluous weight." Michigan's line was strong on defense. The fullback was called upon to make a tackle only once in the entire season. In the final three games of the season, Michigan's defense allowed only seven first downs. Four of Michigan's opponents (Albion, Case, Beloit, and Indiana) never had possession of the ball in Michigan's territory. Only Northwestern and Buffalo moved the ball inside Michigan's 30-yard line, and those two instances came on penalties against Michigan for forward passes. Only one player was taken out of a game for injury, and he returned to practice the Monday after the Saturday game. ==Personnel==

Varsity letter winners married Coach Yost's wife's sister and became a Hall of Fame coach at Vanderbilt. The following 13 players received varsity "M" letters for their participation on the 1901 football team: Line Backfield Varsity substitutes Reserves kept the team fit training in below zero weather and traveling to the Rose Bowl. Coaching staff • Head coach: Fielding H. Yost • Assistant coach: Bennie Owen • Trainer: Keene Fitzpatrick • Manager: Harry K. Crafts, Class of 1902 (Law) • Manager-elect: Joseph H. Ferguson, Class of 1903 (Lit.) Scoring leaders ==Notes==