The Michigan Wolverines have been great from the very beginning. They had an unbeaten season in 1898, heralding what was to come over the next 125 years of college football. They won the 2023 national championship. They have more Rose Bowl appearances — 21 — than any school other than USC. They have fielded great teams in several different decades of college football history. What’s the one moment to pick from all of them? That’s a tough task.
Michigan fans probably would view the 2023 national title season as their favorite moment, if only because that season produced a 15-0 record, unprecedented in UM football history. Jim Harbaugh had an “us against the world” mentality, and Michigan beat all comers, including — fittingly — a Pac-12 opponent in the championship game, a Rose Bowl without the official name.
Michigan fans can have 2023. In trying to be dispassionate here and look at what was truly the greatest Michigan football moment ever — from more than 120 years of history — it’s not an easy call to make. The 1997 national title broke a 49-year national title drought. That rates as a very special achievement which has to be on the short list of great Michigan football moments. Charles Woodson winning the 1997 Heisman Trophy magnified that 1997 season for the Maize and Blue.
The 1948 national championship and the unbeaten 1947 season which preceded it also rate as mountaintop moments for Michigan. What is special about that two-year run is that it came under two different coaches, Fritz Crisler and Bennie Oosterbaan. Clearly, there is a lot to choose from when considering Michigan’s greatest moment.
Yet, we’re going to go back to the start of the 20th century for our No. 1 Michigan moment. Legendary coach Fielding Yost guided Michigan for all but one season from 1901 through 1926. He was and is a giant of college football. From 1901 through 1905, his Michigan teams went 55-1-1 in 57 games. That’s insane, regardless of the era. Within that run, Michigan won the first-ever Rose Bowl game — which was the first-ever bowl game of any kind — in 1902 over Stanford. The 49-0 beatdown was such a savage thrashing that the Rose Bowl was discontinued until it returned in 1916.
Imagine that: Michigan delivered a blowout so thoroughly brutal that it discontinued the Rose Bowl for 14 years. When you think about it, that’s precisely the kind of feat which should warrant top billing in a consideration of over 125 years of Michigan football history.
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