How Michigan built the Big House, a symbol of college football controversy and lore

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Earlier than the primary scoop of dust was raised from the farmstead the place Michigan Stadium was constructed, controversy was brewing concerning the professionalization of faculty sports activities.

By 1926, Michigan’s soccer program had outgrown Ferry Subject, the place huge video games prompted much more demand than the 42,000-seat stadium might accommodate. Fielding Yost, Michigan’s athletic director and the coach of the well-known “Level-a-Minute” groups that dominated school soccer within the early 1900s, was the chief advocate for constructing a brand new stadium, simply as a lot of Michigan’s opponents had accomplished.

Yost’s proposals sparked blended reactions from the campus group. Many supported the concept, however some college members protested {that a} greater stadium would deepen the divide between soccer and the college’s tutorial mission. In a victory for Yost, a college committee issued a report that typically endorsed his view that intercollegiate athletics might contribute to a thriving campus. The report additionally raised a word of warning concerning the win-at-all-costs tradition that might come up as soccer grew to become extra in style.

“Some of the severe difficulties in intercollegiate soccer at the moment is the insistence of the alumni upon successful groups,” the report stated, as recounted in Robert Soderstrom’s e-book “The Huge Home: Fielding Yost and the Constructing of Michigan Stadium.” “Efforts should be made to maintain alumni opinion basically sane and conservative in issues of athletic coverage. Extreme and unwise publicity is a normal evil.”

Immediately, there’s no higher spectacle on Michigan’s campus than a giant sport on the Huge Home. Michigan Stadium would be the heart of the school soccer world Saturday as Fox’s “Huge Midday Kickoff,” ESPN’s “Faculty Gameday” and upward of 110,000 followers converge on Ann Arbor for a matchup between No. 4 Texas and No. 9 Michigan, one of many first Huge Ten-SEC showdowns since each mega-conferences expanded. It’s additionally one of many greatest nonconference video games within the storied stadium’s historical past: The Longhorns are the primary non-Huge Ten workforce ranked within the AP high 5 to go to Michigan Stadium since Florida State in 1991.

High-10 nonconference guests

12 months	Workforce	Consequence
2019		W, 45-14
1997		W, 27-3
1994		L, 27-26
1991		L, 51-31
1991		W, 24-14
1989		L, 24-19
1988		L, 31-30
1984		W, 22-14
1981		W, 25-7
1979		L, 12-10
1977		W, 41-3
1975		W, 31-7

Since 1970

The 2024 season is a groundbreaking one for Michigan and school soccer as a complete, because the reigning nationwide champions enter the period of the 12-team Faculty Soccer Playoff with a brand new head coach in Sherrone Moore. NIL has altered the financial panorama of the game, and income sharing with athletes is true across the nook. The controversy that raged on Michigan’s campus within the Twenties by no means actually ended; it solely obtained louder.

“What is going to a bigger stadium imply? It would solely imply higher Roman holidays than we now have,” professor Robert C. Angell wrote within the Michigan Every day in 1925. “The gamers themselves shall be pressured into much more rigorous coaching than they’re now subjected to. Now we have spring soccer now; we could have winter soccer quickly. These males will suppose and act soccer the 12 months spherical.”

The historical past of Michigan Stadium is, in some methods, a historical past of faculty soccer’s tug-of-war between innovation and custom. The stadium opened in 1927 with non permanent bleachers that elevated capability to 85,000, making it the most important college-owned stadium within the nation. To pay for it, Michigan issued 3,000 bonds to the group at $500 apiece.

Lots of the stadium’s seats sat empty through the Nice Melancholy, however the finish of World Battle II introduced renewed enthusiasm for faculty soccer. Fritz Crisler, coach of the undefeated “Mad Magicians” of 1947, succeeded Yost as athletic director and oversaw two expansions that pushed Michigan Stadium’s capability previous 100,000.

Crisler, the person who launched platoon soccer and the winged helmet, was each a forward-thinker and a traditionalist. Earlier than he went to the College of Chicago and performed for Amos Alonzo Stagg, Crisler considered changing into a pastor, his grandson stated. He discovered a distinct calling as a coach and athletic director however retained a non secular outlook on the worth of soccer.

“My recollection is, though he thought successful was necessary and he needed to win, it was not the primary focus of what athletics have been to him,” stated Crisler’s grandson, F. Adams Crisler. “He at all times thought when it comes to, a minimum of as he instructed me, the thoughts, physique and spirit of an athlete.”

In 1956, Crisler oversaw the development of a brand new press field and extra seating that raised the stadium capability to 101,001. The ultimate digit was not a mistake: In response to newspaper reviews on the time, Crisler initially supposed capability to be 100,001, with a mysterious further seat tucked away someplace within the stadium.

“It has its spot,” Crisler instructed Sports activities Illustrated in 1963. “And I’m the one man who is aware of the place that spot is.”

Many theories have been provided concerning the location and the importance of the additional seat. Some claimed it was put aside for Stagg, Crisler’s coach. Others stated it was devoted to Yost, who died in 1946, or reserved for Crisler himself. As a baby, Adams Crisler climbed a ladder to the roof of the press field and surveyed all the stadium, hoping to identify the seat in some hidden location. He by no means discovered it, and his grandfather by no means gave him any clues.

“You’ve simply obtained to search out it,” Adams Crisler recalled his grandfather saying. “Whenever you suppose you discover it, you let me know.”

As a pupil at Michigan, Adams Crisler had a summer season job changing the stadium’s concrete steps. He held out hope the crew would uncover a lone seat hidden in some secret passageway, however no such seat was discovered. Since then, Adams Crisler has been agnostic concerning the existence of the seat, although he appreciates its place in Michigan Stadium lore.

“It captivated imaginations,” he stated. “It wouldn’t shock me if there was that seat, nevertheless it wouldn’t shock me if there wasn’t.”

Michigan has been working below the M Membership banner since 1962. (Danny Moloshok / Getty Photos)

The stadium’s seating capability, now listed at 107,601, has fluctuated by means of the years, however the “01” stays as a nod to Crisler’s well-known seat. It’s a type of traditions, like saying the Slippery Rock rating or gamers touching the M Membership banner, that has weathered many years of change to each the game and the stadium.

Don Canham, who succeeded Crisler as athletic director, is extensively credited with advertising and marketing Michigan soccer to the lots and ushering in a brand new period of economic success that coincided with Bo Schembechler’s tenure as coach. After years of sagging attendance, the stands have been full once more within the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties. ABC broadcaster Keith Jackson, the voice of faculty soccer for generations, popularized a nickname that caught: The Huge Home.

“That is little question my favourite place, to see 4 generations stand up and recognize it, for the pageantry, the atmosphere,” Jackson instructed The New York Occasions earlier than a 1998 sport at Michigan Stadium, the place the band feted the broadcaster, who had been planning to retire, by spelling out “THANKS KEITH” on the sphere. “Michigan has such grandiosity.”

The purity and pageantry of faculty soccer have at all times existed in a clumsy embrace with the business facet of the game. Each points shall be entrance and heart in 2024 as groups like Texas and Michigan, representatives of faculty soccer’s tremendous conferences, compete for spots within the expanded CFP.

The Wolverines will play Huge Ten video games in opposition to USC, Washington and Oregon and will host a Playoff sport at Michigan Stadium for the primary time at school historical past. The Ohio State rivalry, nonetheless in its customary spot on the ultimate Saturday of the common season, may very well be repeated every week later if each groups make the Huge Ten championship sport. And in a improvement which may have horrified Fritz Crisler, followers can now purchase beer at Michigan Stadium.

“He was one which was not that loopy about professional soccer or commercialism in sports activities,” Adams Crisler stated. “He made a remark that the aim of professional soccer was to promote beer. He tremendously disliked beer, so he didn’t have a variety of use for the professional sport.”

Even so, Adams Crisler thinks his grandfather can be proud to see Michigan Stadium because it stands right this moment. Particularly one a part of it: the brand new indicators beneath the video boards celebrating the 2023 CFP championship.

“He would have cherished to see this final 12 months’s nationwide championship workforce and the type of precision that they had and the sorts of performs that they used,” Adams Crisler stated. “He would have been amazed and proud of it.”

(High picture: Aaron J. Thornton / Getty Photos)