Film Room: 1904 Chicago @ Michigan

1904 Chicago-Michigan Postcard (Bentley Library, University of Michigan)

In April 2023, I broke down the film of the 1903 Princeton @ Yale game and intended to do much the same with the 1904 Chicago @ Michigan game. However, the 1904 film shows bits and pieces of the game, making it difficult to tell who is who or when the action occurs in the game. Still, I'll tell the game's story based on newspaper reports and then point out moments of interest in the game film. (The Library of Congress labels the game as occurring in 1903, but a Detroit movie house hired Thomas Edison's American Kinetograph Company to film the game at Michigan's Ferry Field in 1904.)

Chicago, under A. A. Stagg, and the Fielding Yost-led Michigan Wolverines were the two best teams in the West in the early 1900s, with Michigan having the recent advantage. The Wolverines entered the season-ending game with Chicago with a 38-0-1 record over the last four seasons, having lost to Chicago in the final match of the 1900 season. During that streak, Michigan outscored its opponents 2,324 to 18. (Those are not typos.) They tied Minnesota in 1903 while running up some monstrous scores, including a 128-0 thrashing of Buffalo (1901), a 119-0 win over Michigan State, a 107-0 takedown of Iowa (1902), and they took West Virginia home via a country road 130-0 in 1904.

1904 Michigan football team (Wiki)