Michigan’s 1883 East Coast Football Trip
Michigan was the only non-Eastern team playing football in 1883. This series uses period publications to cover their nine-day trip to play Wesleyan, Harvard, Yale, and the Stevens Institute.
Some readers may tire of hearing about Harvard, Yale, and Princeton in discussions of football history, but it is hard to avoid them since they dominated the early game on the field, in the game's governance and rule-making, and in the media. You can't help but bump into them when researching old-time football. After all, they created the game.
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (HYP) no longer dominate football; they bob along on waves others create. They have not competed at the college game's highest level since being pushed down to DI-AA in 1982, 40+ years ago. Of the schools they played from 1876 to 1885, football's first ten years, only two now play at the FBS level. Rutgers played Yale and Princeton in those years, meeting twice per season several times. But Rutgers has been nationally prominent only on occasion, mainly in the years around WWI.
The other team HYP played between 1876 and 1885 that still plays FBS football is Michigan, which is college football’s winningest program. Michigan played its first football game in Chicago in May 1879, when it met Racine College of Wisconsin. They played the University of Toronto in November 1879 in Detroit and met once in Toronto the next year.
The Wolverines played few games in those years because no one else played football in the hinterlands. This led them to take football’s first intersectional trip when they traveled east in November 1881. Over five days, they lost to Harvard (0-4), Yale (0-11), and Princeton (4-13).
Michigan did not play outside opponents in 1882, but they got things cooking again in 1883 with a March victory over the Detroit Athletic Club. They also took football’s second intersectional trip when they went east to renew acquaintances with HYP and whomever else they could find.
I'll tell the story of Michigan's 1883 eastern trip in stories published over the next week or two using a recently-acquired copy of The Chronicle, a University of Michigan publication, from November 24, 1883. (The document is not worth much anyway, but I bought it for a song since it was incorrectly labeled and attracted less attention than it might have otherwise.) The Chronicle, issued "fortnightly during the college year," included announcements, gossip, and news of interest to students, alums, and the university community. This particular issue covers the football team's first three of four games played on the trip, as told in telegraphed messages from players and managers.
Of course, newspaper accounts and other sources supplement The Chronicle, including coverage of the trip's fourth game. The combination provides a look into football during its formative years through the lens of the only non-Eastern team playing the game. Universities, the world, and football were different then, as shown by three bits of information included in The Chronicle.
The first is a table showing the size of various college and university freshmen classes. Schools were far smaller and elite then, including Michigan, which enrolled 191 newbies. Only eight listed schools enrolled more than 100 freshmen.
Two schools on the list have changed their names since then. Asbury University became DePauw University within weeks of the issue going to print, and Madison changed its name to Colgate University in 1890. The list also includes the “Old” University of Chicago, which closed in 1887, not the current University of Chicago, which was founded in 1890.
Another insight into the times comes from a gossip column. Alexander Graham Bell submitted his telephone patent in February 1876, and the first long-distance call, which went all the way from San Francisco to San Jose, came in 1883, so telephones remained high-end technological marvels in 1883. It is notable that two Michigan fraternities had telephones in their houses by the time the football team headed east.
The third bit of information occurs in several locations in The Chronicle. We all know football evolved from rugby. The evolution took time and was uneven, and it remained underway in 1883, given that The Chronicle referred to Michigan's football team as its rugby team.
The remainder of the series covers the team's trip preparations, the games, and observations about the nature of football when they played four games in nine days:
November 19: Wesleyan
November 21: Yale
November 22: Harvard
November 27: Stevens Institute
Despite little competition in their area of the country, Michigan did not play in the East again until they visited Cornell in 1892 and 1894 and Harvard in 1895. For the rest of the 1880s, Michigan played 3 or 4 games per year, often meeting the same opponent twice.
The Wolverines were early adopters of football, and their experience in 1883 offers insight into the early game due to their unique position as the only football-playing team in the West. Plus, the local fans of 1883 made a big deal of their team, just like they do today.
Paid subscribers have full access to the remainder of this series, while free subscribers will see a preview of each story.
It’s never too early to start your holiday shopping or gift list. Give or get a gift subscription to Football Archaeology or acquire one of my books here.
Subscribe for free for limited content or gain full access with a paid subscription.