Today's Tidbit... Smoke On The Border, The 1879 Michigan-Toronto Match

Parts of the Detroit area had air quality readings in the 150s and 160s yesterday, placing them on par with New York City, though the skies appeared clearer here for some reason. Of course, discussing air quality is not Football Archaeology's core competency. Still, it connects with events from 144 years ago when the University of Toronto sent a team through Southern Ontario and across the Detroit River to play the University of Michigan in the Wolverines' second-ever football game.

Earlier, the long-departed Racine College (WI) challenged Michigan to play a game in Chicago in 1878, with the teams finally meeting in May 1879. In the first rugby or football game played west of the Alleghenies, the Wolverines earned their first victory by outscoring Racine one to nil.

While the Michigan-Toronto game came on November 1, 1879, with the game receiving coverage in two articles in the Detroit Free Press, details of the game are few. Other than some Canadian fans who made the trip, few Michigan fans or the readers had seen the game played before, so much of the coverage described the game's core rules and general action.

For example, readers learned that Rogers of Yale acted as the referee, with each team naming an umpire. The article describes the game being played on a 300 by 400-foot field with sets of twelve-foot posts at either end, between which strings were tied as crossbars. The ball was doozy, described as an oblong sphere about the size of a large watermelon, an example of which is in the 1879 team picture.

The 1879 Michigan football team and their watermelon-sized ball were pictured 58 years before their winged helmets arrived. (BL001115". https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhl/x-bl001115/bl001115. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections.)

The limited description of the game makes it clear that the reporter had little understanding of the game or at least did not attempt to convey his knowledge to the readers. For example, he describes a sequence that begins with a punt as follows:

('Rugby,' Detroit Free Press, November 2, 1879.)

The conclusion of the Detroit Free Press article tells us the game ended in a scoreless tie.

Interestingly, if you continue down the column past the article's end, the next article describes smoke in the air of the soon-to-be Motor City that evening due to a house fire near downtown Detroit.

Coincidence? I think not.

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