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Michigan Wolverine Football: Maize Across America

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Posted at 3:30pm — 10/4/2014

Michigan Wolverine Football: Maize Across America

When the Michigan Wolverines take the field to play Rutgers at High Point Solutions Stadium in Piscataway, it may seem like unfamiliar territory for the players. But it won’t be for the program.

This will actually be the fourth visit to the state of New Jersey for the Michigan football team. The Wolverines hold a 2-1 record, beating the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken in 1883 and splitting two games with Princeton (a 13-4 loss in 1881 and a 21-0 win in the “revenge match” in 1931). You think the App State loss stung? Imagine living with a 13-4 loss to the Princeton Tigers for a half century.

So all of this got me to thinking. And to a bit of research.

The Wolverines have played football in over half of these United States—26 to be exact. The most recent addition to the list happened two years ago when Michigan set foot in Nebraska for the first time, the first soil of a foreign state that had hit their feet since their maiden voyage to Oregon in 2013.

In their 135 years of existence, the maize and blue have spread their brand of football across the contiguous US, from Connecticut (where they first played in 1881) all the way to California (where Tom Harmon’s Wolverines first pasted the Golden Bears 41-0 in 1940). In fact, they’ve hit the Hawaiian islands twice as well, with Jim Harbaugh and Tom Brady bringing victory back stateside in 1986 and 1998, respectively.

Other interesting points along the way:

Michigan’s celebrated first-ever football game, a 1-0 win over Racine in 1879, wasn’t played in Ann Arbor, or in the state of Michigan. Or in autumn for that matter. The historic contest from which all things maize and blue are measured, took place on May 30 in Chicago.

The first true away game for the Wolverines didn’t take place in any state at all. On November 5, 1880, the team left the country and headed for Toronto, where they were victorious, 13-6. Clearly Michigan’s road troubles were still a good 130 years down the road.

Michigan traveled east for the first time in 1881, with games in Massachusetts and Connecticut as well as New Jersey. As a matter of fact, their entire 1881 season was played on the road. It would be another 12 years before the school set up a regular venue for their home contests, Regents Field. Housing a whopping 800 patrons—about the same number that attend the Mud Bowl every homecoming—the stadium would become home to four national championships and bear witness to the famed point-a-minute teams of Fielding H. Yost.

The initial trip to the state of Indiana in 1887 was a mission of mercy for the Wolverines, who were rolling toward their fourth straight undefeated season. They were traveling to Chicago to play the Harvard Club team, and decided to stop in South Bend a day early to show the boys at Notre Dame how to play this crazy new game called football. The Wolverines won 8-0, taking their foot off the gas early and actually mixing up the teams at halftime in the spirit of friendly competition. I know right? Notre Dame.

Michigan’s first visit to Ohio was a loss, but it didn’t involve a trip to Columbus. On November 26, 1891, the Wolverines headed south to play the Cleveland Athletic Association, where they lost, 8-4. The ’91 team struggled through a 4-5 record that could have been worse without some serious schedule padding. Michigan also played the Chicago Athletic Club and Ann Arbor High School (nothing more than a warm-up for their “Statement Saturday” date with Albion).

The Wolverines have played in both Carolinas, traveling to Chapel Hill to face UNC in 1965 and then to Duke three years later. However, they have yet to play in one of the Dakotas, or one of the Virginias. And their first appearance in four different states (Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Arizona) occurred during bowl games (the Orange, Bluebonnet, Sugar and Fiesta).

Next year Michigan will add two more states to the list, with games on the road at Utah and newly added conference foe Maryland. It will be the first time the Wolverines have traveled to two new states in the same season since 1986, when they started the year with a win in the Fiesta Bowl and ended it with victory in Hawaii. And it will leave New Mexico as the only four-corner state that hasn’t seen a winged helmet, as Michigan also broke ground in Colorado in 1996, upsetting the #5-ranked Buffaloes 20-13.

Now that home-and-home agreements with Arkansas and Oklahoma are on the horizon, the list will expand to 30 states by 2025. Until then, the only hopes to grow that number would be invites to the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl in Atlanta, Georgia; the Glidan New Mexico Bowl; the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl; the Royal Purple Las Vegas Bowl in Nevada; or one of the Alabama bowls, the GoDaddy Bowl in Mobile, the Birmingham Bowl or Raycom Media Camellia Bowl in Montgomery.

Let’s hope the Wolverines’ football expectations grow a little higher than that.

ADDENDUM: In researching Michigan’s all-blue uniforms that were worn during the “Under the Lights” contest with Penn State, it occurred to me that I had overlooked Michigan’s infamous neutral-field game against the US Naval Academy in Baltimore. Known as the “Canary Disaster”, the Wolverines donned all yellow unis in response to Navy’s refusal to wear anything other than their dark blue jerseys. Michigan flew away with a 6-6 tie, and the canary yellow jerseys were never heard from again.

On the topic of neutral-field games, the Wolverines also played two in Missouri in the late 1800s. Michigan faced Kansas twice in Kansas City, winning 22-0 in 1893 and 22-12 in 1894. So this would bring the total number of states the Wolverines have played football to 28. They will add to that total next season, but only by one (Utah), since Maryland has already been crossed off the list.

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Written by GBMWolverine Writer — Chris Hill

Go Blue — Wear Maize!