Fielding H. Yost

With a capacity of 107,601, it's a monument to Michigan's outsized athletic ambitions.

The stadium's story begins with the legendary coach Fielding Yost, who arrived at Michigan in 1901 and quickly built a football dynasty.

After years of playing at smaller venues like Fairfield, Yost recognized the growing popularity of college football and the need for a much larger facility.

In 1926, after much political maneuvering by Yost, construction began on a new stadium in a natural ravine north of the planned Stadium Boulevard.

All America, a name given to early greats such as Pudge Heffelfinger, Frank Hinckley, and Truxton Hare, chosen every year by the father of American football, Walter Kempf.

The first great All-American of this century was Michigan's famed Willie Heston, the spark that ignited Fielding Yost's point-a-minute teams.

Some 60 years after his final college game, the man who scored over 100 touchdowns recalled his arrival in Ann Arbor.

I looked up the Athletic Association and found the athletic director who was then Charles Baird.

130 to nothing.

Fielding Yost in that game?

Fielding Yost was the WVU graduate, Marion County, West Virginia native, was the head coach.

Branded up bit.

Yeah.

Ran it up a bit.

And according to WVU sports historian John Antonik.

Antonik just despises Fielding Yost.

And then you get to the Iowa game, and they lose at the last second.

But surely things would be better if they could go back and just take care of Fielding Yost's little brown jug.

And the place where the little brown jug was first brought into the college football world for fear, for fear that the water supply would be contaminated by the opponent, and that's how the little brown jug started.

Michigan had it.

We once in this sport had people worried that someone was going to poison their water supply."

One school would poison each other's student athletes, yeah.

Yeah, this is how, that's how Fielding Yost rolled.

Fielding Yost was so, like, like, one of the greatest coaches that y'all have never heard of.

Back then, Michigan and Minnesota were football powers in the country.

Fielding Yost, the head coach of Michigan, was so afraid of that Minnesota was going to pull a fast one, sent his manager out to buy a water jug, and they brought their own water.

When they left, they had realized they had left the jug behind and requested that Minnesota send it to them.

And the response from the head coach and athletic director at the time at the University of Minnesota was, if you want it, come back and win it.

Bo is only the second first-year coach in Big Ten history to win a conference championship.

The other was another Michigan head man, and that was Fielding H. Yost.

Bo spent the last six years in Miami of Ohio, where his teams won six Mid-American Conference titles.

He played under Woody Hayes and later was an assistant at Ohio State.