Okay, so usually when I sit down to prep for
these deep dives, I am looking for nuance. Right,
the gray areas. Exactly, the historical he said,
she said. I am looking for the two sides of the
story. But then I opened the file on Michigan
football from the early 1900s. Specifically 1901
to 1905. Yeah, that five -year period. Yeah.
And the numbers are just stupid. Stupid is honestly
a pretty fair word for it. I mean, I honestly
thought there was a typo in the spreadsheet.
Yeah. We are looking at a five -year stretch.
where one team played 57 games. And their record
was 55 wins. One loss and one tie. But that is
not even the part that broke my brain. It is
the score differential. I have a feeling I know
exactly which stat you're looking at. Over those
five years, this team outscored their opponents
2 ,821 to 42. It sounds like a glitch in a video
game. Yeah. Like when you put the difficulty
on rookie and just mash the sprint button against
a team of toddlers. Exactly. 2 ,821 to 42. They
averaged nearly a point for every single minute
of play. And the deeper we go into the source
material, the more it seems like this wasn't
just some lucky run of good athletes. Not at
all. This was one specific man dragging a chaotic
and amateur pastime into the 20th century, basically
by the scruff of its neck. And that is the key
distinction for you to keep in mind as we go
through this. Today, we are unpacking the life
and legacy of Fielding H. Yost. And if you just
look at him as a football coach, you are really
missing the entire point of the sources. He is
way more than that. Yost is the transitional
figure in American sports history. He is the
bridge between Football as a violent student
brawl and football as the multimillion dollar
industry you watch on Saturdays. He basically
invented the modern concept of the program with
a capital P. He did. He built the stadiums. He
invented positions that literally did not exist
before him. And he professionalized the role
of the coach. But to understand how he built
this empire at Michigan, you have to understand
that he wasn't really a football guy first. He
was a lawman. Right. This is probably my favorite
detail from his early life. We are talking about
a teenager in West Virginia in the 1890s who
was working as a deputy marshal. Think about
the context of West Virginia in that era. It
is rough. It is rural coal country. Yost is the
son of a Confederate veteran, and by the time
he is a teenager, he is already six feet tall
and 200 pounds. Which in the 1890s makes you
an absolute giant. A literal giant. He is enforcing
the law, and he is earning a public school teaching
certificate at 17. It creates this image of someone
who is just naturally used to imposing his will
on the world. He walks into a room or onto a
field. And he expects to be the absolute authority.
Absolutely. And that attitude did not change
when he started playing football at West Virginia
University. In fact, that is where we see the
first glimpse of his, well, let's call it flexible
morality when it came to winning. You were talking
about the Yost Affair. I am. The sources highlight
this as the moment that really defines his early
career. But honestly, it sounds like the plot
of a bad sports heist movie. It really does.
So set the scene for a second. It is 1896. Yost
is playing tackle for West Virginia. They play
Lafayette College three times in three days.
Which, just as a side note, is physically insane.
Playing three football games in three days. It
was a very different sport back then. Just a
grinding... brutal game. West Virginia loses
all three games, but Yost is so dominant individually,
just this massive physical specimen, that the
Lafayette coach notices him. Now, normally that
is where the story ends. You shake hands and
you go home. Right, you go back to class. But
not fielding Yost. No, definitely not. One week
later. Literally seven days. Lafayette has their
biggest game of the year against Penn. And guess
who runs out onto the field wearing a Lafayette
uniform? It's Yost. It is Yost. He transfers
schools for exactly one week. Just to play one
game. He plays the game and helps Lafayette win
this historic 6 -4 victory over a powerhouse
Penn team. And then two weeks later, he is right
back in West Virginia. And he didn't even try
to hide it. The notes say he flat out told people
he went to Lafayette only to play football. He
was completely engaging in what we would call
ringing today, bringing in a hired gun. But here
is the thing you have to remember about this
era. There was no NCAA. There were no transfer
portals. It was the Wild West. So if Yost saw
an opportunity to win, he just took it. He took
it, and he did not care about the spirit of amateurism.
It sets a precedent, though. It shows he viewed
players and games as assets to be managed, not
just some fun school spirit activity. And when
he moves into coaching, that mercenary spirit
just goes into overdrive. Nomad is the word used
in the biography. He bounces from Ohio Wesleyan
to Nebraska to Kansas to Stanford, four different
jobs in four years. And every single place he
goes, they went immediately. Instantly. Kansas
went ten -a -wo right out of the gate. But there
is a story from his time at Ohio Wesleyan that
I really need you to explain because it sounds...
Sounds illegal even for the 1890s. The trickery
incident. Oh, this is classic Yost. It is 1897.
He is the head coach of Ohio Wesleyan. They are
playing against Michigan, which is ironic since
that is the school where he would later become
a legend. Michigan is the better team. So Yost
decides the best way to coach the team is to
join the team. Wait, he actually put on a uniform?
He put on a uniform and played left tackle. Against
the team he was coaching against? Yeah. While
being the head coach? Yes. Michigan protested,
obviously. They were looking across the line
saying, hey, that 200 -pound man crushing our
quarterback is your coach, not a student. I mean,
how did he even try to justify that? Ohio Wesleyan
tried to introduce him as a transfer student,
but nobody bought it. It got so heated that Michigan
refused to schedule Ohio Wesleyan again for years.
It is so brazen. Yeah. But it tells you he literally
could not stand on the sideline. He had to control
the outcome physically if he felt he had to.
And that obsession with control is exactly what
he brought to Ann Arbor in 1901. He actually
applies for the job at Illinois first, but doesn't
get it. So Michigan hires him instead. And this
is where the point -a -minute legend actually
begins. So let's talk about the how. Because
a .550 to you scoring run in your first season
doesn't happen just by yelling louder or being
a good motivator. What was he actually doing
on the field that was so fundamentally different?
It was a combination of extreme conditioning
and simple physics. You have to remember, football
in 1901 was essentially a giant scrum. Mass momentum
plays right. Yes. Heavy, slow grinding plays.
Everyone huddled up and took their sweet time.
But Yost was obsessed with speed. And this is
where the nickname Hurry Up Yost comes from.
Exactly. He would scream it at practice constantly.
Hurry up, hurry up. He wanted his team to line
up faster than the defense could even react.
He essentially invented the tempo offense. Why
was this so devastating back then? Because of
the substitution rules. Or really the lack thereof.
You played both ways, offense and defense. And
you rarely ever came off the field. If you were
tired, you stayed tired. So Yost's teams were
just in better shape. In way better shape. And
by snapping the ball quickly, he was weaponizing
fatigue. While the other team was still trying
to catch their breath or figure out who was supposed
to be where Michigan was already running the
next play. So he is just running them into the
ground physically and mentally. Precisely. And
that 1901 season ends with the first ever Rose
Bowl against Stanford. And this game, while it
is infamous, Michigan wins 49 to 0. And didn't
the game actually end early? It did. Stanford's
captain straight up asked for mercy with eight
minutes left on the clock. It was such a total
disaster that the Tournament of Roses decided
football was simply too violent and uncompetitive
to host again. They canceled it. They literally
replaced the football game with chariot races
for the next several years. Chariot races? Yeah,
actual chariot races. You know, you have dominated
when the organizers say, you know what, let us
try Ben -Hur next year instead. That is true
dominance. But amidst all this scoring, there
was a defensive innovation happening that I think
is actually Yost's biggest contribution to the
mechanics of football. And it happened completely
by accident. You were talking about Germany Schultz
and the invention of the linebacker position.
Yes. So Germany Schultz is a center for Michigan.
He is huge for the time. In 1904, the center's
job was to snap the ball and then basically stay
in the line of scrimmage and just push. You kept
your face in the dirt. Just a wall of bodies.
Right. But Schultz was getting frustrated. He
could not see where the play was going because
he was constantly tangled up in the pile. So
he improvises. He decides to stand up and take
a step back from the line. just so he can see
over the linemen. And Yost, being the absolute
control freak we have established, he must have
hated that initially. Oh, he was horrified. He
started screaming at Schultz to get back in line.
He thought it was breaking their formation discipline.
But then Yost stopped yelling because he saw
what was actually happening. By standing back,
Schultz could see the ball carrier developing
the play. He could see everything. He was suddenly
making tackle sideline to sideline. Because he
wasn't being blocked in the trenches. He wasn't
engaged in the pile. Exactly. And Yost, to his
credit, realized the massive advantage immediately.
He stopped correcting him and started coaching
it. That gives you the modern linebacker. It
changed defense from a blind shoving match to
a reaction sport. So he has got the hurry -up
offense, and he is inadvertently inventing the
linebacker. And the notes also mention a play
called Old 83. The source calls it a major innovation,
but can we break down what it actually was on
the field? Old 83 was basically the direct ancestor
of the modern option play. Now think about how
radical this is for 1904. In a normal play back
then, you hand the ball off and the runner just
runs. Very simple. But in Old 83, the blocking
scheme was specifically designed to leave one
defender completely unblocked. Which sounds like
a terrible mistake. It looks like a mistake to
the defense, for sure. But Yost taught his ball
carrier to read that unblocked man. If the defender
stayed back, the runner kept going. If the defender
committed and attacked the runner, the runner
would pitch the ball or hand it off to a trialing
teammate. So he is forcing a defender to make
a decision in real time. And whatever decision
he makes is mathematically wrong. Exactly. It
is putting a heavy cognitive load on the defense.
Yost was out there treating football like chess
while everyone else was literally playing checkers.
He realized that mental confusion was just as
powerful as physical strength. But even with
all this brilliant innovation, the point -of
-minute teams did have one blemish. The 1903
tie. Ah, the famous Minnesota game, 6 -6. It
snapped their massive winning streak. And in
the chaos of the postgame, the Michigan team
rushed off the field and left behind a five -gallon
water jug they had bought at a local store. Because
they did not trust the Minnesota water right.
Paranoia was definitely a big part of Yost's
toolkit, yes. He genuinely thought the opposing
fans might try to poison their water supply,
so they brought their own jug. Minnesota found
it after the game and wrote a note to Yost saying,
if you want it. back, you will have to win it.
And just like that, the Little Brown Jug trophy
was born. It is the oldest rivalry trophy in
college football. It is incredible how much of
the lore of college sports, the trophies, the
bowl games, the positions, traces back to this
one guy just being hyper competitive. But that
competitive drive extends way beyond the field.
And this is where the story gets a bit more complicated
and frankly feels very, very modern. We need
to talk about the money. We do, because Yost
was not just coaching for the love of the amateur
game. He was the first true professional coach.
The source material is very clear about his salary.
He wasn't being paid like a part -time gym teacher.
No, not at all. He negotiated a salary that was
equal to, or in some cases, even higher than
full -time academic university professors. You
have to understand how scandalous that was at
the time. Why was that such a massive deal to
them? Because of the Western Conference. This
was the precursor to the Big Ten. It was founded
on this very strict, high -minded ideal of amateurism.
The coaches were supposed to be alumni volunteers
or faculty members who maybe coached on the side
for a tiny stipend. They wanted football to be
strictly subordinate to academics. They wanted
the prestige of sports without the ugly commercialism.
Exactly. And Yost was walking proof that commercialism
wins games. He was a lawyer by training. He treated
coaching as a high stakes cutthroat profession.
And this caused a massive rift. The conference
eventually passed rules requiring coaches to
be full time university faculty, essentially
trying to force Yost out or force him to take
a huge pay cut. And Michigan did not gave? They
backed Yost completely. In 1907, Michigan actually
left the Western Conference. Wow. They were voted
out or chose to leave, depending on how you view
the standoff, because they flat out refused to
adhere to these new amateur regulations. They
went independent for a decade rather than give
up their superstar coach. That is just a massive
power move. It shows that the football program
had effectively become more powerful than the
university's academic alliances. And during those
independent years, Yost's power just went completely
unchecked. And this brings us to the Notre Dame
situation. If you are a college football fan,
you know Michigan and Notre Dame have this historic
bitter rivalry. And the sources suggest Yost
is the primary architect of that animosity. This
is the blackballing allegation. It is. So in
1909, Michigan played Notre Dame and lost. It
was their first ever loss to the Irish. Yost,
while he did not handle it well. I am sensing
a pattern here. He does not lose gracefully.
He does not. And the allegation, which is strongly
supported by historians like Maurice Berber,
is that used used his immense influence to block
Notre Dame from joining the Western Conference.
He effectively kept them on the outside looking
in for years. And the sources point to something
much darker than just him being mad about losing
a football game. There is a lot of mention of
anti -Catholic bias. We cannot ignore the era
we are talking about. This is the early 20th
century. Anti -Catholic and anti -immigrant sentiment
in the Midwest was very real and very potent.
And Notre Dame was the premier Catholic school.
And Yost's background plays into this. Right.
Yost was from West Virginia, the son of a Confederate
and a devout Protestant. The sources suggest
he viewed Notre Dame's rise not just as an athletic
threat to his program, but as a cultural threat.
We are just reporting what the historians have
analyzed here. But the cultural clash was a massive
part of the dynamic. But the notes also mention
he had a very bitter personal. feud with Newt
Rockne, the famous Notre Dame coach. A deeply
bitter feud. Rockne was the brilliant new genius
on the block and Yost was the established king.
So it was likely this toxic cocktail of religious
prejudice, professional jealousy, and massive
ego. Rockne represented a direct threat to Yost's
status as the greatest coach in the game. It
is so interesting, though, because the source
material also highlights that Yost wasn't this
simple blanket bigot. For instance, he was one
of the very first coaches to actively play Jewish
players. Right. The Benny to Benny connection.
Benny Friedman throwing to Benny Oosterman. Friedman
was Jewish. And Yost actively championed him.
He put him on the field when a lot of other coaches
might not have. So you have this deeply complex
figure. Very complex. He broke social barriers
when it suited his team and helped him win games.
But he erected massive barriers, like the one
against Notre Dame, when it suited his personal
power. Speaking of building barriers and structures,
let us talk about his physical legacy. Because
if you go to Ann Arbor today, you are literally
walking through Fielding Yost's imagination.
You really are. In the 1920s... Yost transitions.
He becomes the athletic director. And he goes
on a construction spree that is just mind -boggling
for the time. He builds the university golf course.
He builds the Yost Fieldhouse. Which was a brand
new concept, right? Completely revolutionary.
It was the first building of its kind on any
college campus. A massive indoor facility so
the team could practice during the harsh Michigan
winters. No one else had that. It gave them a
huge competitive advantage. But his masterpiece
is, of course, Michigan Stadium. The big s***.
The largest stadium in the United States. And
you have to realize he planned and built this
in the 1920s. Why build a stadium for 70 ,000
or 80 ,000 people back then? Did they even have
the local population to fill those seats? People
told him he was crazy. They said he was vastly
overbuilding. But Yost envisioned the future.
He actually urged the architects to build the
footings so that the stadium could eventually
expand to seat over 100 ,000 people. You knew
it would get that big. He understood before anyone
else that college football wasn't just a fun
game for the students and alumni anymore. It
was a spectacle for the masses. He built a literal
stage for the massive industry he had helped
create. And he had this weird branding genius,
too, like the way he pronounced the state's name.
Yeah, Miishi. It became this trademark quirk.
Fans and broadcasters just adopted it. He knew
exactly how to market the product. He even coined
the phrase football builds character, which is
pretty rich coming from the guy who played as
a runger for Lafayette and snuck onto the field
in disguise against Ohio Wesleyan. History is
full of irony, but that phrase was incredibly
powerful. It gave the sheer violence of the sport
a moral justification. It made it acceptable
for these high -minded academic universities
to invest millions of dollars into it because
they could say they weren't just playing a game,
they were building men. So we have the builder,
the innovator, the controversial power broker,
but we also have the teacher. His coaching tree
is just absurd. It is a viral map of American
football strategy. 77 men who played or coached
under Yost went on to become head coaches. We
are talking about the guys who literally built
the programs at Texas, Nebraska, Kansas. Even
Dan McGuigan at Vanderbilt, he was actually Yost's
brother -in -law. Wait, really? Yes, Yost was
the best man at McGorgon's wedding. They even
tied in a game once. But this coaching tree means
that the Yost DNA, the speed, the organization,
the ruthless professional mindset, it just seeped
into the groundwater of American sports. So if
you look at a team today playing fast or using
linebackers or just treating the sport like a
cutthroat business, that all traces back to Yost.
Exactly. He standardized the profession. Before
Yost, a coach was often a guy who just showed
up in the afternoon after his real job. After
Yost, a coach was the CEO of a massive program.
And he even proved his own longevity by returning
to coaching briefly in the 1920s and winning
two more national titles in 1923. But legacies
evolve. Yeah. And we have to address the modern
reevaluation that is mentioned in the sources.
Because in 2021, there was a formal push to remove
his name from the ice arena on campus. Yes. And
this goes back to the racial history of the era.
While he did play Jewish players. The University
of Michigan and Yost specifically have come under
heavy scrutiny for the segregation of the team
during his long tenure as athletic director.
There were no black lettermen in football during
Ghost's entire time as coach or AD. There's a
very significant gap in time. It is. And again,
looking objectively at the sources, the modern
critique is that he did not just passively inherit
segregation, but that he actively enforced it.
It is a stark reminder that we can acknowledge
his architectural role in the sport without deifying
the man himself. He was a man of his time with
all the deeply ingrained prejudices and flaws
that implies, but he also held enough unchecked
power that he could have changed. things if he
truly wanted to, and he didn't. He held that
power until 1940. That is a long time to shape
a culture. He died in 1946, so his career essentially
spans the entire first half of the 20th century.
He saw the game go from leather helmets and flying
wedges right to the verge of the modern era.
When you look at the whole picture, the 2 ,821
points, the state of the conference fights the
sheer force of his personality. What is the final
headline for Fielding Yost? The headline is the
first professional. He found a game that was
a chaotic student activity and he single handedly
turned it into a high stakes, high revenue business.
He realized that if you win. You can make the
rules. And you can make the money. And you can
build the stadium. It really makes you think
about the current moment in college sports. We
are watching the Pac -12 dissolve. We are watching
NIL deals worth millions of dollars. We see players
transferring schools for better offers every
single day. It feels chaotic to us. It feels
like the sport is losing its way. But I wonder
if Fielding Yost would look at today's college
football, the professionalism, the massive money,
the... mercenary transfers and think it is chaotic?
Or would he just look at it and think, finally,
you guys cut up? I think he would look at the
modern transfer portal and just wish he had thought
of it first. I mean, he was already doing that
in 1896. He absolutely was. For better or worse,
he was the prophet of commercialization. We didn't
even get to talk about how this mindset laid
the groundwork for the massive media rights deals
we see today. But I will leave that for you to
explore on your own. That's a wrap on the architect
of Amy Shagan. Thanks for listening to this Deep
Dives into Fielding Yoast. See you next time.