NU and the Mud Cost Michigan the 1925 National Title
By George Beres

The 20th century still was young as two men stood hunched together under the stands of Chicago's Soldier Field, watching the rain fall in torrents.

It was the morning of November 7, 1925-- 40 years before anyone thought of carpeting a football field with water-resistant plastic grass.  On that day, lightly regarded Northwestern was to play the nation's #1 team, Michigan, in the lakefront stadium.  Never would the weather play a more dominant role in deciding the outcome of a football game.

It had rained most of the week, and the gridiron was a quagmire.  As the two brooding figures watched, sections of the field disappeared before their eyes under growing puddles of water.  The playing field was beginning to resemble choppy Lake Michigan, which churned just beyond the stadium's east gates.  The shorter of the two men, Michigan coach Fielding Yost, wanted nothing to do with it.

"Tug, I coach a football team, not a swimming team.  How can I tell them to play a game on a field we can hardly see?"

Tug Wilson was the young Northwestern director of athletics, later commissioner of the Big Ten Conference.  He told me years later, "I said to Fielding: 'Look, we've already sold 40,000 tickets to this game.  You know we can't afford to call it off."

Yost's Michigan team had outscored its five previous opponents 180 to 0.  But he knew, as Wilson did, that rain was the great equalizer, the ally of the underdog.  His Wolverines were well on their way to a national championship, and he wanted nothing to do with a game neutralized by the elements.  He stared balefully at the water-logged gridiron and continued to plead that the game be postponed.

But he knew it was a lost cause-- that the one thing he couldn't argue with was gate receipts.  So Wilson-- and the budget-- prevailed, and Michigan sloshed out into the mud to do battle.  Ironically, fewer than 20,000 fans showed up for the game, as half of the advance sale ticket holders refused to venture out into the deluge.

Object as he might to the weather, Yost was shrewd enough to adapt to it as best he could.  He held pre-game practice on higher ground north of the gridiron and dressed his squad in rubber trousers.

Walter Eckersall, University of Chicago Hall of Famer who refereed the game, told Wilson afterward: "In my 25 years of football, I never saw worse conditions.  There were pools of water on the field, and in some places the players' feet sank into the field two or three inches."

A Michigan student manager grabbed a life preserver off a Chicago bridge and brandished it on the sidelines.  The hapless Wolverines could have used it.

Northwestern took the opening kickoff and was stopped inside its 30.  The Wildcats immediately established the stalemate pattern for the game by punting on first down.  Clearly, it was a liability to have possession of the ball on your side of midfield.

That first punt became the game's pivotal point.  Michigan's All-American quarterback, Benny Friedman, fumbled the ball, and Northwestern recovered deep in Wolverine territory.

Three attempts into the line gained nothing.  Then Wildcat fullback, Tiny Lewis, moved back to the Wolverine 18 to try a drop-kicked field goal.  The kick had just enough distance to get over the crossbar, barely missing one of the uprights.  For the first time in six games, Michigan had been scored upon!

The field goal, coming on the first series of the game, was with a comparatively dry ball.  Soon the ball became waterlogged, making it even harder to handle and further neutralizing the offenses.  The supply of balls was limited.  Eckersall was able to put new ones into play only twice: at the start of the third and fourth quarters.

For the rest of the game, nature dictated identical game plans for both teams: make two attempts to gain, then punt on third down.  When two plays failed to gain a first down (there was only one in the game), it became routine for Eckersall to call time so he could wipe the ball for the anticipated third down punt.

After Friedman's early disaster, neither team risked fielding a punt.  There was no danger of the ball rolling.  When it landed, it stopped dead in the mud.  The game's only first down came when Michigan back Bill Hernstein slipped and slid for a gain of 11 yards.  Conditions deprived Michigan of its potent pass weapon, Friedman to Bennie Oosterbaan.  Only one pass was thrown, and it fell incomplete.

The Wolverines refused to panic.  Their willingness to play a waiting game looked as if it would pay off late in the third quarter.  Northwestern had used three plays in a a desperate but unsuccessful attempt to move the ball beyond its own 10. 

Then came the play that haunted Yost the rest of his career.  Instead of punting on fourth down, Wildcat captain Tim Lowry had Lewis down the ball in the end zone for a safety, giving Michigan two points.

The rules of the day gave Northwestern the ball again with first down on its own 30.  When Lewis eventually punted on third down, his kick carried well into Michigan territory.  Neither team threatened again.  Rain kept the remaining action near midfield, and Northwestern floated away with a stunning 3 to 2 victory.

Michigan still went on to win the Big Ten crown.  But the loss in the rain washed away its chances for the mythical national championship.

Yost took little comfort from the fact that on the same day his team was wallowing in the mud, similar conditions existed throughout the Midwest.  The weather was so bad 160 miles to the south in Champaign that the great Red Grange of Illinois came up with negative rushing yardage against Chicago.

At national rules meetings after the season, Yost demanded and got a revision of the safety rule that Northwestern had exploited against Michigan.  The new rule required the team that suffers the safety to give up the ball, kicking to its opponent from the 20-yard line.

But the legislation came too late to retrieve the 1925 national title Yost always insisted he deserved-- the title Michigan left buried in the mud of Soldier Field.


George Beres, a former Northwestern Sports Information Director, was told this story by the late Tug Wilson.

This article originally appeared in the Winter 1995 edition on Northwestern's Alumni News.