people are greatly
roused up over the defeats
coaching is main thing
Dear sir:
Mr. George Huff handed me your letter to him of December 27th and requested me to answer for him. Illinois has secured coaches for 1901 but Michigan has not yet selected hers, although we shall do so very soon.
We won the Western Football Championship for several years, namely 93, 94 and 95. Since then, however, we have won the championship but once, namely in ’98. This has been largely due, I think, to unsatisfactory coaching, though I believe our failure this year was mostly due to the fact that we have a green team, as we had only three old men back.
Our people are greatly roused up over the defeats of the past two years, and a great effort will be made. Alumni everywhere have promised to cooperate, and as we will have three-fourths of the old men back the outlook is splendid. Coaching is the main thing bothering us now.
Would you care to coach at Ann Arbor? What terms? Do you expect to come east soon? If so, could you stop and talk the matter over with us?
If you receive this before you start east, will you please wire me at once whether or not you care to consider the matter and if so, whether you can talk the matter over.
Yours truly,
Chas. Baird
Charles Baird, Athletic Director of the University of Michigan to Fielding H. Yost on January 5, 1901 as reproduced in the book, Stagg vs. Yost : the birth of cutthroat football by John Kryk. Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2015.
Mr. Kryk writes, “Yost would be the first UM football coach who wasn’t either a former star player at Princeton or Yale or a UM grad. In fact, in 1901, Yost would be the only coach among the seven schools good at football at the time who hadn’t learned his craft at one of the Big Four universities in the East. That Michigan would hire this gregarious nomad with personal and educational pedigrees unlikely to impress Western athletic men, let alone any easterners, spoke to the heights of Yost’s coaching overachievements thus far. Such heights were nothing compared to those he was about to reach at Michigan.”
In a caption to a photograph of Mr. Yost, Kryk write, “Fielding H. Yost had more personality than any man I have ever met,” according to Ring Lardner.”
And that’s good enough for me.
No Haiku For You 