1925 Michigan Wolverines football team

1925 Michigan Wolverines football
Co-national champion (Sagarin)
Big Ten champion
ConferenceBig Ten Conference
Record7–1 (5–1 Big Ten)
Head coach
Offensive schemeShort punt
CaptainRobert J. Brown
Home stadiumFerry Field
Uniform
Seasons
← 1924
1926 →
1925 Big Ten Conference football standings
Conf Overall
Team W   L   T W   L   T
No. 2 Michigan $ 5 1 0 7 1 0
Northwestern 3 1 0 5 3 0
No. 8 Wisconsin 3 1 1 6 1 1
Chicago 2 2 1 3 4 1
Illinois 2 2 0 5 3 0
Iowa 2 2 0 5 3 0
Minnesota 1 1 1 5 2 1
Ohio State 1 3 1 4 3 1
Indiana 0 3 1 3 4 1
Purdue 0 3 1 3 4 1
  • $ – Conference champion
Rankings from Dickinson System

The 1925 Michigan Wolverines football team represented the University of Michigan in the 1925 Big Ten Conference football season. The 1925 season was Fielding H. Yost's 24th as the head football coach. Michigan compiled a 7–1 record and outscored opponents by a combined score of 227 to 3. The 1925 team won the Big Ten Conference championship and was ranked second in country (tied with Alabama) behind Dartmouth in the Dickinson System rankings.[1]

The only points allowed by the team were in a 3 to 2 loss to Northwestern in a game played in a heavy rainstorm on a field covered in mud five or six inches deep in some places. Michigan shut out seven of its eight opponents and allowed only four first downs in the last three games of the season.

Quarterback Benny Friedman and left end Bennie Oosterbaan, sometimes referred to as "The Benny-to-Bennie Show," were both consensus All-Americans and became known as one of the greatest passing combinations in college football history. Friedman finished second in close voting for the 1925 Chicago Tribune Silver Football trophy, which is awarded to the Most Valuable Player in the Big Ten. Both Friedman and Oosterbaan were later inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Team captain and center Robert J. Brown and guard Tom Edwards also received first-team All-American honors from some selectors.

At the end of the season, Yost called the 1925 Michigan team "the greatest football team I ever coached" and "the greatest football team I ever saw in action."[2] He continued to maintain that the 1925 squad was his greatest team even years later. The team was retroactively named as a 1925 co-national champion by MIT statistician Jeff Sagarin.[3]

  1. ^ "Dickison Football Rating System: Dartmouth Declared National Champion". The Pantagraph. January 8, 1926. p. 11 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Yost was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) (2015). "National Poll Rankings" (PDF). NCAA Division I Football Records. NCAA. p. 108. Retrieved January 8, 2016.