Patrick’s Day in Champaign I’ll never know. How he ever survived a single Unofficial St. He won three consecutive conference titles before being fired for getting so drunk he tried to fight a cop. Bo remains a cultural icon around Michigan even though, for reasons I’ll cover later, he shouldn’t.Īfter Schembechler stepped away from head coaching duties to be the athletic director (a surprising move for someone who apparently didn’t know about serious crimes happening right under his nose as head coach you’d figure that wouldn’t be conducive to even more oversight, but again we’ll get to that later), longtime assistant and former Illini head coach Gary Moeller was hired to be his successor. Bump Elliot took over in 1959 (his brother Pete would take over at Illinois in 1960) and went 51-42-2, resigning after 1968.īo Schembechler took the reins in 1969 and won 13 Big Ten titles in 21 seasons, somehow never winning a national title in that time. The last, Bennie Oosterban, was forced to step down after going 42-26-3 over 10 years with only one national title. Some dude named Tad Wieman coached for two years and then the next three coaches all won a national title during their tenures. Six titles were won by legendary coach Fielding H.
Michigan has been playing longer and from virtually the inception of the program it was one of the nation’s best. Fielding Yost (rightmost) standing with various sports figures, including Knute Rockne and Babe Ruth. But Michigan’s history can be summarized through a comparison with their biggest rival: while seven of Ohio State’s eight national titles came after the last Illinois national championship in 1951, only one of Michigan’s 11 titles came after that year. No FBS program has won more games than the Michigan Wolverines (976 as of this article). Today, we’re finally wrapping up the Big Ten East with the.