The Sacrifice of Iphigenia
This is the story of the rooster sacrifice that shaped the course of Michigan football history.
Stick with me.
Before Ohio State, the University of Chicago was Michigan’s primary rival. The two programs first faced off during UC’s debut season of 1892. The Wolverines and Maroons played annually on Thanksgiving Day, the last week of the season. Michigan’s 12-11 victory to finish an undefeated 1898 season inspired a music student named Louis Elbel to write “The Victors,” later adopted as the fight song, on his return journey from Chicago to Ann Arbor.
After a one-year hiatus, Michigan and Chicago resumed their rivalry on Thanksgiving Day, 1900, in the Windy City.
A CONTRAST IN COACHES/A YUKON DETOUR
In this nascent age of college football, the vocation of coaching was just beginning to be professionalized. Chicago was an outlier, helmed since 1892 by Amos Alonzo Stagg, who’d already transformed the game by the turn of the century with innovations such as the huddle, the lateral and the tackling dummy.
Michigan had a more typical coaching history for the time. It introduced its first head coach in 1891, then went through five more in the ensuing ten years. Only one head man, Gustave “Dutch” Ferbert, lasted more than two seasons. Ferbert coached the Wolverines to a 24-3-1 record from 1897-99, claiming the program’s first conference title in ‘98.
Needless to say, salaries back then didn’t compare to today’s eight- and nine-figure deals. Ferbert saw an opportunity to go west – not, say, to coach USC or Stanford, but to mine for gold in Alaska.
After years of little word from the expedition – to the point that our intrepid hero was presumed dead at multiple points – the Detroit Free Press reported in 1909 that Ferbert “became a bonanza king overnight”:
Gustave H. Ferbert, known to football followers the country over as “Dutch,” has made a “million-dollar touchdown.” …
Quitting the gridiron game “Dutch” hiked for Nome, Alaska, in 1900 to make his fortune. He has returned rich. He made a “killing” somewhere near Deering City in the Candle Creek region this and last year and if he cares to go back his claims are valuable enough to put him in the millionaire class.
“‘DUTCH’ FERBERT IN LUCK,” Detroit Free Press, 22 Oct. 1909, archived.
Reports on Ferbert’s riches may have been exaggerated. The rest of his life was not well-documented. When he died in 1943, obituaries mentioned that he spent his post-Alaska years working as a mining engineer, not enjoying a Scrooge McDuck lifestyle.
While Ferbert made his Yukon trek, Michigan looked for a new coach. Athletic director Charles Baird chose Langdon “Biff” Lea, the third former Princeton player to coach the Wolverines, after a faith-testing search went into July. Lea, who had been the unofficial coach of the Princeton side the previous year, was supposed to be worth the wait, according to the Free Press:
There has been considerable complaint among the students on account of the delay in arranging for next year’s football work, but no one suspected the magnitude of the star Director Baird was trying to secure.
“Michigan Eleven to Have Princeton’s Old Coach,” Detroit Free Press, 13 Jul. 1900, archived.
Upon arrival, Lea “established a set of strict rules for his team,” according to the Bentley Library:
Posted on the wall of the Gymnasium before tryouts, the stipulations included: “The word ‘Can’t’ is not in the football vocabulary. Any man feeling that way about any part of the game in detail is not wanted on the field and will please stay away. Only those wanted who say ‘I will’ with teeth together and who never stop fighting. Otherwise, they go off the field.
The clichéd fresh-faced football coach instilling a tougher culture to distinguish himself from his predecessor has been around a long time. There’s no word on whether Lea installed a more aggressive, multiple defensive scheme.
Lea’s debut season indicated his focus may have been too much on rule-establishing and not enough on ball-knowing. The Wolverines surpassed 12 points only once during a rickety 6-0 start, got embarrassed 28-5 by Iowa, eked past Notre Dame, then played Ohio State to a scoreless tie five days prior to the Chicago game. The Buckeyes, still independent at the time, had lost the previous week to Ohio Medical University.
The Maroons were the reigning Western Conference champions after a breakthrough 12-0-2 (4-0 WC) season in 1899. They’d fallen on even harder times than Michigan, however, losing a program-record five consecutive games, most recently a 39-5 drubbing at the hands of Wisconsin. While Chicago had the benefit of a week more rest than its rivals, it entered Thanksgiving as the underdog.
“The Absence of the Championship Feature Detracts Little From the Annual Michigan–Chicago Game,” declared a Michigan Daily headline.
Despite the slump, Stagg had unlimited job security – he was, after all, the most innovative coach in the history of the game. The same couldn’t be said for Lea. The Daily wrote in the leadup, “[Chicago] now makes the single boast that, bad as she is, she can still win from Michigan.”
Lea’s front-page quote made the gravity of his situation clear.
“We have got to win, so we will win.”
MICHIGAN STRIKES FIRST
According to the Chicago Tribune, 3,000 Michigan fans made the trip to Chicago’s Marshall Field, where 4,000 Maroons partisans occupied the other side. With a listed attendance of 10,000, the game attracted considerable casual interest, too.
At 2 p.m., the Wolverines sent the opening kickoff from the 55-yard line – the field stretched 110 yards from goal line to goal line. Chicago’s offense converted three first downs to move near midfield as “the maroon rooters went wild.” They quieted when left halfback James M. Sheldon lost a fumble to Michigan.
The Wolverines methodically bashed their way towards the goal line, covering 47 yards in 20 plays for the game’s opening score; 5’10½, 175-pound left tackle Hugh White tallied five points with a one-yard touchdown plunge and fullback Everett Sweeley kicked the one-point goal through the uprights.
The ensuing kickoff featured a rugby-style rules quirk: Chicago kicked off from midfield. Sweeley fielded the ball inside the 15-yard line, retreated a few steps, and punted the ball back to the Maroons, who returned the ball inside the U-M 50. They gained only five yards before losing the ball on downs.
Michigan’s opportunity to move ahead by two possessions instantly slipped through its fingers. Sweeley dropped “a poor pass” (a lateral, your author presumes) on first down, and rather than eat a tackle for loss, he quick-kicked the ball out of bounds near the UC 50.
About that.
THE ORIGINAL PUNT GOD
Sweeley deserves an aside. He had never seen a football game before playing in one as a collegian but still managed to earn the rare distinction of freshman varsity letterman. A sophomore in 1900, he’d play two more seasons for Michigan and set some astonishing records as a dual-threat runner/kicker [emphasis mine]:
Ev Sweeley, of Michigan, holds the two most prized records for kicking a football. In a game with Iowa in [1902], Sweeley administered to the prolate the longest kick on record. A ball from his right foot went 86 yards before touching the ground. Sweeley also boasts an enviable distinction unboasted by any other hero of the gridiron. Never in the four years of his playing days did the Wolverine have a single punt blocked. …
Sweeley was also an expert place kicker, scoring over 100 points in this manner. His greatest game was the running punt trick. He would run a ball until he was hard pressed and then kick, often thus adding many yards to the ground gained.
“SPECTACULAR FIGURE IN FOOTBALL IS THE BOOTER,” Buffalo Courier, 11 Nov. 1906, archived.
Sweeley starred in the inaugural Rose Bowl, held on New Year’s Day of 1902. In Michigan’s 49-0 victory over Stanford, a trouncing that caused the second Rose Bowl to be put off until 1916, he made four field goals and averaged 38.9 yards on 21(!) punts.
He was ever-present in the lineup with one noteworthy exception:
In four seasons he missed only one game, the result of “a little row with a math professor.”
“Kicked Four Years Without a Block,” Harrisburg Telegraph, 03 Nov. 1943, archived.
Sadly, no additional details were provided. Sweeley went on to a brief, three-sport coaching career at Washington Agricultural (now Washington State) before moving to Twin Falls, Idaho, where he became a lawyer. He remained in that field, working as the county prosecutor and a probate judge later in life.
CHICAGO STRIKES BACK
While prudent, Sweeley’s running punt didn’t have the desired impact. Stagg had made a number of lineup changes heading into the game, as “injuries, idleness, and faculty’s blue pencil” had necessitated an overhaul. One varsity newcomer, in particular, began to infuse life in the Maroons: fullback Ernest E. Perkins, who’d previously played on the “scrub team.”
As the Daily put it, with a dash of salt:
The game showed up for the Midway team some stars heretofore unheard of. Men who had previously not enjoyed the dignity of being on the reserve, the king scrubs of scrubs, were discovered at the last minute and put into the game to gain the ground and win the game.
A new play devised by Stagg, dubbed the “pile-driving end-back” by the Tribune, helped Perkins bash through the Michigan defense. Short on experienced offensive linemen, Stagg coached his ends to fold in behind the ballcarrier, give him a push downfield, and follow him while “pushing, pulling, dragging, or shoving the man after he was tackled.”
A 28-yard run by left tackle Frederick Fell highlighted an otherwise workmanlike 16-play drive mostly handled by Perkins, who found the end zone from three yards out to bring the Maroons within a point. The score would remain 6-5 after UC failed the conversion.
The teams spent the remainder of the half trading unsuccessful possessions on Chicago’s end of the field. The Wolverines moved the ball as deep as the seven-yard line, only for Stagg’s defense to hold strong.
As the squads regrouped for intermission, the pivotal moment of the day unfolded.
INTRODUCING IPHIGENIA, AKA “PETE”
While the first half transpired, 30 Chicago students wearing “white ducks [pants], broad-rimmed straw hats, and light coats” gathered in the north stands as part of an initiation ritual for the “Three-quarter club.” They were joined by a guest of honor, Iphigenia, whom they called “Pete” for short.
Pete was a rooster.
Holding Pete against his will by a piece of string, the prospective club members made their way towards the field at halftime. I wouldn’t dare change a word of the Tribune’s account for, well, many reasons:
[T]he candidates filed down into the field and gave imitations of a cavalry troop maneuvering, a section of artillery going into action, a Fourth of July parade, a First Ward Democratic caucus, and of Pottawatomie braves on the warpath. Then they sat down to a pow-wow in the center of the field, while the keen wind filled out their duck trousers.
While the tomtoms were sounding and speeches were being made, a blue-shirted Michigan substitute approached warily and mingled with the braves. “Pete” was hopping out to the limits of his tether and was picking corn out of the hands of the candidates when the Michigan man clutched the rooster by the wing, tucked it under his arms like a football, and started for Englewood.
“CHICAGO VICTORY; PERKINS A HERO,” Chicago Tribune, 30 Nov. 1900, archived.
The unnamed “Michigan man” scrambled to leave the scene, unaware that Pete’s tether was stretching ever tighter.
SCHRÖDINGER’S SACRIFICE
While our feathered protagonist’s fate hangs in the balance, let’s answer the question at the forefront of everyone’s mind: why would a rooster be named Iphigenia?
As the Chicago Tribune noted, Iphigenia was “a yearling rooster with a classic feminine name,” which is likely why the Three-Quarter Club candidates called him “Pete.” Indeed, in ancient Greek mythology, Iphigenia is the daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra.
The Mycenaean princess Iphigenia either met an untimely end or was narrowly saved from one, depending upon the storyteller. No matter the source, most of the myth is the same. Agamemnon needed to get his fleet to Troy for the big war but he had angered the goddess Artemis, who changed the winds to blow his ships off course. To appease Artemis, the king chose to sacrifice Iphigenia.
Agamemnon, a savvy man, had a sneaking suspicion his wife wouldn’t be on board. He devised a plan. No, not to save his daughter, silly, but to trick Clytemnestra into handing her over [emphasis mine]:
He sent Odysseus and Diomedes to his wife, Clytemnestra (who happened to be Helen’s sister), to tell her that he had arranged a marriage between their daughter, Iphigenia, and the hero Achilles, and that Achilles wished to marry her before he went off to fight. Agamemnon told this lie because he suspected that if he told his wife the real reason why he wanted Iphigenia to come to Aulis, Clytemnestra would not go along with the plan. But Clytemnestra suspected nothing; she prepared her daughter for marriage and sent her off to Aulis. Once there, Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter (though some sources contend that Artemis replaced her with a deer at the last second and whisked the girl off to live as her priestess among the Taurians). This action earned Agamemnon the undying hatred of his wife.
Iphigenia either died or didn’t, depending on your preferred version. I assume Clytemnestra’s undying hatred of Agamemnon burned bright in both renditions.
Regardless, the rooster’s name now makes a lot of sense. Would he be rescued at the midfield altar?
In a word, no.
THE DEATH OF IPHIGENIA
Our anonymous Michigan substitute ran with Iphigenia tucked under his arm until “the fowl went the length of its string and then stopped with a squawk.” With the bird incapacitated, the end was inevitable:
The Michigan man was downed, but the rooster’s wing had been broken. It was killed, and as the blood flowed on the ground the candidates danced and the second half was called.
“CHICAGO VICTORY; PERKINS A HERO,” Chicago Tribune, 30 Nov. 1900, archived.
Visceral!
The Wolverines ascribed the events of the second half to Iphigenia’s sacrifice. Given what unfolded, a rooster sacrifice determined the last 120 years of U-M football.
JUST “PERKINS”
Chicago kicked off the second half from midfield. As the teams traded scoreless possessions, Michigan couldn’t run or punt the ball out of their end of the field.
After the second Maroons drive of the half faltered inside the U-M five-yard line, the Wolverines made a common play of the time — punting on first down to avoid a dreaded safety and improve field position. Unfortunately, Everett Sweeley’s boot didn’t travel 20 yards before crossing out of bounds, a rare miscue for the kicking wiz.
This is when fill-in fullback Ernest E. Perkins, who’d already scored Chicago’s lone first-half touchdown, earned mononym status. Sporting a “bulky nose protector,” Perkins “hammered and dragged his way over the gridiron, and wherever he went the pigskin went with him, and all Chicago came behind him.”
Playing only because the presumed starting fullback missed the contest with a “sore ear,” Perkins capitalized on the short field with his second rushing touchdown. The Maroons again missed the extra point, leaving the score at 10-6, Chicago.
The chicken’s ghost was playing with the maroons.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 30 NOV. 1900
The Wolverines couldn’t muster any offense. It took Chicago one exchange of possessions to flip the field and one more to get into scoring territory. The Maroons battered and bloodied the Michigan defense until Perkins plunged in for his third TD of the day:
Reddner [sic] was hurt and was led to the side lines, tears streaming from his eyes. Begle took his place, and the slaughter went on. There was more sledge-hammer work, and Chicago took another touchdown, the score standing 15 to 6.
“CHICAGO VICTORY; PERKINS A HERO,” Chicago Tribune, 30 Nov. 1900, archived.
While the Tribune‘s game story says time was called before the extra point could be kicked, their own diagram of the game shows the two teams trading punts near midfield before UC ran the clock out.
The Tribune‘s front page declared Perkins a “hero”:
The man with the nose protector was Perkins—just Perkins. Until yesterday he was known simply as “Ernest E. Perkins, class of 1902, played on the ‘scrub team.’” Hereafter his name will be written just “Perkins” in every true heart at the University of Chicago, and history out on the Midway will chronicle him as the full back who brought victory in the big game of 1900. He will wear the magic letter “C” on his sweater, too, for, aside from making a Chicago victory, Perkins made the “varsity.” He is a “scrub” no longer.
Perkins remained on the varsity team, sporting the maroon “C” through the 1902 season.
Michigan reportedly had a different explanation for the outcome than the rise of a new star fullback: “The chicken’s ghost was playing with the maroons.”
THE ANVIL CHORUS
The victorious Maroons couldn’t walk off the field because it was packed with “too many men who wanted to carry them.” A.A. Stagg announced plans to buy his team a celebratory turkey (pre-slaughtered, presumably).
The Wolverines returned to Ann Arbor as a team in turmoil. They’d opened the season with six underwhelming wins against the dregs of the schedule before finishing 1-2-1, getting outscored 43-18 over those final four games.
The next edition of the Michigan Daily declared “DISASTER FOR MICHIGAN” in the headline:
In unhappy contrast, the anvil chorus is out in full force at Michigan, and the knock-knock of hammers, great and small, is heard all over the campus, and will continue until a winning team can get back the fickle sympathies of her “student body.”
“DISASTER FOR MICHIGAN,” Michigan Daily, 04 Dec. 1900, archived.
That’s a beautiful way to say someone’s ass is about to get fired.
LEA LEAVES
Langdon Lea evidently decided to get it over with himself. The December 2nd edition of the Detroit Free Press refers to Lea’s “announced retirement,” though I cannot find the announcement itself or any reporting on it. The Daily observed a Thanksgiving break and didn’t publish their postgame edition until Dec. 4th.
Regardless, the retirement didn’t last the offseason. Lea coached Princeton, his alma mater, to a 9-1-1 record in 1901 before leaving the sport. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1964.
By December 18th, the Daily was running an editorial asking for a new approach when hiring Michigan’s next coach:
Michigan has never had a well defined system of coaching which extended over any great length of time. Year after year we have found the football season opening up with a new coach to handle our men and interests. … Primarily, then, we need a quasi-permanent head to our proposed new coaching system, who shall be chief of the staff of coaches.
Michigan Daily, 18 Dec. 1900, archived.
Meanwhile, establishing a time-honored tradition at Michigan, prominent former players made sure their voices were heard. At the “request of certain Chicago alumni,” the university organized what the Daily headline called a “COUNCIL OF MICHIGAN MEN” to help get the program back on track:
All the old varsity captains and 10 or 12 other leading alumni from Chicago, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Detroit, Grand Rapids and New York, who have shown interest in Michigan’s athletics besides the present captain, trainer and coaches, making a party of 25 or 30, have been asked to meet in conference with the Board of Control to discuss the causes of Michigan’s weakness in football and to suggest, if possible, remedies for strengthening the team. Mr. H.G. Prettyman has invited the party to a dinner he gives in honor of the old varsity men who will be present.
“COUNCIL OF MICHIGAN MEN,” Michigan Daily, 15 Dec. 1900, archived.
Horace G. Prettyman, of course, starred on some of the earliest U-M squads, playing from 1882 to 1890 (with a one-year hiatus in 1887) and earning team captaincy three times.
While this conference, which included athletic director Charles Baird, 1900 team captain Neil Snow and 1901 captain-elect Hugh White, produced no official resolutions, the gathered parties agreed on their most pressing matter. Michigan needed a full-time coach.
THE ALTERNATE TIMELINE
While the hammers knocked, Baird began talking to — and fielding interest from — prospective coaches. Given Baird’s intention to look coast to coast and the speed of both communication and travel, local papers had plenty of time to rumormonger during the search.
Baird shot down a particularly juicy rumor that emerged from Ohio State’s student newspaper, The Lantern, stating Michigan had offered OSU coach John B. Eckstorm a $2,500 contract:
When seen by a Daily reporter this morning Manager Baird said “No, I did not offer Mr. Ekstorm [sic] or any one else such amount. In fact we have been deluged with applications from coaches who want positions here next year. Among their number was one from Mr. Ekstorm [sic]. We have accepted none of them as yet.[“]
“First “Coach” Story for the Season,” Michigan Daily, 12 Jan. 1901, archived.
Goddamn. Baird could’ve just said “no.”
Eckstorm, who’d posted a 17-1-2 record in two seasons with OSU, remained in Columbus for 1901. Tragedy would tarnish the season. Two days after being paralyzed in a rugby-style scrum against Western Reserve, OSU nose guard John Segrist passed away.
Overwhelmed with grief, the previously undefeated Buckeyes lost in three of their last four games following Segrist’s death. Ohio State considered canceling the football program entirely. While that didn’t come to pass, Eckstorm resigned in the offseason to coach the team at Ohio Medical University.
THE LELAND STANFORD MAN
Less than a week after the Eckstorm rumor, another report — this time from the Associated Press — had Baird coming to an agreement with an up-and-coming coach who’d spent 1900 at Stanford. Again, a Daily reporter tracked down Baird on campus to collect a tactful denial:
“No, Yost has not been hired by us. The story is another fake, pure and simple. Yost has been in correspondence with Michigan, as have half a dozen other, but you may say that we have come nearer to closing a deal with other men than with him. As yet no man has been selected. We have made Yost no offer.[“]
“Another Pipe Dream,” Michigan Daily, 19 Jan. 1901, archived.
You may say that Baird was obfuscating the truth, in retrospect. Not even two weeks later, he returned from a “long ‘coach’ expedition” — presumably to Palo Alto — bearing the news that he’d agreed to terms with Fielding H. Yost. A special report on Yost’s hiring with a January 31st dateline made it in time for the next day’s Free Press.
The Daily boasted of Yost’s “enviable” record in his prior stops at Ohio Wesleyan, Nebraska, Kansas, and Stanford. He made his hotly anticipated arrival in April, squeezing in “practically just one week of training” before departing again as the school went on spring break. This didn’t seem of great concern. Yost used his brief time on to lay out his plans for the fall:
Coach Yost said: “I will drill the men in the minor points of the game such as catching the ball, falling on the ball, and interference. I will be back next fall very early as a new squad of men need a lot of ‘roughing in.’”
“YOST TAKES CHARGE,” Michigan Daily, 06 April 1901, archived.
Although there were plans to continue using some of the “Yale style” of football that the team already knew, Yost would “try his own style of play.”
Indeed.
THE AFTERMATH
Yost’s Wolverines obliterated their competition from the outset. Michigan outscored their opposition 550 to zero on their way to a perfect 11-0 season in 1901. Their crowning achievement: a 49-0 win over Yost’s former charges, Stanford, in the inaugural Rose Bowl. The contest was so lopsided that Tournament of Roses officials waited 13 years before holding another football game.
Michigan’s famed “Point-a-Minute” teams would go 55-1-1 with a combined score of 2,841 to 42 from 1901-05. The school claims national championships for the first four of those seasons.
Yost would coach until 1923, return to the field from 1925-26, and serve as athletic director from 1921-40. The Wolverines won two more national titles with him as coach and a further two under Harry Kipke in the 1930s. Yost famously envisioned his team playing in front of 100,000 people and made significant contributions to the planning of Michigan Stadium, which opened in 1927.
After a long, painful decline, a 70-year-old A.A. Stagg was forced out of the Chicago job in 1932. He landed at the College of the Pacific, where he won five Far Western Conference titles in 14 seasons before again being pushed out for declining performance and, well, being in his mid-80s.
Rather than retire, Stagg took assistant jobs at Susquehanna (PA) and Stockton (CA) College and coached until he was 96. He remained in Stockton until he died at 102.
Michigan went 14-3 in the series against Chicago from Yost’s arrival through the final game between the rivals in 1939. The Wolverines won that game 85-0 with three touchdowns from Tom Harmon, who’d win the Heisman Trophy the following year. The University of Chicago dropped football after posting a 6-23-2 record from 1936-39.
THE EPILOGUE
As one rivalry passed, another sprung to life. From 1897 to 1927, Michigan ran out to a 19-3-2 series lead against Ohio State. The Buckeyes won seven of the next 10, including four straight shutouts from 1934-37. Addressing pessimism before the 1934 game, first-year OSU head coach Francis Schmidt said of U-M, “they put their pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us.”
From that moment on, whenever Ohio State beat Michigan, every Buckeye received a pair of Gold Pants — a gold charm inscribed with their initials, the date and the score of The Game.
Would any of this have occurred without a group of Chicago student club candidates ritualistically killing a rooster named after a mythological Greek princess? Your author, for one, is glad we don’t know the answer.
