October 31, 1903: The Little Brown Jug

October 31, 1903: The University of Michigan football team comes to Minneapolis to play the University of Minnesota. Michigan coach Fielding Yost, while a football genius, was a bit paranoid, and thought opposing fans might poison his water. So he sent student manager Thomas B. Roberts to buy something and bring it to him. He went to a local variety store and spent 30 cents on a 5-gallon earthenware jug. The game, at Northrop Field, ended in a 6-6 tie.

Afterward, Minnesota custodian Oscar Munson discovered, in his Scandinavian accent, "Yost left his yug." Supposedly, they contacted Yost and said, "Come and win it back." Michigan didn't even try until 1909, when they did win it back.

Ever since, the jug -- which is not little and not brown -- has been painted maize & blue with Michigan's winning scores on one side, and maroon & gold with Minnesota's winning scores on the other, and gone to the winner. Michigan dominates the rivalry 75-25-3, including the battle for the Little Brown Jug 71-23-2.

This rivalry means little to Michigan, because they have absolutely dominated it. Michigan went 18-2-1 from 1895 to 1932, 14-2-1 from 1943 to 1959, and has gone 44-4 since 1968, including 18 straight from 1987 to 2004. Minnesota won 9 straight from 1934 to 1942.

Henry L. Williams, who had been a star halfback at Yale, coached at Minnesota from 1900 to 1921, winning 8 titles in the league that became the Big Ten Conference, and has been retroactively awarded the 1904 National Championship. He went 136-33-11 at Minnesota, but only 1-5-1 against Michigan. Minnesota's arena, opening in 1928, was named Williams Arena in his honor. He died in 1931.

In contrast, Yost, for whom Michigan's 1923 arena (formerly hosting basketball, and now hockey) was named, coached Michigan from 1901 to 1926, going 165-29-10, including 9-1-1 against Minnesota. He won 10 Conference Championships and 6 National Championships. He died in 1946.

UPDATE: In 2026, the University of Minnesota renamed Williams Arena, nicknamed "The Barn," as "The Barn by Blue Cross and Blue Shield." Other than getting sponsorship money, there was no reason to remove Williams' name: There was no revelation of bigotry or a posthumous sex scandal that would have force the University's hand.

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October 31, 1903 was a Saturday. This was also the day that Hampden Park, Scotland's national stadium, opened in Glasgow. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball season was over. Basketball barely existed, and hockey hadn't yet turned professional. These other noteworthy games were played in college football:

* Army beat Vermont, 32-0 on The Plain in West Point, New York.

* Penn State beat Navy, 17-0 at Worden Field in Annapolis, Maryland.

* Yale beat Columbia, 25-0 at the Polo Grounds.

* Harvard beat the Carlisle Indian School, 12-11 at Soldier's Field in Boston. Jim Thorpe was too young to play on the Carlisle varsity, but they almost didn't need him. Two weeks later, on November 14, Harvard Stadium opened, and Harvard lost to Dartmouth. They still play there today.

* The University of Pennsylvania beat Bucknell, 47-6 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia. A new stadium by that name would be built on the same site in 1922.

* Lafayette beat New York University, 8-6 at Ohio Field in The Bronx.

* Princeton beat Cornell, 44-0 at University Field in Princeton, New Jersey.

* And Rutgers beat Stevens Institute, 36-6 at Neilson Field in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

* One game that was meant to be played, but was not, was between Indiana University and Purdue University, on IU's campus in Bloomington. The Purdue Wreck led to its cancellation. I have a separate entry for that event.

October 6, 1923: A Big Day In College Football

Jack Trice

October 6, 1923: It's a big day in college football. The University of Minnesota hosts Iowa State University at Northrop Field in Minneapolis. Iowa State's lone black player, Jack Trice, gets hurt on the 2nd play of the game, breaking his collarbone. He insists he is all right, and stays in the game. But in the 3rd quarter, he tries to tackle a runner, falls, and 3 Minnesota players trample him. He is taken to a hospital, but doctors don't think his life is in danger, and he is released as fit to travel back to Iowa State's campus in Ames. But he has suffered internal bleeding, and dies 2 days later at age 21.

Trice was from the Cleveland area, and in 1979, 56 years after the fact, that city's major paper, The Plain Dealer, investigated his death. A surviving Iowa State teammate, Johnny Behm, said, "One person told me that nothing out of the ordinary happened. But another who saw it said it was murder."

In 1997, Iowa State's home field was named Jack Trice Stadium. It is the only stadium in the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS, formerly known as Division I-A) named for a black person. A statue of him stands outside.

Also on this day, 2 of the classic stadiums of the Big Ten Conference open. Memorial Stadium opens on the campus of the University of Illinois in Champaign. The Fighting Illini beat Nebraska 24-7, and, led by sophomore running back Harold "Red" Grange, go on to win the National Championship.

The stadium's dedication game wouldn't come until the next season, October 18, 1924, when Grange would put on a legendary show in a win over Michigan. The Chicago Bears played their home games at Memorial Stadium in 2002, while the original Soldier Field was torn down and the new one built in its place.

Also on this day, College Field opens on the campus of Michigan State College in East Lansing, but not with a game. The school would be renamed Michigan State University on its Centennial in 1955; the stadium, Macklin Field in 1935, Macklin Stadium in 1948, and Spartan Stadium in 1957. John Macklin was their football coach from 1911 to 1915.

It opened with 14,000 seats. By the time Clarence "Biggie" Munn was coaching the school's 1st great team in the early 1950s, it seated 51,000. When Hugh "Duffy" Daugherty coached its great team of the mid-1960s, it had peaked at 76,000. Today, it seats 75,005. It switched to artificial turf in 1969, and has kept it.

Also on this day, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which had opened on the preceding May 1, hosts a football game for the 1st time. The University of Southern California hosts Pomona College, and wins, 23-7.

The USC Trojans have used the Coliseum as their home field ever since. Their nearby rivals, the University of California at Los Angeles, played home games there from 1933 to 1981. The UCLA Bruins now play home games at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, which, due to the Trojans' success, has often seemed like a secondary home field to them.

The Coliseum has also been the leading professional football venue in Southern California. In the NFL, the Los Angeles Rams played there from 1946 to 1979, and again from 2016 to 2019; the Los Angeles Raiders from 1982 to 1994; Super Bowl I in 1967 and Super Bowl VII in 1973; and the postseason Pro Bowl from 1951 to 1972, and again in 1979.

Other pro football teams using the Coliseum: The Los Angeles Dons of the All-America Football Conference from 1946 to 1949, the Los Angeles Chargers of the American Football League in 1960, the Los Angeles Express of the United States Football League from 1983 to 1985, and the Los Angeles Xtreme of the XFL in 2001.

It has hosted the U.S. national soccer team 20 times, starting in 1965; and Mexico's team 61 times. In 1967, the only season of play for the United Soccer Association, it hosted the Los Angeles Wolves, who won that league's title. It also hosted the city's entry in another league starting that season, the Los Angeles Toros of the National Professional Soccer League. After that year, the two leagues merged to form the North American Soccer League, whose Los Angeles Aztecs used the Coliseum as their home field in the 1977 and 1981 seasons.

The Los Angeles Dodgers used the Coliseum as their 1st home field after leaving Brooklyn, while waiting for Dodger Stadium to be built, from 1958 to 1961. Their home games in the 1959 World Series against the Chicago White Sox attracted over 92,000 fans, the highest-attended competitive games in Major League Baseball history. An all-time record crowd for baseball, 115,300, attended a preseason game between the Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox on March 29, 1958, honoring the Dodgers' 50h Anniversary in Los Angeles.

And, of course, the Coliseum was the main venue for the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympic Games, and will be again in 2028. 

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October 6, 1923 was a Saturday. These other noteworthy college football games were played:

* Army beat Florida, 20-0 on The Plain in West Point, New York.

* Navy beat Dickinson College, 13-7 at Worden Field in Annapolis, Maryland.

* Maryland beat Pennsylvania, 3-0 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

* Notre Dame beat Lombard, 14-0 at Cartier Field in South Bend, Indiana.

* The University of Washington beat Willamette, 54-0 at Husky Stadium in Seattle. They would play Navy in the Rose Bowl, and it would end in a 14-14 tie.

* And in New Jersey, Princeton beat Johns Hopkins, 16-7 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton; and Rutgers beat Villanova, 44-0 at Neilson Field in New Brunswick.

In a regular-season baseball game, Ernie Padgett of the Boston Braves, in only his 2nd major-league appearance, pulled off an unassisted triple play in a doubleheader sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies, at Braves Field in Boston. It is the 1st such play in National League history. The Braves won the opener, 5-4 in 14 innings; and won the nightcap, 4-1 in a game called after 5 innings due to darkness.

Born in Philadelphia in 1899, the infielder would only last 5 seasons in the majors, and died in 1957 in East Orange, Essex County, New Jersey.

* The Brooklyn Robins -- as the Dodgers were known during the managerial tenure of Wilbert Robinson, 1914 to 1931 -- beat their arch-rivals, the New York Giants, 4-3 at Ebbets Field. Jack Fournier's grounder into a fielder's choice got Gene Bailey home with the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning.

* The New York Yankees beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 3-1 at Yankee Stadium. Babe Ruth went 3-for-4 with an RBI, but no home run.

* The Chicago White Sox swept a doubleheader from the Cleveland Indians, 6-3 and 7-6 at League Park in Cleveland.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Cincinnati Reds, 7-1 at Redland Field (later Crosley Field) in Cincinnati.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the St. Louis Browns, 12-3 at Navin Field (later Briggs Stadium and Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. Ty Cobb, by this point the player-manager of the Tigers, went 1-for-3 with 2 walks and 2 RBIs. George Sisler did not play for the Browns.

* And the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-2 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.