SuperGuide: Michigan Neutral Site Game history
As the start of Fall camp nears and the season opener is at a neutral site, here is the complete history of Michigan in neutral site games.
Below is the complete history of Michigan in non-postseason neutral site games. We know most bowl games are neutral site games, so I omitted those since that data is easy to find.
Michigan is 18-14-2 all-time in regular season neutral site games.
Unless another money grabber AD comes along, it's hard to imagine when we will play in another one of these. Went 62 years between the last ones.
Date | Opponent | Result | Location |
5/30/1879 | Racine | W 1-0 | Chicago, IL |
11/1/1879 | Toronto | T 0-0 | Detroit, MI |
11/16/1889 | Cornell | L 0-56 | Buffalo, NY |
11/15/1890 | Cornell | L 5-20 | Detroit, MI |
11/21/1891 | Cornell | L 12-58 | Detroit, MI |
11/28/1891 | Cornell | L 0-10 | Chicago, IL |
10/12/1892 | Michigan Athletic Assoc. | W 68-0 | Detroit, MI |
10/22/1892 | DePauw | W 18-0 | Indianapolis, IN |
10/29/1892 | Northwestern | L 8-10 | Chicago, IL |
11/12/1892 | Chicago | W 18-10 | Toledo, OH |
11/22/1892 | Cornell | L 10-30 | Detroit, MI |
11/25/1893 | Kansas | W 22-0 | Kansas City, MO |
11/10/1894 | Kansas | W 22-12 | Kansas City, MO |
11/24/1894 | Cornell | W 12-4 | Detroit, MI |
11/23/1895 | Minnesota | W 20-0 | Detroit, MI |
10/31/1896 | Lehigh | W 40-0 | Detroit, MI |
11/13/1897 | Minnesota | W 14-0 | Detroit, MI |
11/12/1898 | Illinois | W 12-5 | Detroit, MI |
11/4/1899 | Virginia | W 38-0 | Detroit, MI |
11/30/1899 | Wisconsin | L 5-17 | Chicago, IL |
10/27/1900 | Illinois | W 12-0 | Chicago, IL |
11/2/1901 | Carlisle | W 22-0 | Detroit, MI |
11/28/1901 | Iowa | W 50-0 | Chicago, IL |
10/18/1902 | Notre Dame | W 23-0 | Toledo, OH |
11/1/1902 | Wisconsin | W 6-0 | Chicago, IL |
10/19/1907 | Wabash | W 22-0 | Indianapolis, IN |
11/7/1925 | Northwestern | L 2-3 | Chicago, IL |
10/30/1926 | Navy | L 0-10 | Baltimore, MD |
11/10/1928 | Navy | T 6-6 | Baltimore, MD |
10/31/1945 | #1 Army West Point | L 7-28 | New York, NY |
11/10/1945 | #4 Navy | L 7-33 | Baltimore, MD |
10/14/1950 | #1 Army West Point | L 6-27 | New York, NY |
9/1/2012 | #2 Alabama | L 14-41 | Arlington, TX |
Hope it will not be sooner than another 62 years! Thanks WD.
For 62 years the "people in charge' understood that the schools make less money playing at neutral sites.
Hard to imagine this could have changed for one year. Maybe leaving the band at home to cut costs made the numbers work.
Well that took me down a really depressing wikipedia hole
Mother of God, we have not won a neutral site regular season game in 110 years.
Oh, Florida is going to pay for this.
I think the 1-0 and 0-0 results from 1879 prove that what Rutgers actually invented was soccer
Curbed stomped on the last 4. Yikes
Looks like the original M00N on 11/7/25 was just as thrilling as the original.
The Alabama game is fresh as it is. I want a good game and a win.
the gameplan was shit(offensively wise) because it looked like the coaches already gave up before the game ever started.
We scored more points against Alabama than Notre Dame did. And ND was #2 when they got destroyed.
ever, ever.....EVER
....play Cornell in Detroit.
...they need to play Ohio State in Toledo for the right to claim it!
Surprised Brandon didn't schedule them multiple times to get back at them
Love the SuperGuide.
Interestingly, though not surprisingly, most of these "neutral sites" are anything but.
the 1894 Cornell game, since it was 12-4. Cornell actually scored a touchdown in the game, but missed the extra point. Also, weirdly enough, Michigan traveled to Cornell earlier in that year and lost 22-0. And in a thriller to close the 1894 season, Michigan beat the University of Chicago 6-4.
I'm sure you really don't give a damn if a thread has "OT" in it when it is an off topic subject. People know how to read. They can determine if a thread is off topic without "OT" in the title.
Also don't like the neutral site game this year...only 6 home games and we wait so long for the season to start. Thanks for putting this together WD.
The 1925 team went 7-1 with the only blemish that loss to NW. Michigan scored 227 points that season, and gave up only 3. Yep, that's right—Michigan shut out every other opponent that year.
Wikipedia:
"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.
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."[1] 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."
Entire season recap here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1925_Michigan_Wolverines_football_team
All Michigan fans should know about Benny Friedman:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Friedman
Friedman's high school was Cleveland Glenville, also attended by Willie Henry, Frank Clark, and Pierre Woods.
There is an excellent account of this game, and the entire 1925 season, in Robert Soderstrom's book "The Big House". (He's the guy that gives the alumni assoc. Michigan Stadium tours.)
That game was a total aberration. But that's why they play them.
There was only one first down the entire game, a 14 yard run by Michigan. Michigan threw only one pass in the game despite their passing proficiency that year. It was incomplete.
It was a lot like the Snow Bowl game in Columbus in 1950.
In the aftermath of Michigan's 1925 loss to NW, via wiki:
Controversy over Big Ten Championship
At the end of the season, Michigan and Northwestern each had one loss to conference opponents. However, Northwestern also lost two non-conference games. When it was reported that Coach Yost had given gold footballs emblematic of championship to members of his team, a riot broke out involving 1,200 Northwestern students in Evanston, Illinois. An abandoned fraternity house was set on fire, and firemen who tried to extinguish the fire were thrown aside and their fire hoses were cut. A large bonfire was also built in the middle of Fountain Square. When the mayor of Evanston tried to calm the crowd, he was slugged, and the automobile of the police chief was overturned and damaged. One police officer was disarmed and "so badly mauled that two ribs were broken." Evanston police fired "tear bombs" into the crowd, and the mayor threatened to order police to "shoot and shoot to kill" if such a disorder was repeated.
On the day after the riot, Northwestern's head coach and team captain sent a telegram to University of Michigan president C. C. Little disavowing any claim by Northwestern to the Big Ten football championship. They wrote: "In view of the remarkable showing that has been made by the 1925 football team of the University of Michigan, we believe that the University of Michigan is entitled to sole and undivided honors in the conference, and we wish you to know that Northwestern makes no claim for any share in them, but regards it as a privilege to be even for a few minutes placed in a class with the University of Michigan's team." Following the announcement, Evanston police continued to guard Northwestern's football field to prevent the burning of the wooden stands. The forces dispatched to the stands included a car mounted with a machine gun.
Those crazy Northwestern fans. Good to see they've maintained that passion over all these years.
Oh, wait . . .
There had to be couches in that fraternity house, meaning even Sparty couldn't be first in couch burning.
Non-postseason neutral site games, per the OP
I try not to read, just come for the charts and pics.
I wasn't reading your words, just looking at your avatar...
WD, Been meaning to ask this for a while. I seem to recall seeing you live in Shelby Township (as do I). By chance, is your house near Shelby Road? On game day Saturdays, the house I am thinking of is often decked out in full M gear, including a large inflatable. I always smile at the maize and blue enthusiasm exhibited by this homeowner.
Throw in Michigan having a losing record in bowl games and it really seems like neutral site games are not our thing historically.
Hard to call Army in NYC, Navy in Baltimore, and Northwestern in Chicago "neutral site". Even Wabash in Indianapolis is a stretch on what I'd consider neutral site.
Looks like the last true neutral site game before the 'Bama in Jerryworld game was Wisconsin in Chicago back in aught two.
Several years ago I was messing around with all-time records of UM vs other teams, and Cornell really stood out. It's the only team we've played appreciably sub-.500 against (6-12). It would just take scheduling a few double-headers against Cornell to set things straight.