Gophers biggest Chicago win was a 4-2 blowout

The University of Chicago plays at Bethel on Saturday afternoon. Rachel Blount has a feature on Chicago and its football legacy in today's print edition of the Star Tribune.

Chicago was an early power in college football and in what's now the Big Ten Conference. The Maroons were claimants to a pair of national titles in 1905 and 1913. They had the first Heisman Trophy winner, Jay Berwanger, in 1935, at the same time a university president named Robert Hutchins was doing everything in his power to demolish the program – including running off coaching legend Amos Alonzo Stagg.

Eventually, Hutchins put an end to football after the 1939 season, during Christmas break to avoid a student protest, and the Maroons didn't return as a varsity team until 1969 – in what's now the non-scholarship Division III.

I'm a sucker for this stuff, because it gives me a chance to enlist John Wareham, my guy in the library, to find old newspaper pages containing reports of past sporting battles in this area.

Minnesota and Chicago played 18 games between 1895 and 1934. The teams played 13 of those games with annual meetings between 1906 and 1918. The "Western Conference'' schedule usually was five or six games. For the Gophers, Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan were definites, with Purdue and Northwestern as regulars, and Chicago-Gophers series faded away.

The teams played only twice (1928 and 1934) in the two decades from 1919 until Chicago dropped football in 1939.

The most-notorious game in the series seems to be the Gophers 4-2 victory at Chicago in 1906. The Gophers had claimed the national title in 1904 and Chicago had done so in 1905.

The 2-0 record in the Western Conference allowed the Gophers to claim a co-championship.

That wasn't the goal back then. There was football in the East, the mighty forces of the Harvards and Yales, and there was football in the West.

The 4-2 victory over Chicago led to this headline across the front page of The Sunday Tribune (of Minneapolis) on Nov. 11, 1906. It wasn't Armistice Day then, because it was pre-World War I, and thus there had not been an "Armistice'' that earned a national holiday.

Frank E. Force (that's what the byline reads) covered the game in Chicago for the Sunday Tribune and his enthusiasm was fantastic.

The headline and subhead preceding Force's game report included the following:

REGAINS CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE WEST

"Bob'' Marshall Saves Day By Place-Kicking Goal

And then came the good stuff:

GOPHERS OUTPLAY AND OUTWIT THE MAROONS

Before Immense Crowd, Brilliant Giants of The North Prove Superiority Over

Frank Force's lead went like this:

"CHICAGO, Nov. 11--In one of the most fiercely fought battles ever played on the western gridiron, Minnesota yesterday defeated Chicago at Marshall Field by a score of 4-2.

"From first to last, there was no question as to which was the superior eleven and today Minnesota is admittedly the undisputed champion of west in college football.

"She won the game and title by the persistence of her offensive and defensive play throughout the 60 minutes of the contest, and Chicago must give to the wonderful Gopher eleven all the credit which the score indicates.''

A couple of points: I'm very impressed that Frank was such a forward thinker to refer to the University of Minnesota as a noble lady, since the U.S. was still 14 years from seeing fit to allow women to vote, and I gotta say … you don't see many 4-2 blowouts in today's football, as Frank's assessment indicates this was in favor of the Gophers.

1-Field goals were worth four points then, and to have Bobby Marshall, the African-American pioneer of Minnesota football, kick a 39-yarder through the goal posts was considered a super-human feat in 1906.

2-After reading Frank E. Force, I've never going to suggest again that Sid Hartman has shown a touch of favoritism toward the Gophers in his distinguished career.

As one of his punchlines in a game story that would've measured 200-plus inches in modern newsprint, Frank summarized Marshall's surprising and successful kick thusly: