How Michigan Built the Big House, a Symbol of College Football Controversy and Folklore

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Before the first shovel of dirt was turned from the farm where Michigan Stadium was built, controversy over the professionalization of college sports was already brewing.

By 1926, Michigan’s football schedule had outgrown Ferry Field, with big games far outstripping the capacity of the 42,000-seat stadium. Fielding Yost, Michigan’s athletic director and coach of the famed “Point-a-Minute” teams that dominated college football in the early 1900s, was the leading advocate for building a new stadium, as were many of Michigan’s competitors.

Yost’s proposals drew mixed reactions from the campus community. Many supported the idea, but some faculty members protested that a larger stadium would widen the gap between football and the university’s academic mission. In a victory for Yost, a faculty committee issued a report that generally supported his view that intercollegiate athletics could contribute to a thriving campus. The report also warned of the winning-at-all-costs culture that could develop if football became more popular.

“One of the most serious problems in intercollegiate football today is the emphasis placed by alumni on winning teams,” the report said, as detailed in Robert Soderstrom’s book “The Big House: Fielding Yost and the Building of Michigan Stadium.” “Efforts should be made to keep alumni opinion essentially sane and conservative in matters of sports policy. Excessive and unwise publicity is a common evil.”

There’s no bigger spectacle on Michigan’s campus today than a big game in the Big House. Michigan Stadium will be the center of the college football world Saturday as Fox’s “Big Noon Kickoff,” ESPN’s “College Gameday” and more than 110,000 fans converge on Ann Arbor for a matchup between No. 4 Texas and No. 9 Michigan in one of the first Big Ten-SEC showdowns since both megaconferences expanded. It’s also one of the biggest non-conference matchups in the storied stadium’s history: The Longhorns are the first non-Big Ten team ranked in the AP’s top five to visit Michigan Stadium since Notre Dame in 1992.

Top 10 Non-Conference Attendees

Year	Team	Result
2019		W, 45-14
1997		W, 27-3
1994		L, 27-26
1992		D, 17-17
1991		L, 51-31
1991		W, 24-14
1989		L, 24-19
1988		L, 31-30
1984		W, 22-14
1981		W, 25-7
1979		L, 12-10
1977		W, 41-3
1975		W, 31-7

Since 1970

The 2024 season is a game-changer for Michigan and college football as a whole, as the reigning national champions enter the 12-team College Football Playoff era with a new head coach in Sherrone Moore. NIL has changed the economic landscape of the sport, and revenue sharing with athletes is just around the corner. The debate that raged on Michigan’s campus in the 1920s never really ended; it only grew louder.

“What will a larger stadium mean? It will only mean more Roman holidays than we have now,” wrote Professor Robert C. Angell in the Michigan Daily in 1925. “The players themselves will be forced to undergo even more rigorous training than they now undergo. We have spring football now; we shall soon have winter football. These men will think and act like football all the year round.”

The history of Michigan Stadium is in some ways a history of the tug-of-war between innovation and tradition in college football. The stadium opened in 1927 with temporary bleachers, increasing its capacity to 85,000, making it the largest college-owned stadium in the country. To pay for it, Michigan issued 3,000 bonds to the community at $500 each.

Many of the stadium’s seats remained empty during the Great Depression, but the end of World War II brought renewed enthusiasm for college football. Fritz Crisler, coach of the undefeated 1947 “Mad Magicians,” succeeded Yost as athletic director and oversaw two expansions that boosted Michigan Stadium’s capacity to over 100,000.

Crisler, the man who introduced platoon football and the winged helmet, was both a progressive thinker and a traditionalist. Before he went to the University of Chicago and played for Amos Alonzo Stagg, Crisler considered becoming a minister, his grandson said. He found another calling as a coach and athletic director, but he retained a spiritual view of the value of football.

“I remember that even though he thought winning was important and he wanted to win, it wasn’t the main focus of what athletics was to him,” said Crisler’s grandson, F. Adams Crisler. “He always thought in terms of, at least as he told me, the mind, the body and the soul of an athlete.”

In 1956, Crisler oversaw construction of a new press box and additional seating, increasing the stadium’s capacity to 101,001. The latter figure was no mistake: according to newspaper reports at the time, Crisler had originally envisioned a capacity of 100,001, with a mysterious extra seat hidden somewhere in the stadium.

“It has its place,” Crisler says told Sports Illustrated in 1963“And I’m the only one who knows where that place is.”

There have been many theories about the location and significance of the extra seat. Some have claimed it was reserved for Stagg, Crisler’s coach. Others have said it was dedicated to Yost, who died in 1946, or reserved for Crisler himself. As a child, Adams Crisler climbed a ladder to the roof of the press box and surveyed the stadium, hoping to find the seat in a hidden location. He never found it, and his grandfather never gave him any clues.

“You just have to find it,” Adams Crisler recalled his grandfather saying. “When you think you’ve found it, you let me know.”

As a student at Michigan, Adams Crisler had a summer job replacing the stadium’s concrete steps. He hoped the crew would discover a lone chair hidden in a secret passageway, but none was found. Since then, Adams Crisler has been agnostic about the chair’s existence, though he appreciates its place in Michigan Stadium lore.

“It captured the imagination,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that chair was there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t.”

Michigan has existed under the M Club banner since 1962. (Danny Moloshok / Getty Images)

The stadium’s capacity, now listed at 107,601, has fluctuated over the years, but the “01” remains as a nod to Crisler’s famous chair. It’s one of those traditions, like announcing the Slippery Rock score or players calling the M Club bannerthat has endured decades of changes in both the sport and the stadium.

Don Canham, who succeeded Crisler as athletic director, is widely credited with marketing Michigan football to the masses and ushering in a new era of commercial success that coincided with Bo Schembechler’s tenure as coach. After years of declining attendance, the stands were packed again in the 1970s and 1980s. ABC announcer Keith Jackson, the voice of college football for generations, popularized a nickname that stuck: The Big House.

“This is definitely my favorite place, to see four generations stand up and appreciate it, because of the pageantry, the ambiance,” Jackson told The New York Times before a 1998 game at Michigan Stadium, where the band honored the announcer, who was planning to retire, by spelling “THANKS KEITH” on the field. “Michigan has such grandeur.”

The purity and grandeur of college football have always existed in an uneasy embrace with the commercial side of the sport. Both sides will be front and center in 2024, as teams like Texas and Michigan, representing college football’s superconferences, battle for spots in the expanded CFP.

The Wolverines play Big Ten games against USC, Washington and Oregon and could host a playoff game in Michigan Stadium for the first time in school history. The Ohio State rivalry, which still plays out in its usual spot on the final Saturday of the regular season, could be repeated a week later if both teams reach the Big Ten championship game. And in a development that might have scared Fritz Crisler, fans can now buy beer in Michigan Stadium.

“He was a guy who wasn’t really into pro football or commercialism in sports,” Adams Crisler said. “He said the point of pro football was to sell beer. He didn’t like beer, so he wasn’t really into the pro game.”

Still, Adams Crisler thinks his grandfather would be proud to see Michigan Stadium as it is now. Particularly one feature: the new signage beneath the video boards celebrating the 2023 CFP championship.

“He would have loved to see last year’s national championship team and the precision they had and the types of plays they made,” Adams Crisler said. “He would have been amazed and pleased with it.”

(Top photo: Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images)