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The 1924 Gophers finished the season 3–3–2, winning just one, high profile, conference game. PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

On January 3, 1922, Colonel Eliel T. Lee, a thrice-wounded veteran of the Civil War and perhaps the biggest supporter of University of Minnesota football in the state, died in the Minnesota Soldiers’ Home at the age of 77. He was buried a few days later in Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis. Known to a generation of Gopher fans as “The Man with the Flag,” Lee had been a faithful attendee of all home football games for so many years the exact count was lost. Until the very end, he brought an American flag to each game and waved it proudly on behalf of his team.

Adding charm to this tradition was the fact that Colonel Lee refused to let his flag fly over a Gopher defeat. In the fourth quarter of those games in which the home team was down by an insurmountable margin, Lee would quietly roll up his flag and slip out of Northrop Field before the final gun sounded. To thousands of fans, the sight of Lee packing up his staff and heading for the exit was a melancholy moment, a signal that the party was over.

Actually, the melancholy was pervasive in regard to the University of Minnesota football program during the last two years of Lee’s life. He and his flag had not witnessed the bitter end of many Gopher games through the 1920 and ’21 seasons. In fact, not since before Dr. Henry L. Williams first took the reins of the football program, 22 years earlier, had Minnesota football seen such miserable days.

Williams had long been considered one of the premier coaches in the nation. He was an innovator and “a strategist of the first water,” according to Walter Eckersall, a widely read Chicago Tribune sportswriter

Colonel Eliel Lee, whose picture appeared on the cover of the January 12, 1922, Minnesota Alumni Weekly shortly after his death, waved the American flag over Gopher football victories.

of the era. Williams brought the new-fangled and little-used forward pass to Minnesota in the 1910s, and his teams won or tied for conference championships in 1900, ’03, ’04, ’06, ’09, ’10, ’11, and ’15. In eight of his 22 years, the Gophers were undefeated; in eight more, they lost just one game.

Perhaps Williams’ greatest team was one that didn’t even win the conference championship. In 1916, the Gophers fielded a squad that outscored its opponents by the remarkable margin of 348–28, an average score of nearly 50–4. The only blemish in the schedule was an upset at Northrop Field, when Illinois came to town and stifled the vaunted Gopher passing attack. 

The Gophers had decent records in 1917 and 1918, but World War I enlistments depleted the levels of football talent for programs around the nation, making the competition less than it had been in the past. Schedules also included service teams like the Chicago “Municipal Pier” squad—a group of all-star U.S. Navy recruits culled from various college football teams around the country—and a combined football squad of Carleton and St. Olaf college players, which the Gophers thumped 59–6.

The Gophers had another pretty good team in 1919, winning five of eight games, but two conference losses, to Iowa and Illinois, were galling and put Minnesota out of running for the Big Ten championship. For a football program accustomed to the successes that the U of M had achieved through the first 15 years of the century, a 5–3 record simply wasn’t good enough.

Then came the disastrous 1920 season, during which the Gophers lost every one of their six conference contests. They rebounded

The November 20, 1924, Minnesota Alumni Weekly published the play-by-play drama of the Minnesota–Illinois game.

to win two Big Ten games in 1921, but were crushed by Ohio State (27–0), the Wisconsin Badgers (35–0), the Iowa Hawkeyes (41–7), and the Michigan Wolverines (38–0). The once-proud Gopher football team was utterly humiliated, week after week sending Colonel Lee and his flag back to the Soldiers’ Home with ample time for an early Saturday supper.

The consensus among Minnesota students, alumni, and fans everywhere was that something needed to be done—and quickly. It was easy to point the finger at the aging Coach Williams with accusations that the game had passed him by, but as sportswriter Eckersall pointed out to Minnesota fans: To win games in a highly competitive conference like the Big Ten, a program had to do more than simply switch coaches. Top-quality athletes were needed and they had to be lured to the school by a variety of means.

“Alumni of other institutions are constantly on the alert for promising athletic material,” said Eckersall in a special analysis of the football program, written for the student paper Ski-U-Mah. “The grads have been instrumental in persuading boys to go far away to school, and when they arrived, positions of some kind were obtained whereby they could work their way through college.”

The alumni association at the University agreed that something needed to be done, but its concerns went far beyond recruiting. At the end of the 1921 season, the alumni association formed a committee on athletics headed by former association president Henry Nachtrieb. These advisers met just days after the last game of the year and quickly counseled University president Lotus Coffman and the Board of Regents via

A team photo of the 1924 Gophers

the pages of The Alumni Weekly “that the athletic system at the University is out of date.” What was needed was a system established “along the lines followed at a number of other western universities.” This meant creating a more professional athletic department headed by an athletic director “who shall give his entire time to that work.”

The committee also advised Coffman to fire all athletic coaches at the end of the year. This turned out to be the means by which the Gophers got rid of the man whose name had been inextricably linked to Minnesota football for more than 20 years.

Coffman, along with the chairman of the alumni committee, a man named John Harrison, and Regent Fred Snyder were designated as members of an interim athletic board. They asked for and received the resignation of all Gopher coaches and then proceeded to establish the University’s first athletic department. To head this division they hired the University’s first-ever director of athletics, Fred Luehring, previously of the University of Nebraska. A few days later, this same trio hired a new football coach, William H. Spaulding, who had been coaching football at Western Michigan University. The board then disbanded and turned over its work to Luehring, who proceeded to rehire the rest of the Gopher coaches, beginning with basketball coach, Dr. Louis Cooke. Just one coach was not rehired: Dr. Henry Williams.

One other effort to boost the fortunes of the football program swung into full gear that winter of 1921–22, and it would turn out to be the biggest and most enduring change. The possibility of building a memorial stadium, to honor the service of Minnesotans

Clarence Schutte, left, circled the end for a touchdown against Illinois in 1924.

during the war, had been discussed around the University since the end of World War I. Those talks, however, had never progressed into a constructive phase. That Northrop Field was small, old, and inadequate to the needs of a Big Ten football program was understood by all. But now, combined with the desultory efforts of the Gopher squad over the past couple of years, and the fact that a number of other regional schools had built mammoth stadiums, the need for a new playing field for the Gophers seemed paramount.

Working in conjunction with the Board of Regents and a number of individual alumni, the alumni association helped form the Greater University Corporation, which became the fund-raising arm for Memorial Stadium. The stadium project was joined with efforts to build Northrop Auditorium, with the total price tag for the two buildings estimated at near $2 million.

The funding campaign began in the fall of 1922 and was an immediate success. In less than a year, pledges from students, faculty, alumni, and other fans of University of Minnesota football had exceeded the $700,000 necessary to construct Memorial Stadium. Ground was broken on the project in March 1924, and while it would take several more years (until 1929) to finish the fund-raising and complete construction on Northrop Auditorium, the bricks and mortar for the stadium were laid with amazing rapidity. On October 4, 1924, less than two years from the day the first dollar was donated, the Minnesota Gophers welcomed the University of North Dakota to their brand new home and beat the Flickertails 14–0.

Coaching for Minnesota that day was William Spaulding, who had had a

Henry Williams, Gopher football coach from 1900 to 1922, led his teams to eight conference victories or ties in eight seasons.

tough opening season for the Gophers in 1922, winning just two of six Big Ten games. Spaulding had experienced a hopeful second year at the helm, when for the first time in years Minnesota had actually vied for the Big Ten conference championship, beating Northwestern and Iowa and tying Wisconsin. But a loss in the season finale at Michigan ended any possibility of a 1923 title for the Gophers.

Unfortunately, that defeat turned out to be a portent of things to come in the 1924 season. After the North Dakota win, Minnesota lost twice and tied twice in its next four games, which meant that by mid-November the Gophers were winless in Big Ten play. Despite a fancy new, 50,000-seat stadium and relatively new head coach, Minnesota had only a single victory, against the less-than-fierce Flickertails, to show for their struggles that season.

It seemed like the bad old days of Gopher football had returned. Adding to the sense of misery was the fact that the Big Ten season was scheduled to end on November 15 against the University of Illinois, which had what many considered the best football team in the country, headed by its star running back, the incomparable Red Grange.

Only a junior at Illinois, Grange had already achieved legendary status, on a par with some of the other great iconic sports figures of the 1920s, including Babe Ruth, Knute Rockne, and Jack Dempsey. In a game against powerhouse Michigan in his first varsity season, Grange had scored four touchdowns in under 12 minutes of play, establishing his brilliance early in his career. In subsequent years, fans would pour by the tens of thousands into stadiums across the Big Ten to

Illinois running back Red Grange (far left), aka the Galloping Ghost, scored just one touchdown against Minnesota in 1924.

watch him play, and Grange would ultimately be named to three successive all-American teams at halfback. He was also christened with one of the greatest nicknames in sports history: the Galloping Ghost.

Aligned against the Ghost that upcoming Saturday were the Flickertail maulers, aka the Minnesota Gophers, who didn’t look like they had a chance. All week long the local papers ran one profile after another of Grange, touting his skills, his modesty, and his accomplishments on the gridiron. There was not much ink left for the local boys.

Adding to the gloom surrounding the game was the fact that University officials had decided weeks earlier to officially dedicate the stadium in this, the last home game of the season, against Big Ten rival Illinois. In other words, dignitaries and officials from around the state were about to gather with some 50,000 other Gopher fans to bless the new sports facility and witness what one local sportswriter described as “Illinois in the role of the lion slay[ing] the lamb, portrayed by Minnesota.”

The opening kickoff went to the Gophers, and they went no place fast. After three downs, Minnesota had gained seven yards and punted to Grange. Illinois proceeded to march down the field and, eight plays later, the Galloping Ghost was sprinting into the end zone from the 11-yard line. It was 7–0 Illini before latecomers had even warmed their seats.

But that 11-yard touchdown by Grange would turn out to be his longest run of the day. Suddenly, every time he touched the ball, he was stuffed by a swarm of Minnesota tacklers. “Again and again ‘Red’ Grange hugged the ball to his ribs and started one of his

William Spaulding replaced Williams as Gopher football coach in 1922 but left by 1925.

famous runs,” wrote Lorena Hickok in the next day’s Minneapolis Tribune. “Again and again he started and dropped, with three or four Gophers on top of him.”

Stepping forward on offense for Minnesota was its own halfback, Clarence Schutte, who after a season of injury and undistinguished play was doing a pretty fair imitation of the legendary Ghost. Schutte scored on Minnesota’s first drive of the second quarter, and he scored again on the last drive of the half. He scored one more time in the third quarter, making the score 20–7 in favor of the Gophers. Late in that same period, Grange was gang-tackled one last time, so banged up by Minnesota linemen now that he had to be carried from the field.

“On his shield, with injuries that may put him out for the rest of the season, we sent him back to Illinois Saturday night—‘Red’ Grange the Incomparable, football’s hero of heroes,” wrote Hickok, (who would one day achieve a kind of fame of her own, as the special friend of Eleanor Roosevelt).

Twenty to 7 turned out to be the final score in what was surely the most satisfying victory for a Gopher football team in years. Memorial Stadium had been well-dedicated, and fair turnabout had been achieved for that 1916 upset of the U of M’s undefeated team by Illinois.

It would be nice to report that the fortunes of the Minnesota football program rose on a steady course in the wake of the Illinois upset, but, in fact, the Gophers lost their very next, season-ending game to Vanderbilt 16–0. What’s more, Coach Spaulding would soon be replaced by Clarence Spears and a couple more years of rebuilding loomed.

By the 1930s, however,

Ground was broken on Memorial Stadium in March 1924 and was dedicated November 15, during the Illinois game.

the University of Minnesota had established the best football program in the country under coach Bernie Bierman, continuing the great tradition that had been born in the days of Henry Williams. Minnesota won its first national championship in 1934 and would repeat that achievement in 1935 and 1936, and then again in 1941 and 1942. The team was undefeated in ’34, ’35, ’40, and ’41, and these last two teams featured the play of Minnesota’s only Heisman Trophy winner, Bruce Smith.

Henry L. Williams died in 1931, just a few years shy of the full-fledged return of championship Minnesota Gopher football. He apparently held no bitterness about his abrupt departure from U of M athletics, and the University rewarded his continued support by honoring him with a banquet just four months after he was asked to leave his post.

Members of each of his teams gathered in the union ballroom for the occasion and presented Williams with a gold watch, a U of M blanket, and a silver football, which held the names of all the men who’d received football letters under his coaching. The final gift was an honorary U of M letter of his own, stitched to a gold-colored sweater. All the old footballers choked back tears at this last presentation, according to the Alumni Weekly. “No man who has received an honorary L.L.D. from his alma mater,” said Dr. Williams, “is half as proud as I am to receive this emblem of manhood from Minnesota.”

In 1950, the University renamed its newly renovated basketball fieldhouse in his honor.