page_title: 1913 Michigan Wolverines football team
section_title: Week 7: Penn
hierarchical_section_title: 1913 Michigan Wolverines football team / Season summary / Week 7: Penn
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph Miller Pontius
context_page_description: The 1913 Michigan Wolverines football team represented the University of Michigan in the 1913 college football season. The season was Fielding H. Yost's 13th as Michigan's head football coach. The team compiled a record of 6–1, outscored opponents 175 to 21, and shut out four opponents while giving up an average of only three points per game.
  After opening the season with wins against two Ohio colleges, the Wolverines lost to Michigan Agricultural College by a score of 12–7. It was Michigan's first loss in the history of its cross-state rivalry with the East Lansing institution. Following the loss to the Aggies, star halfback Jimmy Craig, who had decided to quit playing football, returned to the team upon "urgent pleading by the entire student body." In his season debut, Craig scored four touchdowns in the first half. Though he played in only two-and-a-half games in 1913, Craig scored seven touchdowns and received consensus All-American honors, including a first-team selection by Walter Camp.
  During its decade-long absence from the Western Conference, Michigan played inter-sectional rivalry games against Penn, Syracuse, Cornell, and Vanderbilt.
context_section_description: Michigan concluded its 1913 season with a 14-0 victory over Penn. During the period of Michigan's withdrawal from the Western Conference, the Penn Quakers were Michigan's principal rival, playing each other every year from 1906 to 1917 (usually as the last game of the season).
  The 1913 match between the Wolverines and Quakers was played in Ann Arbor.  The night before the game, a mass meeting was held at Hill Auditorium featuring speeches by University President Harry Burns Hutchins, Coach Yost, and others.  Highlights of the night included the debut of a new song called "Michigan Men of Steel" and the "new Hawaiian yell" which was "enthusiastically received."   The game itself was played with wet snow falling at times and rain at other times.  The Penn team did not appear at Ferry Field until 21 minutes after the scheduled start time, having failed to leave sufficient time for train travel between Detroit and Ann Arbor.  A record crowd, estimated at 20,000 to 22,000, filled the grandstands and bleachers to capacity and watched as the Michigan band, "treading to strains of 'The Victors,' marched up and down the field and under the goal posts."
  
  Although Michigan scored only 13 points, the Wolverines converted 14 first downs in the first half to only one for the Quakers.  E. A. Batchelor wrote that the score concealed the decidedly one-sided nature of the game:
  "If ever one football team smothered another, kicked it out of its boots, ground it into the mud, outfought it, outguessed it and outlasted it, Michigan did these things to the Quakers today.  Not for one little moment were the easterners ever in the game."
  The New York Times wrote that Michigan had "simply battered" the Penn defense and Penn's offense was at no time even dangerous.  After the Penn game, Coach Yost declared 1913 "one of Michigan's greatest years."  The 1913 Michiganensian (the University of Michigan yearbook) devoted four full pages to an account of the Penn game and concluded: "That glorious triumph will go down the vista of the years as one of the greatest and most satisfactory tributes paid to Yost genius, and the undying spirit at Michigan."
  Playing in his third game of the 1913 season (and his last for Michigan), Jimmy Craig scored both of the Wolverines' touchdowns.  The first touchdown was scored at the conclusion of an 82-yard drive in the first quarter.  The drive consisted of "plunges and end runs" by Craig, Tommy Hughitt, and Martin Galt, and ended with Craig diving over the Penn line from the two-yard line.  George Paterson kicked the extra point.  In the second quarter, Michigan scored on another long drive featuring a long run by Craig and a 25-yard gain on "a circus catch" by John Lyons of a pass from Hughitt.  Craig ran for the touchdown from the five-yard line, and Paterson's kick for the extra point hit the upright and bounced back onto the field.
  
  During the second half, Michigan played a defensive strategy.  The highlight of the second half came in the third quarter, after Craig intercepted a pass at midfield.  On the ensuing drive, Craig ran 20 yards to the 27-yard line.  On third down, the Wolverines set up in kick formation with Paterson lined up for an attempted field goal.  Instead, Hughitt took the snap and ran 27 yards for an apparent touchdown. E. A. Batchelor described the play:
  "The ball came back straight and true to Hughitt and Paterson advanced and kicked.  But he kicked the empty air, for Tommy rose the minute he got his hands on the leather, and was off like a shot around Pennsy's right end. . . . Michigan's rooting section proceeded to do things which would cause an insane patient to get the straightjacket and padded cell, but the demonstration was premature."
  The touchdown was nullified due to a holding penalty.  The penalty occurred at a distance from Hughitt's run and was called on a Michigan player who slipped in the mud and grabbed Penn's center to hold himself steady.  The Michigan Alumnus wrote that "one of the cleverest plays from placement formation that football followers have ever witnessed, went for n
caption: Consensus All-American Miller Pontius
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