caption playing_years playing_team article_title position image college imagewidth
charles michigan team photograph h. `` fatty '' smith cropped from 1893 1893-1894 michigan charles h. smith -lrb- american football -rrb-
 center fatty smith.jpg university of michigan 210px
charles h. smith -lrb- american football -rrb-

charles h. `` fatty '' smith was an american football center who played for the university of michigan wolverines football team in 1893 and 1894 .
smith stood 5 feet , 10 inches , and weighed a hefty 230 pounds in 1893 .
in 1894 , smith anchored the line for one of the first great michigan football teams .
the 1894 michigan team outscored opponents 244-84 and compiled a record of 9-1-1 , including wins over cornell university and the university of chicago .
michigan 's 1894 victory over cornell marked the first victory by a western football school against one of the eastern football powers .
up to that point , no western player had been selected for the annual college football all-america teams selected by eastern football authorities , caspar whitney and walter camp .
smith was the standout star of western football in 1894 , and western football enthusiasts lobbied for smith to be selected as an all-american .
whitney and camp declined the suggestion , and no western football players would be selected as all-americans until 1898 , when clarence herschberger and william cunningham received the honors .
the resistance to selecting smith -lrb- or any other western player -rrb- as an all-american is reflected in the following newspaper account from december 1894 : `` some of the western colleges have developed great players on their teams and this year may claim for them a position on the all american team .
notably the university of michigan claims for their center ` fatty ' smith the supremacy in his position .
but the western institutions have not yet mastered the eastern knowledge of all the details and fine points of the game .
smith has made a great record against the west and even against cornell , but the ithacan center was not a master of his position .
when brought to face a man like the stillman of today or the bulliet of last year , smith would simply be lost and entirely out generaled .
so it would be with all of the claimants for line positions from western teams .
and no one claims for a moment that western back field men could play in the same class with eastern men . ''
