The records of the football teams of 1895 and 1896 were quite overwhelming for those days, 266 points to their opponents' 14 in 1895 and 262 points to 11 the next season. The only disappointments were a 4 to 0 defeat from Harvard in 1895 and a 7 to 6 victory for Chicago in 1896. A season of uninterrupted victories in 1897 was again cut short by a defeat from Chicago 21 to 12 in the last game. Chicago had now come to occupy the chief place on the schedule and the seeds of that rivalry which was later to prove so unfortunate in Western inter-collegiate affairs were already being sown. An unbroken series of victories marked the 1898 season, with the Championship of the West decided by a thrilling 12 to 11 victory over Chicago. At the end of the first half in this game the score stood 6 to 5,--a touchdown for Michigan and a goal from the field by Chicago's great punter, Herschberger. One of the most spectacular runs in Michigan's football history came in the early part of the second half when C.H. Widman, a freshman, broke through between left end and tackle, ran down the field sixty yards, broke away from the Chicago full-back, and squirmed across the remaining five yards for a touchdown. Chicago's subsequent touchdown made the score a close one but left the championship, the first in three years, with Michigan. The center on this team, W.R. Cunningham, '99_m_, was Michigan's first player on an All-American Team. This team had been coached by a number of the older players, a system that was followed again in 1899, but with no brilliant success. A change came in 1900 when Langdon Lea, of Princeton, took charge. He instituted some revolutionary changes and insisted on the fundamentals of the game,--always the weak point of Western football. The season, however, was not a great success, and in the final game with Chicago, Coach Stagg, with his famous "whoa-back" formation, was able to take advantage of Michigan's weakness in backing up the tackles, and won with a score of 15 to 16. The record for the following year was very different. Fielding H. Yost, who received his football training at the University of West Virginia and Lafayette, was called to Michigan from Stanford and entered upon his long and successful career as Michigan's football coach. Not only has he proved himself time and again a master of football strategy, but his insistence on the highest ideals of sportsmanship has been one of the strongest factors in the development of clean athletics at Michigan.