Part 1 of our interview with our Guest, Author Dr. John Behee, who joins us in the Pigpen to discuss the legendary football coach Fielding Yost and what early instances shaped the path to his success. Dr. Behee's latest biography on Yost, after over 50 years of research, is titled Coach Yost: Michigan's Tradition Maker. Part 2 will be out soon!

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Delving into the annals of American football history, we explore the illustrious career of Fielding H. Yost, a coaching titan whose contributions to the sport are revered and unparalleled. With insights provided by Dr. John Behee, an esteemed author whose scholarly work has encapsulated the life and legacy of Coach Yost, we embark on a narrative that traverses the early life of Yost in the rugged terrains of West Virginia, where his formative experiences shaped his indomitable spirit and relentless drive for excellence. Dr. Behe recounts Yost's humble beginnings, his transition from a promising player to a distinguished coach, and the pivotal moments that defined his coaching philosophy. Through rigorous analysis and personal anecdotes, we unravel the complexities of Yost's character, his unwavering commitment to his teams, and his innovative approaches that revolutionized coaching techniques in American football. As we dissect Yost's journey, we are introduced to the socio-cultural context of the late 19th century, a period marked by the burgeoning popularity of football in America. The dialogue navigates through Yost's early coaching years, emphasizing his remarkable tenure at the University of Michigan, where he instituted a legacy of success that would resonate through generations. Dr. Behe's extensive research sheds light on Yost's strategic acumen, his ability to galvanize players, and the profound impact he had on the development of college football. This exploration not only highlights Yost's tactical brilliance but also emphasizes the ethos of teamwork and resilience that he instilled in his athletes, fostering a culture of excellence that transcended the boundaries of the sport. In this enlightening discourse, we gain an appreciation for the intricate tapestry of Yost's life, punctuated by significant milestones and challenges that ultimately forged his path to greatness. Dr. Behe's passion for sharing Yost's story is palpable, and through his narrative, we are reminded of the enduring spirit of football and its capacity to inspire and unite. The episode culminates in a promise of further exploration into Yost's legacy, setting the stage for subsequent discussions that will delve even deeper into the nuances of his coaching career and the lasting impact he has had on the fabric of American football.

We have a special treat today. We have our guest, Dr. John Behee, author of two books on fielding H. Yo's, the great coach, most famously of Michigan.

He's going to tell Coach Yo's story from beginning to end in part one of this three part series on Fielding Ho's with Dr. John B. Coming up in just a moment.

This is Darin Hayes of pigskiandispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football.

And we're going to look down that portal today and go back some 130, 135 years to talk about one of the greatest coaching legends of all time, and that's Fielding H. Yost, most famously of Michigan.

And to help us with this, we have a gentleman that has wrote two books over the last 50 some years and that is Dr. John Behe of his great book, Coach Yost, Michigan's tradition maker. Right now, we'll welcome him in. Dr. John Behee, welcome to the Pigpen.

Thank you. Thank you. Good to be with you.

Doctor. You have such an interesting outlook on Fielding H. Yost and his entire career.

You talk a lot about Michigan in the book, but you talk about him prior to Michigan as a player and as a coach at some other places as well. And we're going to talk about that. But what gave you the passion of writing about Coach Yost in the first place?

That. Good question. I was a high school football coach for four years and then I got a chance to work at a small college in Kansas, my home state.

I met Bob Holloway, who was a defense coach at the University of Michigan and he really helped me considerably in those early coaching years.

So when I finished my bachelor's degree and then my master's degree, I thought I want to do the doctorate and I really want to do it somewhere around a good football program. And in six years there was in my lap, Michigan.

So I talked to Bob and he said, yeah, well you got to apply and get accepted and if you get accepted, I'll put you to work. And that's what he did.

And I sat in on every coaches meeting that I could, you know, where I wasn't in class for two years, 64 and 65, 1-1-65 was a rose world championship year, as you may know. And so I was in seventh heaven learning about about Michigan football from the people who were really experts.

And also I started hunting then for a dissertation topic because I did not want to just do the coursework. There were a lot of ABDs, all but dissertations out there and I didn't want to be one of them.

Well, that is pretty interesting.

Now failed to mention earlier that your latest book came out just a year or two ago during COVID is called Kochios Michigan's Tradition Maker by John Behe.

And you can reach ways of purchasing that particular book at behe, which is beh.combehe.com they have a few different stores there you can link to to get your purchase on that book. Now Dr. Going back to Jost, he wasn't always a coach according to your book, he was quite the player too, wasn't he?

Well, first of all, West Virginia comes out a pretty good gene pool.

Some pretty bright people, but in a very, very modest living area in the western part of West Virginia forgotten by most people, you know, really not very arable soil. And they're going to make their living by what's. Well, of course the forest. They could do lumbering, but everything else is below the surface.

And so anyway, those were mining, coal mining, salt mining and those are tough jobs. Here's the When I look at the guy's character as I studied his football teams and his coaching techniques, he was fearless.

And I look at his youth and I'm thinking that's where it came from. He As a 10 year old, this was his first experience with the school.

He was in Fremont In a small town in West Virginia and in Fairview, 10 miles away, they had a school. He walked that 10 miles with his brother after a while, but he walked to school and back.

And the only school, the school is only offered in the dead of winter. So he's out, he's in Nowhere's Bill, walking 10 miles each direction to school in the middle of winter.

And he's excited about it because he gets to learn.

And West Virginia is not the flattest place in the world either, is it?

No hills and dales and rivers running off, but yeah, interesting. Yeah, interesting terrain, you're right.

So, you know, he's in an environment where the people who are working are pretty rugged individuals and you know, they're minors. His dad has a, an outfitting shop and all the things that miners need to do the job, they come to his, to his shop to purchase.

Yost notices that, but his mom thinks that he ought to, he'd be a good teacher. And he gets big for a high school boy.

At 17 he was 6 foot 195 pounds and, and they made him a, a marshal because you know, they get some rowdiness and drinking and this sort of thing. So he, he, he's learning how to manage conflict as a 17 year old, you know, he, he. By 17 he is tough as nails.

Now his mom thinks he'll be a good teacher. So she says there's a nice Methodist school. She was a Methodist gal in, in Ohio called Ohio Wesleyans. And you need to go there and do the teacher.

I think the teacher education is two years. Yeah. So he'd go there and get a teaching degree. He'd make a good one. So he goes to, he goes there. They don't have a football program.

He plays, does play baseball for him. But anyway, in two years he's got his teaching credentials and he comes back to West Virginia and teaches for one year.

He says it's just not interesting enough, not enough action for me. So he works for his dad in that supply shop for another year or two and says, you know, this just is not interesting enough for me.

And they're thinking, well, you know, there are always other things. And if you want to go to law and do some work here with the miners and right of ways and all the good things, he takes the bait on that.

That was his introduction not only to law into a career but also to college football. He played, he.

And the first year they have a nice record, but again everybody just plays beginners bumping against beginners. The next year they go 3, 7 and 1. Pretty dismal record. He loved everything about it. The coach was well paid.

They took them on to a preseason camp in Maryland. They got to play some really good schools and he loved the whole experience and they got to play, I'm trying to think now, school Lafayette.

They played Lafayette three consecutive days in three different cities in West Virginia. And he, he got in. Lafayette was an outstanding small college football team.

They were going to take on Pennsylvania which was a, had been for three years a perennial national champion. And the first game he played against Lafayette, he got smacked really good above the eye and split it open, the skin open and somebody comes out.

He's not going to quit. He's made of iron. He thinks the next day he comes out again for the next game, second game with a piece of beef steak over the eye.

And Park Davis, wonderful, wonderful coach. A great man in the history of early football. He is genuinely impressed. And so then the doctor will not let the yolks play the third game.

And his dad had some, his grandpa was a doctor. So he, he got some pretty good advice.

Any case, he doesn't play a third game, but he is, he's won the heart of Park Davis who says, you know what, you need to come transfer to our school of major in engineering. And we have wonderful engineering school and he would be a wonderful addition to our football team. And he does, he goes up there and plays.

Happens to be, just happens to be the week of their game against Penn. Penn's coming in, I think with a 32 game win streak. They've rolled over everybody and Mark Davis. Team Lafayette with Yost in the lineup.

A tackle, left tackle, beats them six to four. You have a crowd of about 18,000. I mean it's big time stuff.

Well, that was a mountaintop experience for Yost and that kindled a love for football that never died. That's how he got interested in football.

Yeah, that's an extremely, still a very volatile game to talk about because the people down on the other side of the state for me down in Philadelphia, they're still calling it the Yosta. That game with him playing that one game for Lafayette and they thought, you know, they claim bringing in as a ringer and I know it's a long story.

And you know, Yost years later said, you know, his intention was to go back to Lafayette and it wasn't really just a one game thing that him and Park Davis thought up. Park Davis thought he was going to be attending there for a while and Yost did too. But some other things got in the way of that. So.

Well, it sounded scandalous, but the way in which Yost handled it added to the whole thing. This made matters worse. Honesty was not one of the strategies he used to explain his whereabouts. I mean it was clearly.

They played about nine away games in baseball in the spring of the year and I don't think in any of those games were a majority of the players. Michigan University, Michigan students.

Oh my God.

First of all, we've let these guys run themselves and as long as they didn't run up debt or get into any other trouble that would get the university in trouble, we'd find somebody on the faculty who liked the young men and they would like him and he'd keep them out of trouble and help pay their debts and they'd do. They'd have to play some games in cities where they could pass the hat and make some money from donations.

But basically they were just young men at play, primarily men at play and just stay out of trouble. This is an academic environment and that's where we star, say the faculty and the presidents.

And then, then the faculty and the presidents really became involved. And then in a. As Coach Yost, my story of Coach Yost points out, that's the title that's entire that I entitled.

That's the chapter I entitled All Hell Breaks Loose. The they went from playing 11 games a year to five, only one of which could be a strong opponent so there would be no champion.

The faculty finally put a foot down and came back to haunt them.

Dr. Before we get into that, I just wanted to make sure touch a Little bit more of the background before we get into his coaching. Because he did.

I mean something I found really interesting that I learned about Coach Oz from your book is that he in the center of professional football right at its birth within at least the first five years of his birth in the Pittsburgh area as well. Before he went into coaching.

Yes. Yeah. There's a group in the Latrobe area, the Pittsburgh area, of really good professional players and they made no distinctions.

Matter of fact, sometimes in the coaching that Yost did, he would get agreement from the opposition to let him play. Sometimes they were hiring coaches, sometimes to both coach and play. So you know, there, there were with.

There were very few rules that would make for equity in competition or anything resembling the rules we have governing sports today. But anyway, he's so dumb. He, he did get the chance to play with some of those all star teams in the Pittsburgh area. So.

And when he played, he really learned a lot about the first of all, if you had to play both offense and defense, there is, there are no, there's no just one way players and against the best players. And he was a strong and a tough guy and a smart guy. He learned quickly and became a very outstanding athlete.

And it wasn't so much that he learned that so he could play professional ball, he could teach it. And he did. And it was one of the key features in his successful coaching career, his ability to.

He would dress for practices and get down there and oh, I've got good stories about when he was in Michigan and he has them gathered at the start of the year and he's giving him the little pep talk and the little organizational meeting and he gets a. Grabs a guy and to demonstrate, but the guy is really caught, caught by surprise.

And, and so Yoster starts demonstrating and he's got this guy, he's a big guy, he's got him upended. And if he comes forward, Yoshi knows that's going to happen. And he's got him on his nose. If he goes back, he's got him on his heels.

I mean he was outstanding at first of all, all the skills demonstrate him and loved to do that. And that fellow became an all American at the University of Michigan center. Great, great athlete that Yosh was toying with.

And he said, I learned a lot. The biggest thing I think I learned was that the next year at that preliminary practice, I was going to be way, way back in the pack.

Not, not going to volunteer me to face Yoshi. He did have professional experience, but now, you know, there's not professional the sense that we have to the professional football today.

But he's playing, he's playing with the Allegheny Athletic association who played against Latrobe and the Pittsburgh, you know, some of the other Pittsburgh clubs, you know, the John Braille years, Pudge Heffelfingers, you know, Bob Shirings, Blondie Wallace's those, those type of guys were playing in that same era.

That's some tough, hard nosed football and like you said, it teaches some lessons about how to play single platoon football and stay on your feet and stay in a game without getting killed. You know that's I think that's, that's, that's important. I think in this lesson of some of his fundamentals that he taught like you said. So.

Okay, so he gets, it gets his playing days are somewhat over and he starts to move into coaching. What happens next?

Well, he, he comes back from this great experience having played with the Lafayette team and winning basically. They, they were named then the, the top team of the year, national champions.

Lafayette was and, and Park Davis the coach made sure that Yost, even though he was on there for one game get his L sub major is letter. He was A and he wore that L on a sweater very, very often. So anyway, now he's, he has been to the Summit and has been and has succeeded.

Just two years of graduate school training is over.

He's got his law practice certification and so now what he wants to do is to be a lawyer and help to do learn some things about mining and how to get things, the minerals from the ground and into fat plants and into the. To the work world.

He, he also when he goes to get that the training for teaching at Ohio Wesleyan, he joins the Sigma Chi fraternity and becomes a, a lifetime member and a tremendous he. The fraternities were big and those were opportunities to get influence centers. They came from all corners and they knew people who knew people.

So he and Joost was so abundantly confident that it's very easy for people to say he is a braggart. He is a pain in the rear with his bragging. When he did something really well, he couldn't shut up about it.

So he has to tell the boys at Ohio Wesleyan what he's done and what this Lafayette thing was all about and how great it was and of course how great he was. And so they're saying it's a tardy house, you know, why don't you come here and coach us, coach our team.

Well, it says, you know, you gotta set it up for me and I'll see what I can do. So they set things up for him and he saw what he could do. Out he goes. He has no intention of staying.

He's just going to go out and coach football that fall and he's going to come back to West Virginia and do his lawyering. He gets out there and my gosh, they learn very quickly and he's showing them things that they would never have learned anywhere else.

He is really prepared to be a good coach of technique. The third game on their schedule is one with the University of Michigan now that they are totally out of their league.

It's all very informal, almost like intramurals. And of course they're playing this podunk Ohio Wesman, so there's not a lot of sweat here anyway.

Well, he plays and he has his team so psyched up, Michigan can't score on them and the game ends in a 00 tie. This does not sit well with the sports reporter for the Michigan Daily who he decries the whole event.

He says that basically, you know, they said they were going to be do everything they could to win, including biting and pulling hair and everything else, and they did exactly that. Well, he accused them of being, you know, very dirty football players.

And then of course he concludes his own article and write up on the game in the Michigan Daily by saying, and the referees stood around doing nothing. So, you know, any refereeing at that point in time was a, you know, you almost had to get somebody.

Well, in some cases the coach of one team would, would do the offensive side and the coach of the other team would do the defensive side and then they'd switch back. I mean, it's very informal. Anyway, Yost brings them to a wonderful season conclusion and Ohio State is just learning football at this point in time.

He happily goes back to West Virginia, but he cannot get football out of his head.

He's Got the bug, right?

He's got the bug. And now he says, I don't recall that he got much in the way of money for that, but it was.

He gets everybody who saw his team play to write for him. He knew how to mass the, the, the support and he had that.

He had the network in place and they were looking out for him.

Yeah, absolutely. And they wanted to, I mean you could, you couldn't say no to this guy.

So they go to Nebraska, they say they're going to pay him $340, but I think he only got about half of that. But anyway, he wasn't that interested in the money anyway. He said it's okay.

And really that's almost a third of the wages of a person who's doing full time 12 month work anyway. My gosh, their big rifle was Kansas and they go through a wonderful season and they beat Kansas.

So they call themselves then the champions of the league and they are. So now he's been at Nebraska, that's his second year of coaching and I think they lose one game.

He said, this is fun and you know, the money isn't all that bad. Kansas says, you know, we would love to have you.

Well, before I let you leave Nebraska, I gotta. You have a very interesting tidbit. Something else that I learned that Nebraska was not called the Corn Huskers at that point in time.

Before, before the 20th century had a different nickname and I thought this was kind of interesting.

They were the Bug Eaters. Yeah, I couldn't let that one go. Doctor, you talk about students being involved in their own game here.

Hey, what do you think we should call ourselves? I got it. How about the Bug Eaters? Hey, let's do that.

Yeah, that's, that's one ball game where I wouldn't want to visit the concession stand, let's just say.

So. And of course the, there's always a manager of football.

Someone who can put, put the schedule together and do the, the kind of things it took, you know, to, to, to have a. You only have about 25 guys on the team. So anyway, so, so now Josh decides that he will take.

Oh, they don't, they, they don't have enough money at Nebraska to hire him back. They hardly could pay him what they promised in the first place. But Kansas did.

And so he gets everybody who signed play, including the manager at Nebraska to write for him and he gets the Kansas job. Can you imagine that?

Okay, so Kansas is their biggest rival at Nebraska.

Yes.

He talks to his players who probably don't want him to leave and his managers, everybody else to write letters to get him a job at their rival who they're going to have to play again.

Exactly right. And he goes, and he goes to Kansas and he goes 10 and 0. Of course he beats Nebraska and Missouri, two big rivals.

Anyway, it's one of those things where, you know, they joke sometimes about the great coaches of today. You know, they say he's good enough that he can take his players and beat you and then he can take your players and beat you with them.

Beat the team that he left. That's it. The point is that it doesn't matter which side the players are on or they're really good. If he's on that side, they're going to win.

Smart guy, just knew how to coach, he knew how to motivate and he knew how to get the students in, fans on the side, the players to really help him in practices, well attended practices, you know, cheering the guys on. And he knew how to put on a show for that film. Signal calls running up and down the field. And you know, there was no huddle at this point in time.

We're going to break off our interview right here and end this episode of it. But we're going to continue our talk with Dr. John Behe on fielding hios.

It's really starting to get into the good stuff when once we get into Michigan and some of the traditions that he did start with, you know, the Great book by Dr. Behe Fielding Coach Yost, Michigan's tradition maker. You can find that [email protected], which is b e h e-e.com. Find it in the show notes.

It gives you links here to buy this very excellent work by the good doctor his second time around writing about fielding H yost old Hurry up Yost, the great coach of Michigan for so many years and you know, and he tells why he believes he may be one of the greatest coaches ever to coach in college football in the United States.

So make sure you tune back in just a few days where we'll come up with part two of Dr. John Behe, author, biographer of Cocchiost Michigan's tradition maker and is a great book, great story. So till tomorrow everybody have a great gridiron day. That's all the football history we have today folks.

Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

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