Century Marks

If I am making a rare mid-week post, it must be a big deal.  Michigan is currently sitting on win #899 just won Game #900, so I thought as I added these games to the Michigan History Calendar, I would put together some stats on the eight previous "Century" wins for Michigan.  We're not saying that this is going to happen this weekend, we're just saying that Michigan has 899 wins.  No, we're saying it now because it happened.

Win #100: October 5, 1901, 57-0 win over Case at Regents Park

Win #200: October 9, 1915, 35-0 win over Mount Union at Ferry Field

Win #300: October 1, 1932, 26-0 win over Michigan State College at Michigan Stadium

Win #400: October 23, 1948, 26-14 win over Minnesota at Memorial Stadium, Minneapolis, MN

Win #500: October 11, 1967, 21-14 win over Illinois at Memorial Stadium, Champaign, IL

Win #600: October 21, 1978, 42-0 win over Wisconsin at Camp Randall Stadium, Madison, WI

Win #700: November 4, 1989, 42-27 win over Purdue at Michigan Stadium

Win #800: September 30, 2000, 13-10 win over Wisconsin at Michigan Stadium

Win #900: October 20, 2012, 12-10 win over Michigan State at Michigan Stadium

Various notes:
Fielding Yost and Bo Schembechler both earned two "Century" wins (#100 and #200 for Yost, #500 and #600 for Bo).  Kipke, Bennie, Bump, Lloyd, and Brady have earned the other five.

Six of Michigan's century wins have occurred at home, three on the road.

The first six Century wins and the ninth one all occurred in the month of October, the last seventh and eighth within four days of October.  October is clearly the month for Century wins.

Year to year isn't a fair comparison, but here's the number of games it took to reach each "Century" victory.

001-100 135 games 135
100-200 120 games 255
200-300 135 games 390
300-400 142 games 532
400-500 178 games 710
500-600 120 games 830
600-700 135 games 965
700-800 131 games 1096
800-900 159 games 1255

You'd be shocked to discover that Yost's Point-a-Minute teams and Bo's dominant 1970s teams were able to do it in just 120 games, winning at an .833 clip to get there fastest.  The longest gap between Century wins is between wins 400-500 between 1948 and 1967, the Oosterbaan/Bump era, winning at just a .561 clip.  The gap between 800 and 900 checks in at the second longest in terms of games, as the 800-900 century is sitting at roughly a .667 winning percentage, but because of the expanded schedules of the last decade, Michigan is still on pace to earn another century win in just 12 years.

Given Michigan's all-time winning percentage at .735, it would take roughly 11.25 years to get to the millennium mark at that pace.  So you may want to work on your 2023 season ticket package now.