1885 Michigan Wolverines football team
| 1885 Michigan Wolverines football | |
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| Conference | Independent |
| 1885 record | 3–0 |
| Head coach | no coach |
| Captain | Horace Greely Prettyman |
| Home stadium | Campus playing field |
| 1885 college football records | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Conf | Overall | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Team | W | L | T | W | L | T | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Princeton | – | 9 | – | 0 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Michigan | – | 3 | – | 0 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Colorado College | – | 1 | – | 0 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cincinnati | – | 1 | – | 0 | – | 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Yale | – | 7 | – | 1 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Massachusetts | – | 3 | – | 2 | – | 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Richmond | – | 1 | – | 1 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Navy | – | 1 | – | 2 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rutgers | – | 0 | – | 1 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The 1885 Michigan Wolverines football team represented the University of Michigan in the 1885 college football season. The team compiled a 3–0 record and outscored its opponents by a combined score of 82 to 2. The team captain was Horace Greely Prettyman.
The season began with a home-and-away series against a team from Windsor, Ontario, Canada. The first game was played in Windsor under Canadian rules (allowing 15 men on the field per side), and was the second and final football game played by a Michigan football team in a foreign country. The return game against Windsor was the first to be played on the University of Michigan campus, prior home games having been played at the Ann Arbor Fairgrounds. The team concluded the season with a 42–0 victory on Thanksgiving Day against the Peninsular Cricket Club team from Detroit.
With several veteran players returning from the undefeated 1884 team, expectations were high for the 1885 team. The returning players included James E. Duffy, Horace Greely Prettyman, John M. Jaycox, Thomas H. McNeil, and Raymond W. Beach. On October 4, 1885, The Michigan Argonaut (a University of Michigan weekly newspaper) wrote: "From this number there is no reason why an eleven cannot be made up which will equal any Rugby team the university ever had. With the good material now present, we may expect some interesting games before the fall season closes."
One of the challenges facing the 1885 team was the lack of other college and university teams in proximity to Ann Arbor. Other major colleges and universities in the region had not yet established regular varsity football programs: Notre Dame, Purdue, Indiana, and Penn State did so in 1887; Northwestern in 1888; Iowa, Ohio State and Wisconsin in 1889; and Nebraska, Illinois, Pittsburgh, and Missouri in 1890. In 1881 and 1883, Michigan had traveled to the east coast to play games against the major college teams of that region. In the absence of such a trip, Michigan was left with the option of playing Albion College (the only other established collegiate program in Michigan during the 1880s) and club teams from Detroit, Chicago, and even Windsor, Ontario.
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