A committee of professors at the University of Michigan recommended “unanimously” that the university change the name of Yost Ice Arena, named after Fielding Yost, who led the Michigan Wolverines to several championship victories as head football coach in the early 20th century.
“In naming the Field House after Yost, the University chose to place one man’s contributions to football and to athletics above the profoundly deep and negative impact he had on people of color,” the President’s Advisory Committee on University History said in a report.
The university is soliciting feedback from the campus community in order to decide whether the arena should be renamed, according to an article in the University Record, which Kim Broekhuizen, the associate director of public affairs, provided to the Washington Examiner.
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Central to the committee’s recommendation is the issue of race. Only one black man played football for the Wolverines from 1901 to 1941, the time Yost was working as head football coach and later athletic director, which was due to Yost’s belief that football should be kept as white as possible, the committee’s report said.
The one exception was Willis Ward, who earned his varsity letter from the team in 1932. Yost benched Ward in a 1934 game against Georgia Tech due to demands from the opposing team’s “racist demands,” the committee said.
One notable player who was outraged by this decision was future President Gerald Ford.
The committee wrote in the report that it considered the historical and institutional context of the time in which Yost coached. The professors argued that Yost being “a man of his time” does not excuse his behavior.
“We reject this view because our historical analysis reveals that Yost — and others at the University in his day — had choices to make and evidence from their own times indicating the right ones,” the report said.
Yost died in 1946.
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The recommendation comes following a report that revealed that another legendary football coach, Bo Schembechler, knew about sexual abuses by a University of Michigan Athletics physician but failed to put a stop to them during his time as head coach.
