The 1930 Minnesota Golden Gophers football team represented the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

in the

1930 college football season The 1930 college football season saw Notre dame football, Notre Dame repeat as national champion under the Dickinson System, as well as claim the No. 1 position from each of the other three contemporary major selectors, (the Boand System, Boand, ...

. In their first year under head coach

Fritz Crisler Herbert Orin "Fritz" Crisler ( ; January 12, 1899 – August 19, 1982) was an American college football coach who is best known as "the father of two-platoon football", an innovation in which separate units of players were used for offense and ...

, the Golden Gophers compiled a 3–4–1 record, shut out four opponents (including a scoreless tie with Stanford), and outscored all opponents by a combined score of 126 to 81. Out of 126 points scored by the Golden Gophers, most were scored in two games against schools from South Dakota who the Golden Gophers defeated by a combined score of 107 to 0. Guard

Biggie Munn Clarence Lester "Biggie" Munn (September 11, 1908 – March 18, 1975) was an American football player, coach, and college athletics administrator. He was the head football coach at Albright College (1935–1936), Syracuse University (1946), and m ...

was selected as the team's Most Valuable Player. Munn was also selected by the

United Press United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th ...

as a first-team player on the 1930 All-Big Ten Conference football team. Total attendance for the season was 167,728, which averaged to 27,955. The season high for attendance was against Northwestern.

Schedule

Game summaries

Michigan

In the seventh week of the season, Minnesota played Michigan in the annual competition for the Little Brown Jug. The game marked the first appearance by

as a head coach at Michigan Stadium. Crisler was in his first year as head coach at Minnesota; he took over as Michigan's head coach eight years later. Michigan won the game 7 to 0. The game's only score came in the first quarter on a 45-yard punt return by Michigan's left halfback, Jack Wheeler. The return was off of a punt by Minnesota's All-American

. A newspaper account of the game described Wheeler's run as follows:

"Wheeler's run will go down as one of Michigan's, classics. He got the ball after a low, twisting kick by Munn had traveled to the Minnesota 45-yard line. Wheeler gathered it in and charged. He hit two Minnesota tacklers and knifed his way between them. He staggered a yard or two from the impact and sidestepped another Gopher tackler. Morrison came across like a charging bull to take another from Wheeler's path. He waved away, and slid yards across the goal line on his dive for a touchdown."

Despite the lack of scoring, the ''Associated Press'' reported that the game was "a desperately-fought breath-taking football battle."

References

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Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

Minnesota Golden Gophers football seasons Minnesota Football