Thank you for posting that photo. I had forgotten about that anomaly which I now remember seeing written on the Jug years ago and wondering about at the time.
Your post spurred me to do a little research as to why. Turns out that after the 1925 season the Big Ten instituted a rule requiring members to play at least four conference games to be eligible for the conference championship. Minnesota had only played three conference games in 1925 (Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan). When the Big Ten met in December 1925 to finalize the 1926 conference schedules, only those three initially agreed to play the Gophers in 1926.
During the meeting, the remaining schools were pressed to be Minnesota’s fourth conference opponent, but there were no takers.
Based on various accounts at the time, other Big Ten coaches were wary of Minnesota’s extreme physicality on defense and of Gopher coach Doc Spears’ implementation of the Shift offense popularized by Spears’ good friend Knute Rockne of Notre Dame.
Michigan lore has it that Fielding Yost finally agreed to play a second Jug game in 1926 if Spears would ditch his version of the Shift offense. The most prominent coaches of the Big Ten (Yost, Bob Zuppke at Illinois and Amos Alonzo Stagg at Chicago) thought the Shift should be made illegal as it commonly had all four backs in motion simultaneously.
As a sidenote, at the same meeting, Northwestern also agreed to play Indiana twice in 1926 to ensure the Hoosiers would play the requisite four conference games. It seems a little odd that the conference didn’t simply require Indiana and Minnesota to play, thus solving the problem for both schools, as Northwestern and Michigan had already secured the minimum. It’s ironic that Michigan and Northwestern finished as co-champions at 5-0 but did not play each other that year, perhaps due to their doubling up with Minnesota and Indiana, respectively.
