Faculty was also
aroused. The result was the organization in 1894 of the Board in Control
of Athletics, which ordinarily has had the final word in the
administration of athletic affairs since that time. It is at present
composed of four Faculty representatives, elected by the University
Senate, three alumni, appointed by the Regents, three students appointed
by the Directors of the Athletic Association, and the Director of
Outdoor Athletics.

The year 1894, therefore, aside from the beginnings of a real football
team, was important also because it saw the awakening of the Faculty to
its responsibility in athletic affairs, and a corresponding growth in
the whole University body of higher ideals of inter-collegiate sport,
with the University "started fairly and squarely on the road to athletic
cleanliness." The movement thus inaugurated resulted in the
establishment of the Western Inter-collegiate Conference on February 8,
1896. This is a body composed of representatives from the athletic
boards of seven (later ten) leading mid-western Universities, which has
aimed from the first, not only to regulate and standardize the
conditions of all forms of inter-collegiate athletic competition but
also to maintain a high ideal of amateurism in college sports. The
formation of this body, which soon came to be the most powerful
influence in the West for clean athletics, was due in no small part to
President Angell, who was instrumental in calling the first meeting, as
well as to Dr. C.B.G. de Nancrede and Professor Albert H. Pattengill,
the Michigan representatives at that first meeting. Professor
Pattengill's interest in outdoor sports was lifelong. His was the
moving spirit in the Conference through many years; and to him, more
than to any other, Michigan owes, not only the present effective
organization of athletics, but the securing of Ferry Field and its
equipment.

The records of the football teams of 1895 and 1896 were quite
overwhelming for those days, 266 points to their opponents' 14 in 1895
and 262 points to 11 the next season. The only disappointments were a 4
to 0 defeat from Harvard in 1895 and a 7 to 6 victory for Chicago in
1896. A season of uninterrupted victories in 1897 was again cut short by
a defeat from Chicago 21 to 12 in the last game. Chicago had now come to
occupy the chief place on the schedule and the seeds of that rivalry
which was later to prove so unfortunate in Western inter-collegiate
affairs wer