Homecoming spirit bloomed with Memorial Stadium

The homecoming parade has been part of the festivities from the beginning. In the early years, the parade wound through campus; now it travels east on University Avenue from Dinkytown.

Photo from University of Minnesota Archives

From M, fall 2003

"They came, they saw, they left again, and there lies the rubbish," was how the Minnesota Alumni Weekly described the 1921 University of Minnesota homecoming. For nine years, from 1914 through 1922, homecoming failed to fire the imagination of the average alumnus. But on November 17 and 18, 1923, things changed. "The rebirth of Minnesota spirit," some called it. A Friday banquet scored record attendance. Saturday dawned with alumni in "yellow chrysanthemums and scarlet hats" impatiently prowling campus by 10 a.m. The 11:30 parade featured "rumbling chariots, creaky farm wagons, and antique relics" as students strove for the homecoming cup, the prize for the best parade unit, according to the Gopher yearbook. The game itself was a 20-7 win over rival Iowa, a victory that, "after seven years of more or less fruitless hoping," the Weekly stated, made Minnesota a premier contender for the Big Ten football title.

Homecoming for the Hundredth

Homecoming this year is scheduled for the days leading up to the Saturday, November 1, football game against Indiana. To mark the UMAA's centennial and raise money for scholarships, a series of special events will take place that weekend: the annual breakfast inside the Sports Pavilion near the end of the parade route, a silent and live auction of unique University goods and services, and a free Gopher Roadshow event similar to the PBS series "Antiques Roadshow."

The first homecoming?

The year of the first homecoming at a U.S. college or university is hard to pin down. The NCAA Hall of Records gives the title to Missouri in 1911. But Illinois claims it held the first college football-related event called "homecoming" in 1910. Central Illinois argues that their homecoming games go back to 1903, although, until 1914, the game featured the varsity team playing against an alumni team. In any event, the tradition spread fast--including to Iowa in 1912 and Minnesota in 1914--as colleges and alumni groups across the nation recognized football's popularity and its unique ability to attract thousands of fans and alumni to a college campus.

Reporting on the day that continued with well-attended open houses and dances, the Minnesota Daily gushed: "There was never such a day--such a game--such a crowd.... They felt a new thrill, a new pride in being one who numbers Minnesota as their alma mater."

The difference in 1923, concluded Leland F. Peterson, editor of the Weekly, was not just a winning team, but also a just-completed noble accomplishment: the Memorial Stadium fund drive. "The great stadium and auditorium drive last year served to bring alumni and students into closer contact with each other; it was a common sacrifice for each other and for the betterment of an institution which enclosed them both," he wrote. That drive eventually netted more than $2 million and resulted in the building of Memorial Stadium (officially dedicated the following homecoming) and, later that decade, Northrop Auditorium.

The stadium was razed in 1992, but its Processional Arch is rebuilt inside the McNamara Alumni Center, the alumni association's home and the only building besides Northrop and the stadium to be built on campus with alumni donations and no public money. Since opening in 2000, the alumni center has become the hub of alumni activity at homecoming (see right for more).

Addressing alumni at a homecoming banquet in 1923, University president Lotus Coffman said, "Athletics are the greatest cementing agency for school spirit that we have. Although this is undoubtedly the greatest homecoming we have ever had, I believe that homecoming affairs are in their infancy."

Indeed, now almost 90 years old, Minnesota's homecoming has grown and changed, seen traditions come and go, and even waned a bit in the early 1970s. But it has always held at its center the reacquainting of alumni with the University, that affiliation that is, as alumni organizing chairman Stanley Gillam ('12, '13) proclaimed in 1923, "one of the most durable satisfactions of life."

For information on the breakfast and related events and a full Twin Cities homecoming schedule, visit www.alumni.umn.edu.