The Eastern Michigan Eagles are a college football program at Eastern Michigan University. They compete in Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and the Mid-American Conference. Past names include "Michigan State Normal College Normalites" (1899 to 1928), "Michigan State Normal College Hurons" (1929 to 1955), and "Eastern Michigan Hurons" (1956 to 1990).
Since 1891, Eastern Michigan University has compiled an all-time record of 490–622–47, fielding a team in each year except 1944. The team has achieved five undefeated seasons, in 1906, 1925, 1927, 1943 (holding opponents scoreless), and 1945. The team saw its greatest period of success from 1925 through 1939 under head coach Elton Rynearson, for whom their home field, Rynearson Stadium, is named. Among the lowest periods in the team's history was a 27-game losing streak in the early 1980s; under head coach Mike Stock the team was held scoreless seven times and posted an average margin of loss of 18 points per game.
History
Early history (1891–1977)
Michigan State Normal School first fielded a football team in 1891. Initially the team had no official nickname, being known variously as the "Normalites" or the "Men from Ypsi". From 1892 to 1926, the team competed in the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association, winning conference championships in 1896 and 1925. (Although the MIAA did not recognize football as an official sport until 1894, MIAA teams competed against each other as early as 1891.) After playing football for three years at the University of Michigan, including being on the undefeated 1898 Michigan Wolverines football team that won the university's first Western Conference championship, Clayton Teetzel travelled six miles east to Ypsilanti, where he became the first person to coach the Michigan State Normal College football team for more than one year. From 1900 through 1902, his teams compiled a 6–14–1 record.
The 1916 season was cut short after four games when Coach Elmer Mitchell and four players contracted smallpox; the last game was played October 28 against the University of Detroit.
Following the smallpox–shortened 1916 season, Elton Rynearson was hired to replace Elmer Mitchell. Although Rynearson's offense was more effective, outscoring opponents 111 to 82, more than half of the scoring came in a single game, a 63–0 rout of Central Michigan, and the team ended the season with a 3–4 record. After the shortened 3-game 1918 season was coached by Lynn Bell, Rynearson returned to coach the 1919 squad to their first winning season in four years. After another winning season in 1920, other coaches assumed the duties for four years, during which the team managed a 9–15–4 record. Rynearson's return in 1925 sparked the most successful period in school history. From 1925 through 1930, the team achieved a 40–4–2 record, including perfect seasons in 1925 and 1927. From 1925 through 1927 they outscored opponents 405 points to 31 and registered 19 shutouts. They won the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association Championship in 1925, and won the Michigan Collegiate Conference championships in 1927, 1928, 1929, and 1930. In 1929, the Michigan State Normal College Men's Union sponsored a contest to determine a nickname. A three-person committee chose "Hurons" from the contest entries; the runner-up name was "Pioneers". The name Hurons was submitted by Gretchen Borst and George Hanner, both MSNC students. It is likely that Hanner got the idea from the Huron Hotel in downtown Ypsilanti, where he was employed.
Although less dominant, Rynearson's teams continued to have success throughout the 1930s, never having a losing season until the teams of 1940 and 1941 combined for a 2–10–3 record. The 1943 and 1945 teams (there was no team in 1944) were again successful, combining for a 7–0–1 record. However, following the end of World War II, Rynearson's teams again struggled, and he ended his coaching career on a streak of three losing seasons from 1946 through 1948. His 26 seasons as head coach are double those of the next-longest serving coach, Fred Trosko, and no Eastern Michigan University football coach has reached even half of Rynearson's win total of 114 games. Following Rynearson's retirement in 1948, Harry Ockerman was the head coach for three undistinguished years, in which he compiled a 7–19–0 record, including a winless first season. For the 1952 season, Fred Trosko was hired as head coach, and over the next several seasons the team improved markedly, attaining a 7–1–1 record in 1953, an 8–1–0 record in 1954, and a 7–2–0 record in 1955. The team was not able to sustain the success, however, and for the remained of his thirteen seasons Trosko's teams struggled, finishing two consecutive seasons winless (1960 and 1961, both 0–8–1), and only managing two additional winning seasons, going 6–3–0 in 1957 and 4–3–0 in 1964, Trosko's final year. In thirteen seasons, the second longest tenure of any head coach at the school, Trosko had nearly as many losses as Rynearson had in twenty-six seasons.
In July 1952, Fred Trosko was hired as head football coach at Michigan State Normal College. Trosko had been a star college running back at Michigan under head coach Fritz Crisler. The team improved markedly during Trosko's early years as head coach. In his first seven seasons, the team attained a record of 41–19–2, including a 7–1–1 record in 1953 and an 8–1–0 record in 1954. His teams won Interstate Intercollegiate Athletic Conference ("IIAC") championships in 1954 and 1957. The team's success came to an abrupt end in 1959. Trosko's teams had a 29-game winless streak (0–27–2) starting with the third game of the 1959 season and continuing through the fifth game of the 1962 season. The precipitous decline followed the decision of the Eastern Michigan administration not to follow an IIAC policy that allowed member schools to award scholarships. Competing with non-scholarship athletes against conference schools with scholarship athletes, Trosko's Eastern Michigan teams were unable to compete. In August 1965, Trosko announced his resignation as the school's head football coach, and it was reported that the resignation was the result of "an apparent break with school administrators over policy." Trosko had the second longest tenure of any head coach at the school. He also taught at Eastern Michigan and remained on the faculty at Eastern Michigan after retiring as football coach. He ultimately retired in 1981 as a professor emeritus. In 1982, he was inducted into the Eastern Michigan Sports Hall of Fame. Jerry Raymond was the head football coach of the Hurons for the 1965 and 1966 seasons, and his coaching record at the school was 8 wins, 7 losses and 2 ties. As of the conclusion of the 2010 season, this ranks him No. 12 at Eastern Michigan in total wins and No. 13 at the school in winning percentage ().
In July 1967, Dan Boisture was hired as head coach at Eastern Michigan University. He later commented that he was willing to go to a smaller school, saying, "There weren't many jobs open...Joan and I looked at the campus. It was a cute campus." Under his leadership, the team produced the longest period of sustained success since Elton Rynearson's days. The team posted winning seasons in all seven years of Boisture's coaching, including a 13-game winning streak that remains a school record. His 1971 squad finished the regular season 7–0–2, only allowing one touchdown in the last five games, before losing to Louisiana Tech in the Pioneer Bowl, the first bowl trip in school history. Boisture was named NCAA District Four "coach of the year" in 1971. Boisture's tenure at Eastern Michigan is also notable for the construction of Rynearson Stadium. Boisture's teams played their first two seasons at the old field, near the corner of Oakwood and Washtenaw, just west of McKenny Union. In 1969, the new stadium, which was considered off-campus at the time, opened with a capacity of 15,500. Boisture's bowl-bound 1971 team played for one of the few sellout crowds in the stadium's history, a 0–0 tie against Eastern Kentucky on October 16, 1971, which drew 17,360 spectators. In February 1974, Boisture left Eastern Michigan to coach the Detroit Wheels, in the Central Division of the World Football League. The Wheels played their home games at Rynearson Stadium after they were unable to secure an agreement with Tiger Stadium in Detroit or Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. In 1972, Eastern Michigan joined the Mid-American Conference, in which they still compete.
In February 1974, Michigan assistant coach George Mans was hired as the head football coach of the Eagles, where he remained for the 1974 and 1975 seasons. In his first season as head coach, Mans' team started the season with only one win in the first six games, but the team finished strong, going 3–1–1 in the final five games. In May 1976, Mans announced his resignation as Eastern Michigan's coach in what the Associated Press described as a "surprise move." According to one newspaper report, Mans resigned "when it became apparent that EMU would place a greater emphasis on basketball, hiring former Detroit Pistons Coach Ray Scott." Mans compiled an 8–12–1 record in two seasons as the head football coach at Eastern Michigan. Coach Ed Chlebek came to Eastern Michigan from the University of Notre Dame, where he was an assistant under Dan Devine and coached future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana. Chlebek's Eagles compiled a 10–12 record from 1976 to 1977. After an impressive 8–3 campaign in 1977, Chlebek left EMU to accept the position of head football coach at Boston College.
Mike Stock era (1978–1982) Mike Stock's tenure as head coach is primarily remembered for a school-record 27-game losing streak from 1980 through 1982, including a winless season in 1981. He was fired after the team lost the first three games of 1982, including a 49–12 pasting at Louisiana Tech and 35–0 shutout at Miami University, bringing the losing streak to 22 games; the team went on to lose five more consecutive games under interim coach Bob LaPointe before the streak was broken with a 9–7 win over Kent State on November 6, 1982. Stock's teams were held scoreless seven times, his teams were outscored by a total of 809 points — nearly 18 points per game, and his final record of 6–38–1 gives him a 14.4% win percentage, easily the lowest of any coach to remain at Eastern more than one season. Stock continued to coach football both at the collegiate level and the professional level, both in the United States Football League and the National Football League, until his retirement following the 2008 NFL season, but this was his only head coaching position.
Jim Harkema era (1983–1992) Coach Jim Harkema came to EMU from Grand Valley State and lead EMU to four consecutive winning seasons from 1986 to 1989, including Eastern's only MAC championship in 1987, when the team went to the 1987 California Bowl and upset 17½ point favorite San Jose State for the only bowl game win in school history until the 2022 Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, when they again beat San Jose State. The 1988 and 1989 teams each finished in second place in the conference. Harkema's teams struggled from 1990 to 1992, and Harkema was fired after an 0–4 start to the 1992 season after 2–9 and 3–7–1 campaigns in 1990 and 1991.