Fullback Sam Davison scored six touchdowns in the team's November 1908 victory over Kentucky State.

Team captain Germany Schulz missed the first three games of the season, because he had "three conditions in the engineering course, more than a player can carry and continue his athletic relations".

Near the end of the half, Michigan drove to Case's 10-yard line and took a 4–0 lead on a field goal by Dave Allerdice.

Case's score came in the last five minutes of the game and followed a fumbled punt by Albert Benbrook at Michigan's 20-yard line.

It was the fourth game in the Michigan–Michigan State football rivalry, and Michigan had won the three prior meetings by a combined score of 204 to 0.

[9] In Ann Arbor, the result was met with disbelief among Michigan fans who had expected an easy win.

[13] Dave Allerdice scored all 12 of Michigan's points on three field goals – two in the first half and one in the last minute of the game.

After taking a 6–4 lead at halftime, Michigan's touchdown came at the start of the second half and was set up by a trick play.

The game matched Michigan head coach Fielding H. Yost against his former player and brother-in-law, Dan McGugin.

Owing to the relationship between Yost and McGugin, the two teams played nine times between 1905 and 1923, with Michigan winning eight games and tying one.

"[29][30][31] After taking a 36–0 lead at halftime, there was a "perceptible letup" in the second half, as Yost played his substitutes, including Frank Linthicum and Thomas Riley.

After leaving the Big Ten Conference, Michigan played annual rivalry games against Penn at or near the end of the season.

[34] Michigan's hopes to beat Penn were based to a large extent on its star center Germany Schulz.

"[35] Though Michigan was beaten, Schulz's performance, and the pummeling he took from the Penn team, was recounted many times in the following decades.

In one of the few contemporaneous accounts, the Toledo Blade wrote that the Penn players, knowing that Schulz was "the power in the Michigan game," focused their energy on wearing him down.

"[36] Yost finally sent in a substitute, and Schulz limped to the sideline and walked slowly away "with head bowed and hands to his stomach."

In the end, Schulz "didn't say a word — big tears rolled down as he lay there; Schultz was thoroughly beaten, but it took the entire Pennsylvania eleven to do it.

"[37] Coach Yost said of Schulz's performance: "He gave the greatest one-man exhibition of courage I ever saw on a football field.

"[38] From the 1920s through the 1950s, the story was told, re-told and likely embellished in columns by Grantland Rice, Art Carlson, Frank Blair and Dave Lewis — more than one of them writing that they had seen the game in person.

In Carlson's 1925 account, "the giant center had been rendered practically useless from the Penn attack", but refused to leave the game.

In Frank Blair's 1951 telling, Schulz played with the "strength of Samson", and Penn "put five men -- center, both guards and both tackles—on the Wolverine giant.

"[41] In a 1954 article, sports writer Dave Lewis wrote that Penn assigned five players to the task of mowing down Schulz.

The Detroit Free Press wrote: "When the students here learned this morning that Allerdice, Michigan's fullback, had played the entire game with Pennsylvania yesterday with a broken collar bone, they could not comprehend that they had unconsciously witnessed the greatest act of heroism ever displayed on the gridiron.

[49][50][51] The Detroit Free Press described the season-ending losses to Penn and Syracuse as "the worst defeats in twenty years of the gridiron sport" at Michigan.

[52] Some Michigan fans argued that a bias against football among the university's faculty was responsible for the poor showing.

In early December 1908, the Chicago Daily Tribune reported: "It is alleged that the faculty is working against the football men in every possible way.

[54] On December 5, 1908, he returned to Ann Arbor and announced that he was considering leaving Michigan if things did not improve in 1909—the final year of his five-year contract.

"[55][56] The only Michigan player to receive recognition on post-season All-American teams was center Germany Schulz.

[58][59][60][61][62] Schulz was also selected as a first-team player on the All-Western teams of E. C. Patterson (for Collier's Weekly) and Walter Eckersall (for the Chicago Daily Tribune).

He defeated quarterback William Wasmund who had advocated more liberal distribution of varsity "M" letters to football players.