Right tackle Thomas Austin was the team captain, and center Gerald Ford was selected as the most valuable player.

Prior to the 1934 season, the Wolverines had won Big Ten championships in 1932 and 1933 while compiling a 22-game unbeaten streak.

However, the team lost its leading players, including Whitey Wistert, Chuck Bernard, Ted Petoskey, Herman Everhardus, and Stanley Fay, to graduation in the spring of 1934.

After a scoreless first half, Kurt Warmbein ran for two touchdowns in the fourth quarter for Michigan State.

Quarterback Tommy Flinn and halfbacks Jay Berwanger (the first player to win the Heisman Trophy) and Ned Bartlett starred for Chicago.

After a scoreless first half, Michigan quarterback Ferris Jennings returned a punt 70 yards for a touchdown in the third quarter.

On the final play of the quarter, Michigan blocked an attempted Georgia Tech pass from the end zone, and William F. Borgmann fell on the ball for a safety.

[3] The Georgia Tech game is best known for a racial incident involving Michigan's African-American end Willis Ward.

[5] As the game approached, word spread that Georgia Tech was insisting that Ward not play, and that the administration might capitulate to the demand.

[5] Petitions were circulated, and formal protests were lodged with the university by the Ann Arbor Ministerial Association, the NAACP, the National Student League and many other groups.

[6][4] The student newspaper, the Michigan Daily opined: "If the athletic department forgot it had Ward on its football team when it scheduled a game with Georgia Tech, it was astonishingly forgetful; ... if it was conscious of Ward's being on the team but scheduled the game anyway, it was extraordinarily stupid.

"[6] Time magazine ran a story about the uproar on Michigan's campus: "Fifteen hundred Michigan students and faculty members signed a petition asking that the team's star end, Negro Willis Ward, be allowed to play against Georgia Tech.

[4] One alumnus recalled that, the night before the game, "bonfires lit all over the campus echoed with screams of student anger, and 'Kill Georgia Tech' was heard throughout Ann Arbor.

[4] Playwright Arthur Miller, then a writer for Michigan's student newspaper, learned first-hand about the strong resistance among the Georgia Tech team to playing on the same field with an African-American athlete.

Not only did the visiting team rebuff 'the Yankee' Miller 'in salty language', but they told him they would actually kill Ward if he set one foot on the Michigan gridiron.

"[8] The day after the Georgia Tech game was played, an editorial ran in The Michigan Daily stating "that everyone who touched (the Ward affair) did so only to lose in respect and esteem.

Illinois took a 7–0 lead in the second quarter on a short touchdown run by John Theodore and successful extra point kick by Lester Lindberg.

The second Wisconsin score was set up by what the Detroit Free Press called "the most ridiculous play" of the season.

John Regeczi took the snap in Michigan's end zone for a punt, then decided to run, ran three yards, changed his mind again, and finally kicked with three Badgers in front of him.