Gerald Ford
The #48 jersey has been retired at Michigan since 1994. The jersey will once again be worn by a Michigan Football player in 2012. Brady Hoke confirmed this during a radio interview with WJOX-FM in Birmingham, Alabama. ”That is something we’re doing a lot of thinking about and we’re doing that, we’re honoring Desmond Howard now every year with one of our players who really deserves it, that’s Roy Roundtree wearing No. 21,” Hoke told the interviewer. “We’re going to do the same with Gerald Ford’s jersey here this year. There’s a lot of things we’re looking at doing. Right now, that No. 1 is still hanging in the locker.”
Ford played center at Michigan from 1932 to 1934 and was named team MVP as a senior. He would later become the 38th President of the United States of America.
There had been some buzz in recent years that Michigan should retire Howard’s #21 jersey. Athletic Director, David Brandon came up with the idea of designating players as Michigan Legends. The first player to be honored this way was the Wolverines second Heisman Trophy winner, Howard. Brandon mentioned that with the size of College Football rosters it was not practical to retire more jersey numbers and further thin out the available numbers to hand out.
I think this is a great idea and look forward to seeing #48 back in action. I am also looking forward to the day the other retired numbers, 11 (Wistert brothers), 47 (Bennie Oosterbaan) 87 (Ron Kramer), and 98 (Tom Harmon) are pulled out of retirement and designated as Legend jerseys.
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