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Charles H. Smith - Biography
Charles H. "Fatty" Smith was an American football center who played for the University of Michigan Wolverines football team in 1893 and 1894. Smith stood 5 feet, 10 inches, and weighed a hefty 230 pounds in 1893. In 1894, Smith anchored the line for one of the first great Michigan football teams. The 1894 Michigan team outscored opponents 244-84 and compiled a record of 9-1-1, including wins over Cornell University and the University of Chicago. Michigan's 1894 victory over Cornell marked the first victory by a Western football school against one of the Eastern football powers. Up to that point, no Western player had been selected for the annual College Football All-America Teams selected by Eastern football authorities, Casper Whitney and Walter Camp. Smith was the standout star of Western football in 1894, and Western football enthusiasts lobbied for Smith to be selected as an All-American. Whitney and Camp declined the suggestion, and no Western football players would be selected as All-Americans until 1898, when Clarence Herschberger and William Cunningham received the honors. The resistance to selecting Smith (or any other Western player) as an All-American is reflected in the following newspaper account from December 1894:
