Alvin Wistert - College Athletics

College Athletics

After his discharge from the Marine Corps, Wistert worked for Proctor & Gamble Soap Company in Massachusetts. He learned that Boston University was offering high school equivalency tests that would allow him to enroll there. Using the post-war G.I. Bill, Wistert spent one semester at Boston University and played for the school's football team as a 30-year-old freshman.

After one semester at Boston University, Wistert transferred to the University of Michigan. He was the last of the Wistert brothers to play for the Michigan Wolverines football team where he, like his brothers Francis and Albert before him, wore number 11, which was retired by the University of Michigan but will be re-issued starting November 10, 2012 before a home game against Northwestern as part of the new Michigan Football Legend program. In the spring of 1947, Wistert was won the Meyer Morton Award as the most improved player during Michigan's spring football practice. Wistert played defensive left tackle for the undefeated 1947 Michigan Wolverines football team that became known as "The Mad Magicians", and is considered to be the greatest Michigan football team of all time. Wistert later recalled the tight competition to play for the 1947 team: "There were players of almost equal ability on the first two teams. You had to play at your peak because there was someone who could always step in. Also, there was a good balance. A good mixture of youth and maturity." At 230 pounds, Wistert was the largest player on the 1947 Michigan team. In addition to being the largest player, he was also the oldest. Wistert recalled, "When I played football for Michigan in 1947, opponents would say, 'Here comes Pappy and his kids again.' I was a 30-year-old college freshman. I was 13 years older than some of the other players."

As a junior, Wistert was selected as a consensus All-American while playing for the undefeated 1948 Michigan team that finished the season ranked #1 in the Associated Press poll. In October 1948, Michigan helped secure Michigan's 19th consecutive victory with a blocked punt at the 12-yard-line of the Minnesota Golden Gophers. Michigan recovered the ball at the one-yard line and scored a touchdown on the next play. The 1948 team also set a Rose Bowl record defeating U.S.C. 49-0.

After the 1948 season, Wistert was unanimously chosen as the team captain of the 1949 team. He was selected as a consensus All-American for the second straight year in 1949.

When Wistert played his final game for Michigan in November 1949, the Detroit Free Press offered to fly his mother, Josephine, to the game to watch her son play. She had never seen one of her sons' football games in person but listened to the games on the radio. She declined the invitation, noting that she had been ill would listen to the game on the radio while looking at her sons' pictures. Interviewed by Lyall Smith, she expressed her particular pride for Alvin's accomplishments:

"I am the proudest mother in the world. But I am proudest of all about Alvin. It hasn't been easy for him to go to school, you know. He had the hard way and that's why I am so happy his teammates made him captain this year and that he was picked by you sportswriters as an All-America . . ."

The Sporting News published a photograph in December 1949 of Wistert's mother "Cheering Alvin's Final Game" while listening on the radio with a Michigan pennant and photographs of her three sons visible in the background.

Wistert was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1973 as the third Wistert brother so honored. In 1981, he was also inducted into the University of Michigan Athletic Hall of Honor in the fourth class of inductees alongside his brothers. Only five Michigan football players earned this honor before him.