Fielding H. Yost

Fielding Harris Yost coached Michigan football for 25 seasons between 1901 and 1926 and served as the university’s athletic director from 1921 to 1940. His early “point-a-minute” teams made him one of the most quoted figures in American sport, and he spent his later years on the lecture circuit preaching that athletics built character through preparation, not through wanting to win. That lecture-circuit theme is where the “will to prepare to win” formula first shows up in print.