The Student Athletic Association continued to publish "official scorecards" on the 1900 model, but other, more artistic designs also appeared.

The program for the 1902 Minnesota game, billed as "the final championship game," is the earliest full-fledged program for a home game. It is uncertain who produced the program, but it is clearly a commercial venture. The program for the 1902 Wisconsin game (played in Chicago) with a nearly identical cover, appears to have been produced by the Milwaukee Sentinel newspaper.

The program for the 1903 Wisconsin game, also billed as the "championship game," was the most elaborately produced for an Ann Arbor game thus far. Presumably a fancy program was produced for the 1904 Chicago game at Ferry Field, but the Bentley collection includes only a Student Athletic Association program.

By 1907 the Michigan programs for the "big games" had adopted the format popular among the eastern schools, exemplified by the 1906 Penn program.

A dispute over conference rules led to Michigan's withdrawal from the Western Conference (predecessor of the Big Ten) in 1907 and for the next decade the Wolverines turned to the East for the big games each year. Penn, Cornell and Syracuse replaced Chicago, Wisconsin and Minnesota on the schedule. The only exceptions came in 1909 and 1910 when Minnesota violated the conference ban on games with Michigan.