The 1888 Michigan Wolverines football team represented the University of Michigan in the 1888 college football season. The team compiled a 2–1 record and outscored its opponents by a combined score of 94 to 36. The team scored 76 points against Albion College, a single-game Michigan record that stood until Fielding H. Yost's 1901 "Point-a-Minute" team scored 128 points against Buffalo. The team closed its season with a Thanksgiving Day game against a "picked team" from the Chicago University Club that The New York Times called "undoubtedly the greatest football event that ever took place in the West." The captain of the 1888 team was halfback James E. Duffy who had set the world's record for dropkick distance in 1886.