Good read on SI about Hayes and that last game with Clemson. For some reason I thought Hayes was way older than 65 when he was fired at Ohio State. https://www.si.com/college-football/2016/12/23/woody-hayes-punch-clemson-ohio-state
That moment is still clear in my mind. Did I see what I thought I saw on TV? Hard to believe, but Woody just so competitive that he lost his composure and was fired by the university the next morning. Real a sad moment for all concerned. Woody is still revered by the majority of OSU fans and considered to be one of the best coaches to ever represent the Scarlet and Gray!
As he should be. Not unlike the legacy of Bob Knight in Indiana. An ugly end to a great career but remembered with reverence.
I remember it well...I was in Grand Rapids watching with a group of friends...I was the only one who saw it and told them "he's gone". :cry:
:idea: For those of us on the Left Coast, Woody was the perfect enemy. He would hide his team at Citrus Jr. College and treat reporters like criminals in the days leading up to the Rose Bowl. He assumed that everything out here was some kind of Communist plot, except former USC player John Wayne, who agreed with Woody that everything out here was a Communist plot...
:idea: :!: Jim Murray of the LA Times was my hero. He was the guy who taught me how to read. When the Dodgers moved here in 1958, I began fighting my father for possession of the LA Times Sports Section every morning and it's featured sports writer Jim Murray. I can still remember many of his columns: - "So this is Pittsburgh..." introduced LA fans to the world's most polluted city and it's confused fans. - His Notre Dame columns were all classics (He was Irish), but locals fans complained that he favored the Irish over USC. (He did.) - His Rose Bowl columns had me laughing out loud at his Irish sarcasm many times. He would describe USC or Stanford as Ivy League schools filled with altar boys and future scientists, while the Ohio State team was filled with knuckle draggers that "Woody recruited out of the coal mines." My favorite Woody column came after Stanford upset them. The article began with the words, "Well bust my monocle!" He described how the rich kids upset Woody's blue collar boys. It was all Irish nonsense of course, but it was fun.
Woody was a well read, astute man who realized, decades before the rest of us figured it out, how toxic the cultural cesspool that constitutes California is.
I was a big Jim Murray fan. I can't recall when I started to read him, but I was young, probably just out of college. At first he turned me off with his sarcasm, but I kept reading him and soon came to understand and appreciate his brand of humor. Once I adapted, I loved his writing. I once criticized a Fort Wayne writer as a Jim Murray wannabe, but eventually I warmed to him also. He was one of a kind. There's never been another like him, although some have tried.
Having spent my first 24 years in Ohio I was steeped in the traditions of Ohio State. I actually "met" Woody twice. First time as a senior in high school when he walked into our gym class to meet with a team mate and he hung around for 20 minutes and talked to us as a group. And once in doughnut shop in Columbus early on a Sunday morning where he barreled through the front door of a local donut shop in a foul mood and glared at my group who had just pulled an all-nighter on High St. When had his melt down in the Clemson game I would rate it just below watching Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey and Armstrong setting foot on the moon. The entire state of Ohio was in shock. My dad was a huge Irish fan and used to read Jim Murray's sysndicated column in the Dayton Daily News. He loved him as well.
The Woody Hayes game for me was so memorable because I can still remember the shocked look on my dad's face as it all unfolded. I was still pretty young then so I don't remember a lot from those days, but I do remember that.