“There was a time,” said former broadcaster Bert Charles, “when both programs were coming off periods of indifference among the respective fan bases.” (Press Pros Feature Photos)
We’ll all watch. But smile at all the hype given and the beer guzzled in preparation for Saturday’s renewal of the ‘rivalry’…as I’ll share what I’ve learned over the years from those who’ve lived it from the other side.
A friend from Columbus sent me an email this week with a photo of the 1901 (he says) Ohio State-Michigan game…showing horses and wagons parked outside the fence.
Someone else had added this to the photo: “Parking was only $5.00 back then!”
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The older I get the more I’m struck by naivete’, and the reality over this week in college football, while fully understanding and appreciating rivalries. But I’m also appreciative of facts – hard, cold facts – about Ohio State football.
And even with #1 Ohio State having lost the last four games in a row to Michigan, the Buckeyes have still won 15 of the last 20 games between the two. The four losses, for rivalry sake, couldn’t have come at a better time. In fact, if the Ohio High School Athletic Association was in charge there might be talk of competitive balance.
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But the rest of the story about the OSU-Michigan series is worth sharing, and appreciating, too. Because there was another, recent time when the rivalry was questioned over the effects of competitive imbalance…and were it not for the collaborative efforts of Woody Hayes and former Michigan coach Bo Schembechler fifty-five years ago, talk today about ‘the team up north’ might have a different perspective.
There are tons of stories about Woody and Schembechler being bitter enemies. It makes for great copy come the big game in November, but it isn’t true. Bo Schembechler played for Woody at Miami University and later coached with him as an assistant at Ohio State. They were close friends and they were smart marketeers. A “good story” about their imagined hatred went a long way towards filling the “Horseshoe” and “The Big House” on Ohio State-Michigan game day. It was just good business and Woody and Bo knew it.
“I guarantee you Woody and Bo had a marketing strategy for the Ohio State-Michigan game. Those stories about Woody running out of gas in Michigan and pushing his care to the state line to fill up? It never happened, but it helped promote the Michigan game.” – Bert Charles
The late Bert Charles, a long-time Buckeye broadcaster and radio executive in Columbus once confirmed that while Ohio State and Michigan was always a game of heated interest, it became a red-hot when Woody turned the Buckeye program around in 1968 and when Bo took the Michigan job in 1969. Both programs were coming off periods of indifference among the respective fan bases. Prior to quarterback Rex Kern and the national championship in 1969, planes were flying on game days in Columbus dragging banners that read “Good-bye Woody”.
As late as the 1966 OSU-Michigan game, the game was NOT sold out, and throughout the 60’s, prior to Kern and the ’69 national champions, the horseshoe was routinely undersold on game days.
Schembechler as an assistant for Hayes at Ohio State from 1958 to ’62 prior to his taking the head coaching position at Miami of Ohio. They were of like makeup, “Two peas in the same pod,” said Charles. “And when Woody needed an advocate on his staff he always turned to Bo. He was the fair-haired boy and Woody highly promoted him for the Miami job in 1963.”
Both saw opportunity when Schembechler returned to the Big Ten and Michigan in 1969.
Bo Schembechler (above, left) and Woody Hayes were as close off the field as they were distant off, at least to the public. When Hayes was fired in 1978 Schembechler came to Columbus to support his friend and former boss at his Upper Arlington home.
“I guarantee you Woody and Bo had a marketing strategy for the Ohio State-Michigan game,” said Charles, when he first told me the story in the mid-70s. “They weren’t filling the stadium and Woody was determined to fire up fans and alumni. Those stories about Woody running out of gas in Michigan and pushing his car to the state line to fill up? I knew assistants that claimed it never happened. But it helped promote the Michigan game.”
And for his part Schembechler did his best up north, painting Hayes as the villainous raider who stockpiled talent from both states so they wouldn’t play against him at Michigan. And, it didn’t hurt the cause when Bo returned the favor, recruiting several high-profile Buckeyes that did eventually swing the tide in Michigan’s favor in the game against Ohio State.
“Don’t get it wrong,” Buckeye equipment manager John Bosick once told me. “The two schools didn’t like each other in football, but Woody and Bo really made the most of the opportunity. They talked about it all year and it sold tickets. It made the game a special event. And as a result they both benefited with recruiting. The best high school players wanted to be a part of the rivalry.
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“And did you ever hear talk of an Ohio State-Michigan rivalry in another sport?” he added.
Years later, when I was umpiring minor league baseball, former Michigan quarterback Rick Leach was a centerfielder in the Tigers organization, playing in Evansville, Indiana (AAA). I once asked him about the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry.
Sophomore Rex Kern guided Buckeyes to the 1968 national championship, and gave a shot in the arm to the OSU-Michigan rivalry.
“It was always a big game,” said Leach. “Both teams were good then, but the game that meant the most in Michigan was with Michigan State.”
And in fact, when I traveled to Ann Arbor for OSU-Michigan baseball two years ago I asked an usher working at Ray Fisher Stadium (where the Wolverines play) if that was still true.
“Yes,” he said. “When Mark Dantonio came to East Lansing he made it a priority to be the best team in Michigan, and that changed what the Ohio State game means to a lot of people up here.”
Since Woody and Bo, the rivalry in Ohio got a shot in the arm when John Cooper lost all those games to Michigan, and then the reverse with what’s happened since 2000. People in Ohio were hungry for wins, and Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer delivered.
But back to Woody and Bo, just a day after Hayes’ firing in 1978 a Dayton businessman named Bo Foreman provided his private plane to fly to Ann Arbor and bring Schembechler back to Columbus to meet his old coach and colleague at his Upper Arlington home. The two spent the day together discussing the past, as well as the future. And at the end of their visit Hayes accompanied Schembechler on the plane back to Ann Arbor. A friend in Vandalia has a pair of red plastic drink cups retrieved from the plane that day that are marked, “Woody’s cup” (and the date), and “Bo’s cup” (and the date). So much for the intense dislike between Woody and Bo.
They’d both laugh now if they saw the price of a ticket for Saturday’s game. Both were fiscal conservatives and both preached priorities of life outside football. Neither would have paid $5.00 to park.
But owing to at least one Hayes concession to progress, he wouldn’t have come in a horse and wagon, either.
Woody always drove a Buick!
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