• Follow us on Twitter @buckeyeplanet and @bp_recruiting, like us on Facebook! Enjoy a post or article, recommend it to others! BP is only as strong as its community, and we only promote by word of mouth, so share away!
  • Consider registering! Fewer and higher quality ads, no emails you don't want, access to all the forums, download game torrents, private messages, polls, Sportsbook, etc. Even if you just want to lurk, there are a lot of good reasons to register!

A Brief History of Ohio State Football

1945 - 1953: A Lack of Direction

After their civilian national championship, Ohio State then entered a period of malaise that saw them go 48-27-7 (.628 winning percentage) from 1945 to 1953. During that nine-year period, the Buckeyes had four head coaches and the team did not win more than seven games in any one season. To make matters worse, the Buckeyes posted a 1-7-1 record against Michigan (including a 58-6 loss in 1946) and they won just a single Big Ten co-championship (1949) while their rivals up north won three outright conference championships and a co-championship, plus national back-to-back national titles in 1947 and 1948.

This era of Buckeye football was not distinguished overall, but there were still some great moments along the way. After the 1949 season, Ohio State won its first bowl game by defeating California in the Rose Bowl by the score of 17 to 14 (Ohio State's only previous bowl appearance was a loss in the 1921 Rose Bowl). In 1950, Vic Janowicz won the Heisman Trophy after amassing 875 total yards, 16 total touchdowns, kicking 26 extra points and 3 field goals, along with handling the Buckeyes' punting duties. That same year Ohio State and Michigan played in the Snow Bowl, one of the most memorable games in college football history (the Buckeyes lost, 9-3, in blizzard conditions). In 1952, Ohio State had its first Academic All American, quarterback John Borton. Probably the most significant event during this period occurred in 1951, but its significance would not be recognized for a few years.



Welcome to “That Happened” where we dig deep into the who, why, and how of outliers in Ohio State athletics history.

When fans think of Woody Hayes, "three yards and a cloud of dust" is one of the first quotes that come to mind. With legendary running backs such as Archie Griffen, Howard Cassady, and Bob Ferguson, Hayes' legacy is tied to the ground game.

In his second year in Columbus, however, Hayes' offensive philosophy was an anomaly. The 1952 Buckeyes were considered a pass-happy team, as quarterback John Borton threw for 1,555 yards, smashing the program record. Borton also threw for 15 touchdowns, leading the nation that year. His yardage record stood for the entirety of Hayes' time at Ohio State, with Art Schichtler eventually breaking Borton's record in 1979 with 1,816 passing yards.



During Borton's record-breaking season, his game against Washington State has stood the test of time. Against the Cougars, the sophomore quarterback threw for Ohio State's first-ever 300-yard game on 15/17 passing. He also tossed five touchdowns, another school record that was not broken until 2013, with four of those going to tight end Robert Grimes.

Grimes recorded a nine-catch, 187-yard, four-touchdown performance against Washington State, breaking the program records for receptions, receiving yards, and receiving touchdowns in one afternoon. Three weeks later, the tight end broke his own receptions record, catching 12 passes against Pittsburgh.

As the Buckeyes threw more than ever, Robert Grimes, a senior from Middletown, was the main beneficiary. After catching just 11 passes for 221 yards in his first three years at Ohio State, the tight end caught 39 passes for 534 yards in 1952, both of which were school records at the time.



Grimes' records are still near the top of the leaderboards today. His 534 yards and 39 receptions on the season were program-bests until Billy Anders' 1966 campaign. Grimes' 12-receptions in a single game stands as the best mark by a tight end and is tied for the second-best performance by a receiver in program history. It was matched by Anders and eventually broken by Gary Williams in 1981.

His 187-yards against Washington State is the best mark by a tight end in Ohio State history and his four touchdown receptions in the same game still stand as the program record. It has since been tied by Noah Brown, Dane Sanzenbacher, and David Boston.

Although the numbers pale in comparison to today's aerial offenses, Borton and Grimes' records are astounding. Hayes' trust in the passing game seemed to come for just one year, as the Buckeyes turned back to their ground-heavy game for the rest of his tenure, breaking the four-digit mark just five more times during his 28-year career. Hayes nearly eliminated the forward pass altogether just three years later as Ohio State's leading passer threw for just 60 yards in 1955 and 88 yards in 1956.

The Buckeyes ended the 1952 season third in the conference and with a 6-3 record, but beat Michigan for the first time in eight years, 27-7, and upset No. 1 Wisconsin. John Borton returned in 1953 and 1954, winning a National Championship his senior year.
 
Upvote 0
1890 - 1915: The Early Days

Ohio State played its first football game on May 5, 1890, a 20-14 win over Ohio Wesleyan. For the next twenty-six years, Ohio State was a middle of the road football program, with an overall record of 140-77-19 (.634 winning percentage). The only real highlights during the early days were the Buckeyes' first undefeated season in 1899 when the team went 9-0-1 (a 5-5 tie with Case Institute of Technology ruined the perfect season); Ohio State's admission into the Big Ten Conference in 1913; and the Buckeyes' first All American, end Boyd Cherry in 1914.



Also, see other Land-Grant Holy Land articles on Ohio State football history:

24 Club: Alexander Lilley
24 Club: Jack Ryder
24 Club: Ohio State’s third football coach Charles Hickey had a disappointing one-year tenure
24 Club: David Farragut Edwards, Ohio State’s worst football coach
24 Club: John Eckstorm, OSU’s First Great Coach
24 Club: Perry Hale, a winning coach that suffered OSU’s worst ever loss
 
Upvote 0
2003 - 2007: Several More Near Misses

Ohio State won its first ten games in 2007, but a week eleven loss to Illinois seemed to derail the Buckeyes national title aspirations. Ohio State finished the season with a 14-3 domination of Michigan, holding the Wolverines to just 91 yards of total offense (1.5 yards per play). After an improbable series of late season upsets, Ohio State found itself back in the national title game, this time against LSU. The Buckeyes again took an early lead on a big play, courtesy of a 65-yard run from Beanie Wells, but again fell apart quickly in a 38-24 loss. The Buckeyes finished with a record of 11-2-0, and linebacker James Laurinaitis won the Butkus Award.



 
Upvote 0
1933 - 1935: The Buckeyes' Quest For Perfection Falls Short
The Buckeye continued their success in the first year of the post-Harley era, as the 1920 team went 7-1 and won an outright Big Ten championship. However, from 1921 to 1932 the Buckeyes fell back to mediocrity, with an overall record of 52-32-11 (.605 winning percentage), no Big Ten championships, and a 4-8 record against Michigan. Ohio State still produced some excellent players during this era including a pair of three-time All Americans, end Wesley Fesler (1928, 1929, 1930) and halfback Lew Hinchman (1930, 1931, 1932).

Great article about the 1921 team:

 
Upvote 0
A FOURTH-AND-1 CHANGED THE RIVALRY

THANK YOU FOR NOT PUNTING. Wild as it is, a decision NOT to punt from Jim Tressel was what led to The Vest's first victory over Michigan, sparking two decades of Buckeye dominance in The Game.

On one of the last of the 310 days he’d spent preparing his team for that week’s game, first-year Ohio State coach Jim Tressel shared with his players a motivational letter he’d received from Fred Martinelli, the Hall of Fame coach for Division II Ashland College in Ashland, Ohio. Like Tressel’s father, Lee, the longtime coach at Division III Baldwin Wallace, Martinelli had spent decades watching their state’s flagship university take on hated rival Michigan.

“He said, in the end, it’s usually a fourth-and-1 that decides the ballgame, whether you’re the team on defense that has to stop it or the team on offense that has to gain it,” Tressel described 20 years later. “So we talked about how, in rivalries, perhaps it comes down to 1 yard.”

On Nov. 24, 2001, in front of 111,571 spectators in a stadium where Ohio State had not won in 14 years, Tressel’s unranked Buckeyes held a 7-0 lead over No. 11 Michigan to start the second quarter. On a third-and-13, Buckeyes quarterback Craig Krenzel found receiver Chris Gamble on the flat, who turned upfield and lunged headfirst for the first-down marker. He came up 1 yard short at the Michigan 46.

Tressel, a notoriously conservative coach, initially called for the punt team.

“And the kids were all saying, ‘Wait a minute! You told us it was going to come down to a fourth-and-1. It’s fourth-and-1; let’s go for it,’” recalled Tressel. “And I thought, ‘Ooooh. You know, you’re right.’”

Spoiler – they went for it, they got it, and they buried Michigan in Ann Arbor.

It looked like this:

PaEG7yV.gif


.
.
.
continued

Entire article: https://www.elevenwarriors.com/skul...-and-curtis-samuel-are-teaming-up-and-haskell
 
Upvote 0
Back
Top