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- Thread starter 3yardsandacloud
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RIP...he was a genuinely nice person with fans who always seemed happy people still cared about him the few times I met him. A hardcore Buckeye until the end.
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ScriptOhio
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
1979 - 1987: 81-26-1
March 8, 1931 - April 20, 2018
R.I.P.
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Like many have already shared, he was the coach at OSU when I was a student there. Yeah, he was called "Ol' 8-3 Earle", but damn, he had some great wins. I really looked back fondly on his time during some of the dark Cooper years. I remember my freshman year the day after we beat M*ch*gan my room mates and I were walking from our Dorm in Morrell Tower to High Street (hung over of course) to get something to eat. He came out of the Shoe and got in his dark tan Buick and drove by. We hooped and hollered and cheered. He gave us a very satisfied smile and a thumbs up.
RIP, Coach. You will be missed.
RIP, Coach. You will be missed.
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ScriptOhio
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
Good article for Earl Bruce nostalgia:
The Mystery of Earle Bruce : He Had Best Record in Big Ten for Nine Years; Why Was He Fired? Don't Ask, He Doesn't Know
January 17, 1988
Somewhere, sometime Earle Bruce did something to get himself fired as Ohio State's football coach. Which takes us to that all-important $471,000 question: What did Bruce do to lose the only job he ever wanted?
"If you find that out, then I want you to come back and tell me," said Bruce last week, sitting at home on a cold, blustery winter afternoon.
He's in for a considerable wait, since the person who knows best why Bruce was fired on Nov. 16--Ohio State President Edward H. Jennings--isn't saying. Legal reasons.
The school's Board of Trustees isn't saying, either. Nor is the influential Wolfe family, which owns the city's only newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, is principal owner of the CBS television and radio affiliates, and is a major contributor to OSU. Nor is the powerful Galbreath family, another strong financial supporter of the school. Mum's the word here.
This wasn't just any firing, mind you. This was war, full of petty jealousies, innuendoes and cheap shots galore. This was mighty Ohio State, where Woody Hayes once walked, where the band dots the I in the Script Ohio formation, where the naming of a new assistant coach leads the local evening sportscasts. This was lawsuits and resignations and settlements--Bruce's $471,000, for instance--like you wouldn't believe.
At controversy's center were Jennings, Athletic Director Rick Bay and, of course, Bruce.
Jennings is still here, though there seems to be some question of how long.
Bay resigned in protest, choosing a principle over a president's mandate.
Bruce, fired for the first time in his 32-year coaching career, was hoping for a call from Southern Methodist University, since it needed a football coach. But then came news Thursday that Forrest Gregg had accepted SMU's job offer. So much for that.
Bruce can hardly remember when he spent this much time inside his own house. December, January, those are the months he's in other families' homes, sampling a mother's home-baked pie, sipping a cup of coffee, telling any recruit who will listen why Ohio State is the greatest place in the world.
Bruce would maybe tell a story or two about the legendary Hayes, the man he succeeded in 1979, about Buckeye tradition, about impressive graduation rates, about Ohio State football being the only game in town.
Now look at him. The big decision of the day involved dinner: Cook vegetables and shrimp in a wok or dine out with his wife, Jean, and friend and family attorney, John Zonak? Next up for Bruce: Clean the basement or the garage?
"I'm seeing parts of this house that I've never seen before," said Bruce, laughing a sad little laugh.
Odd as it may be to think of Bruce with a dust mop and a can of Pledge, that is his fate at the moment. He is a 56-year-old football coach who won 81 games, lost 26 and tied 1 during his nine seasons at Ohio State. He had the best record in the conference in those nine years, including two outright Big Ten titles and two shared. And he is without a job. Worse yet, no one has told him why.
So here he sits in his home outside of Columbus, wearing blue and gray sweats, sneakers, fidgeting with an eyeglass case decorated in OSU script. On Bruce's right ring finger is a 1984 Big Ten championship ring, large enough to keep an Ohio State metallurgy class busy for days.
He is Ohio State-educated, once a scholarship player for Hayes, later an assistant coach and still later, Hayes' own choice as head coach. This was the job he cherished, and now, after a 1987 record of 6-4-1, it is someone else's.
"I don't know what to say," Bruce said. "I can't quite put it all together, why it should happen. That's what I can't understand. I thought that if you had a bad record and lost one season . . . you hang on for a year. Woody always said that if you had one bad year, you better have a good one the next. You couldn't have two bad seasons back to back at Ohio State, or probably anyplace. I agree. So I felt kind of safe. But you never feel too safe."
Bruce didn't get fired because of his coaching abilities. If there's one thing Bruce can do, it's win football games. As a high school coach, Bruce lost only 12 of 94 games. His teams at fabled Washington High in Massillon, Ohio, were 20-0.
At the University of Tampa, Bruce stayed one season and finished 10-2. He came close to dismissal at Iowa State, but then turned that struggling program around with three consecutive 8-3 records. "And the NCAA didn't even think about investigating him," said Gil Brandt, Dallas Cowboys vice president-personnel development, and a close friend of Bruce.
Said Lou McCullough, a former OSU assistant coach and later Bruce's athletic director at Iowa State: "Earle would have to be in the top five (coaches) in America. To go 8-3, 8-3, 8-3 at Iowa State, that's like Northwestern winning the Big Ten."
Ohio State hired Bruce partly because he was family, partly because he won games--lots of them--and partly because Hayes approved. So revered was Hayes, that even after his own firing for striking a Clemson player during the infamous "Punch Bowl" in Jacksonville, Fla., Ohio State administrators still sought his advice on the new coach.
There had been talk of hiring Lou Holtz, then the coach at Arkansas. But Holtz reportedly said he wasn't interested in submitting himself to a protracted selection process. Bruce's name emerged.
And that was that. Ohio State had the coach it thought it wanted. Bruce had the job he knew he wanted. "It's a dream come true," he said shortly after his appointment.
An 11-1 record that first season was followed by six consecutive 9-3 seasons, a 10-3 year and the recently completed and supposedly fateful 6-4-1 season. Not exactly the resume of someone you jettison into unemployment.
But this is Ohio State, where things are not always as they appear. Despite the successes--the wins, the bowl appearances, the Big Ten championships, a noteworthy academic record, an honest program--there grew this disenchantment with Bruce and his ways.
In approximate order of likely truth, the three most popular theories are:
(1) He wasn't one of the fellas.
This, Bruce will not deny. He never was one for cocktail parties, banquet chatter and board room protocol. Still isn't. He could have done without the media, too.
"I've never been one to blow smoke," he said. "I don't think I can do that. And I'm not a politician and I didn't profess to be one when I accepted the job. It's never been a problem."
So Bruce thought. His thinking was that as long as he won, the so-called "downtown faction" and university hierarchy would remain silent. He was wrong.
Said Bay: "He simply was not popular with certain influential people around the city and certain members of the Board of Trustees. He's not the most charismatic person in the world and he could be abrasive, but at some time or another, Earle apparently rubbed people the wrong way. It was clear from the day I arrived that he was not the most popular guy on our staff (to those certain influential people)."
Bruce agreed. And guess what! He wouldn't have changed a thing.
"I don't think I had good relationships with the people downtown, because I don't have time to go downtown," he said. "Downtown is important. That's what people talk about here. When you say downtown, I guess you're talking about . . . the governor, the mayor, the power structure of the community. You're talking about the Wolfes, some members of the Board of Trustees. You're talking about all of that.
"I always thought the football coach's job was to coach football," he said. "If someone's going to take care of the downtown faction, it's going to be left up to the university president, the athletic director, whoever. Not that I'm against that, but I deal with the parents, some of the alumni, the boosters."
This is where Bruce might have miscalculated. He won games, sure. But how was he at maintaining that delicate relationship with the university and community power brokers? Turns out, not so hot.
And if you need proof of how serious OSU administrators are about that relationship, ask Jennings what he considers to be the primary duties of an Ohio State football coach. He doesn't mention victories.
"Like any of our people, the most important responsibility is to represent the mission of the institution and represent that well to all the various constituencies," he said. "And I've said that 100 times."
And each time it seems to say that Bruce failed to please those various constituencies: The big-money contributors, the legislators, the city's old guard, the student body, the faculty, the Board of Trustees.
According to proponents of Reason No. 1, Bruce simply didn't play the backslap game enough, and when he did, he did so reluctantly and not very well. The downtowners apparently wanted Cary Grant in cleats: Suave enough to tie a Windsor knot and brash enough to guarantee wins over, say, archrival Michigan.
Instead, they got this plump little man who changes moods--from fierce to gentle, from gentle to fierce--in a moment's time, who made the mistake of wanting only to coach football.
"I don't like one phase of what happened to me," Bruce said. "I don't like the firing. I don't particularly care for the president. I don't care for some members of the Board of Trustees, but I have no selection in that.
"I guess the best way to explain it is, they're not my kind of guys, that's all, my kind of people. Probably, that's why I'm fired, because I'm not their kind."
(2) He wasn't Woody.
At the OSU bookstore is a mini-mart's worth of Hayes merchandise. Hats, buttons, photographs, coffee mugs. Each one reads: "American Football Legend . . . Woody Hayes . . . 1913-1987 . . . 'You Win With People.' " Visit a local shopping mall and you can buy a 90-minute video on the life and times of Hayes. Some of the local art galleries even sell portraits of Hayes, sort of the Bear Bryant of the Midwest.
This is the legacy Bruce chose to follow. There, for all to see, was Hayes' singular OSU record of 205-61-10, five national championships, to say nothing of the 13 Big Ten championships he won or shared.
Also there was his penchant for philanthropy, for history, for his complete commitment to Columbus and OSU.
Bruce couldn't compete with that, nor did he want to.
"I went to school here," Bruce said. "I was an assistant coach here. I love Ohio State. But I knew the difficulties coaching at Ohio State.
"I saw what happened to Coach Hayes. They always want to build up the good times, but I was there when they put the airplane around (a plane, carrying a banner calling for Hayes's dismissal, was flown above the campus).
"I was there when they hung him in effigy at the bonfire for homecoming. I was there when they treated him bad. I knew what this job was. And I knew it wasn't going to be easy."
The comparisons began with Bruce's first game. Woody would have done this. Woody would have done that.
It didn't stop there. Woody would have eaten more often at the faculty dining room. Woody would have given this speech. Woody would have found time for this charity appearance, that social function. Everywhere, St. Woody.
"Bruce was a good football coach, but he was a football coach ," said Paul Hornung--the retired sportswriter, not the former Notre Dame football player--who covered Ohio State football, first for the school newspaper and then the Dispatch, beginning in 1937 and until 1981. And when Hayes wrote his book, Hornung was asked to help.
"But the guy (Bruce) succeeded was one in a million, an extraordinary human being. That's not a knock on Earle. It's just, maybe we were spoiled after 28 years."
.
.
continued
.
.
On the day he was fired, Earle Bruce returned to his house in the suburbs and tried to understand why Ohio State had done this to him.
Or why seven months after his 1986-87 OSU personnel evaluation had read in part: "Great job! Ohio State is lucky to have you!" he was dismissed.
And most disturbing, why honesty, a clean program and an impressive record weren't good enough anymore.
Then he heard music. Trumpets and saxophones and tubas blared, cymbals crashed and drums thundered at his doorstep. The windows rattled. The walls shook slightly. Neighbors raced from their houses.
Seems a 49-car caravan carrying about 150 Ohio State Marching Band members had driven to Bruce's neighborhood, parked at block's end, marched down the street as if in the Rose Parade and played "Across the Field" for their former football coach.
Bruce bawled like a baby as the music washed over him.
Entire article: http://articles.latimes.com/1988-01-17/sports/sp-36807_1_big-ten-championship/2
The Mystery of Earle Bruce : He Had Best Record in Big Ten for Nine Years; Why Was He Fired? Don't Ask, He Doesn't Know
January 17, 1988
Somewhere, sometime Earle Bruce did something to get himself fired as Ohio State's football coach. Which takes us to that all-important $471,000 question: What did Bruce do to lose the only job he ever wanted?
"If you find that out, then I want you to come back and tell me," said Bruce last week, sitting at home on a cold, blustery winter afternoon.
He's in for a considerable wait, since the person who knows best why Bruce was fired on Nov. 16--Ohio State President Edward H. Jennings--isn't saying. Legal reasons.
The school's Board of Trustees isn't saying, either. Nor is the influential Wolfe family, which owns the city's only newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, is principal owner of the CBS television and radio affiliates, and is a major contributor to OSU. Nor is the powerful Galbreath family, another strong financial supporter of the school. Mum's the word here.
This wasn't just any firing, mind you. This was war, full of petty jealousies, innuendoes and cheap shots galore. This was mighty Ohio State, where Woody Hayes once walked, where the band dots the I in the Script Ohio formation, where the naming of a new assistant coach leads the local evening sportscasts. This was lawsuits and resignations and settlements--Bruce's $471,000, for instance--like you wouldn't believe.
At controversy's center were Jennings, Athletic Director Rick Bay and, of course, Bruce.
Jennings is still here, though there seems to be some question of how long.
Bay resigned in protest, choosing a principle over a president's mandate.
Bruce, fired for the first time in his 32-year coaching career, was hoping for a call from Southern Methodist University, since it needed a football coach. But then came news Thursday that Forrest Gregg had accepted SMU's job offer. So much for that.
Bruce can hardly remember when he spent this much time inside his own house. December, January, those are the months he's in other families' homes, sampling a mother's home-baked pie, sipping a cup of coffee, telling any recruit who will listen why Ohio State is the greatest place in the world.
Bruce would maybe tell a story or two about the legendary Hayes, the man he succeeded in 1979, about Buckeye tradition, about impressive graduation rates, about Ohio State football being the only game in town.
Now look at him. The big decision of the day involved dinner: Cook vegetables and shrimp in a wok or dine out with his wife, Jean, and friend and family attorney, John Zonak? Next up for Bruce: Clean the basement or the garage?
"I'm seeing parts of this house that I've never seen before," said Bruce, laughing a sad little laugh.
Odd as it may be to think of Bruce with a dust mop and a can of Pledge, that is his fate at the moment. He is a 56-year-old football coach who won 81 games, lost 26 and tied 1 during his nine seasons at Ohio State. He had the best record in the conference in those nine years, including two outright Big Ten titles and two shared. And he is without a job. Worse yet, no one has told him why.
So here he sits in his home outside of Columbus, wearing blue and gray sweats, sneakers, fidgeting with an eyeglass case decorated in OSU script. On Bruce's right ring finger is a 1984 Big Ten championship ring, large enough to keep an Ohio State metallurgy class busy for days.
He is Ohio State-educated, once a scholarship player for Hayes, later an assistant coach and still later, Hayes' own choice as head coach. This was the job he cherished, and now, after a 1987 record of 6-4-1, it is someone else's.
"I don't know what to say," Bruce said. "I can't quite put it all together, why it should happen. That's what I can't understand. I thought that if you had a bad record and lost one season . . . you hang on for a year. Woody always said that if you had one bad year, you better have a good one the next. You couldn't have two bad seasons back to back at Ohio State, or probably anyplace. I agree. So I felt kind of safe. But you never feel too safe."
Bruce didn't get fired because of his coaching abilities. If there's one thing Bruce can do, it's win football games. As a high school coach, Bruce lost only 12 of 94 games. His teams at fabled Washington High in Massillon, Ohio, were 20-0.
At the University of Tampa, Bruce stayed one season and finished 10-2. He came close to dismissal at Iowa State, but then turned that struggling program around with three consecutive 8-3 records. "And the NCAA didn't even think about investigating him," said Gil Brandt, Dallas Cowboys vice president-personnel development, and a close friend of Bruce.
Said Lou McCullough, a former OSU assistant coach and later Bruce's athletic director at Iowa State: "Earle would have to be in the top five (coaches) in America. To go 8-3, 8-3, 8-3 at Iowa State, that's like Northwestern winning the Big Ten."
Ohio State hired Bruce partly because he was family, partly because he won games--lots of them--and partly because Hayes approved. So revered was Hayes, that even after his own firing for striking a Clemson player during the infamous "Punch Bowl" in Jacksonville, Fla., Ohio State administrators still sought his advice on the new coach.
There had been talk of hiring Lou Holtz, then the coach at Arkansas. But Holtz reportedly said he wasn't interested in submitting himself to a protracted selection process. Bruce's name emerged.
And that was that. Ohio State had the coach it thought it wanted. Bruce had the job he knew he wanted. "It's a dream come true," he said shortly after his appointment.
An 11-1 record that first season was followed by six consecutive 9-3 seasons, a 10-3 year and the recently completed and supposedly fateful 6-4-1 season. Not exactly the resume of someone you jettison into unemployment.
But this is Ohio State, where things are not always as they appear. Despite the successes--the wins, the bowl appearances, the Big Ten championships, a noteworthy academic record, an honest program--there grew this disenchantment with Bruce and his ways.
In approximate order of likely truth, the three most popular theories are:
(1) He wasn't one of the fellas.
This, Bruce will not deny. He never was one for cocktail parties, banquet chatter and board room protocol. Still isn't. He could have done without the media, too.
"I've never been one to blow smoke," he said. "I don't think I can do that. And I'm not a politician and I didn't profess to be one when I accepted the job. It's never been a problem."
So Bruce thought. His thinking was that as long as he won, the so-called "downtown faction" and university hierarchy would remain silent. He was wrong.
Said Bay: "He simply was not popular with certain influential people around the city and certain members of the Board of Trustees. He's not the most charismatic person in the world and he could be abrasive, but at some time or another, Earle apparently rubbed people the wrong way. It was clear from the day I arrived that he was not the most popular guy on our staff (to those certain influential people)."
Bruce agreed. And guess what! He wouldn't have changed a thing.
"I don't think I had good relationships with the people downtown, because I don't have time to go downtown," he said. "Downtown is important. That's what people talk about here. When you say downtown, I guess you're talking about . . . the governor, the mayor, the power structure of the community. You're talking about the Wolfes, some members of the Board of Trustees. You're talking about all of that.
"I always thought the football coach's job was to coach football," he said. "If someone's going to take care of the downtown faction, it's going to be left up to the university president, the athletic director, whoever. Not that I'm against that, but I deal with the parents, some of the alumni, the boosters."
This is where Bruce might have miscalculated. He won games, sure. But how was he at maintaining that delicate relationship with the university and community power brokers? Turns out, not so hot.
And if you need proof of how serious OSU administrators are about that relationship, ask Jennings what he considers to be the primary duties of an Ohio State football coach. He doesn't mention victories.
"Like any of our people, the most important responsibility is to represent the mission of the institution and represent that well to all the various constituencies," he said. "And I've said that 100 times."
And each time it seems to say that Bruce failed to please those various constituencies: The big-money contributors, the legislators, the city's old guard, the student body, the faculty, the Board of Trustees.
According to proponents of Reason No. 1, Bruce simply didn't play the backslap game enough, and when he did, he did so reluctantly and not very well. The downtowners apparently wanted Cary Grant in cleats: Suave enough to tie a Windsor knot and brash enough to guarantee wins over, say, archrival Michigan.
Instead, they got this plump little man who changes moods--from fierce to gentle, from gentle to fierce--in a moment's time, who made the mistake of wanting only to coach football.
"I don't like one phase of what happened to me," Bruce said. "I don't like the firing. I don't particularly care for the president. I don't care for some members of the Board of Trustees, but I have no selection in that.
"I guess the best way to explain it is, they're not my kind of guys, that's all, my kind of people. Probably, that's why I'm fired, because I'm not their kind."
(2) He wasn't Woody.
At the OSU bookstore is a mini-mart's worth of Hayes merchandise. Hats, buttons, photographs, coffee mugs. Each one reads: "American Football Legend . . . Woody Hayes . . . 1913-1987 . . . 'You Win With People.' " Visit a local shopping mall and you can buy a 90-minute video on the life and times of Hayes. Some of the local art galleries even sell portraits of Hayes, sort of the Bear Bryant of the Midwest.
This is the legacy Bruce chose to follow. There, for all to see, was Hayes' singular OSU record of 205-61-10, five national championships, to say nothing of the 13 Big Ten championships he won or shared.
Also there was his penchant for philanthropy, for history, for his complete commitment to Columbus and OSU.
Bruce couldn't compete with that, nor did he want to.
"I went to school here," Bruce said. "I was an assistant coach here. I love Ohio State. But I knew the difficulties coaching at Ohio State.
"I saw what happened to Coach Hayes. They always want to build up the good times, but I was there when they put the airplane around (a plane, carrying a banner calling for Hayes's dismissal, was flown above the campus).
"I was there when they hung him in effigy at the bonfire for homecoming. I was there when they treated him bad. I knew what this job was. And I knew it wasn't going to be easy."
The comparisons began with Bruce's first game. Woody would have done this. Woody would have done that.
It didn't stop there. Woody would have eaten more often at the faculty dining room. Woody would have given this speech. Woody would have found time for this charity appearance, that social function. Everywhere, St. Woody.
"Bruce was a good football coach, but he was a football coach ," said Paul Hornung--the retired sportswriter, not the former Notre Dame football player--who covered Ohio State football, first for the school newspaper and then the Dispatch, beginning in 1937 and until 1981. And when Hayes wrote his book, Hornung was asked to help.
"But the guy (Bruce) succeeded was one in a million, an extraordinary human being. That's not a knock on Earle. It's just, maybe we were spoiled after 28 years."
.
.
continued
.
.
On the day he was fired, Earle Bruce returned to his house in the suburbs and tried to understand why Ohio State had done this to him.
Or why seven months after his 1986-87 OSU personnel evaluation had read in part: "Great job! Ohio State is lucky to have you!" he was dismissed.
And most disturbing, why honesty, a clean program and an impressive record weren't good enough anymore.
Then he heard music. Trumpets and saxophones and tubas blared, cymbals crashed and drums thundered at his doorstep. The windows rattled. The walls shook slightly. Neighbors raced from their houses.
Seems a 49-car caravan carrying about 150 Ohio State Marching Band members had driven to Bruce's neighborhood, parked at block's end, marched down the street as if in the Rose Parade and played "Across the Field" for their former football coach.
Bruce bawled like a baby as the music washed over him.
Entire article: http://articles.latimes.com/1988-01-17/sports/sp-36807_1_big-ten-championship/2
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11W has done a much better job than I could ever do. I completely forgot about the win over Oklahoma in '83
This one is a kick in the nuts folks. Not going to lie.
REMEMBERING EARLE BRUCE'S BEST GAMES, MOMENTS AT OHIO STATE
This one is a kick in the nuts folks. Not going to lie.
REMEMBERING EARLE BRUCE'S BEST GAMES, MOMENTS AT OHIO STATE
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I remember that the game was hot as all fuck, and every time a player got tackled, he'd leave a streak of sweat on the carpeted field.
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Jake
Once a Buckeye, always a Buckeye
‘17 The Deuce Champ
Fantasy Baseball Champ
'18 The Deuce Champ
I could only attribute it to the shocking manner of a couple losses his final season: Marv Cook dragging defenders into the end zone as time expired, getting thumped by Indiana - both of these occurred in the Shoe. Sad/funny thing is, had they waited until after the TTUN game he may have saved his job. Then again, without his surprise firing the underdog Bucks may not have played such inspired football. Regardless, Ohio State paid for that decision. It was called the Cooper era, where season after season ended with a thud and a whimper.
Coach Bruce went out a winner in the Pig House, Cooper's house of horrors until Jim Tressel lifted the curse. RIP
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Of course, just now glossing thru the video of it, it seems maybe that memory has been amplified in my head, as I don't see the swaths of wet on the turf as I remembered.
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Yes.
The way they fired Earle is a big part of why they kept Cooper sorry fucking ass around longer than anyone outside of the AD's office thought prudent.
Not to be lost in remembering this era was Rick Bay resigning in protest. scUM player or not, it was a stand up thing to do and shouldn't be forgotten.
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