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The Ten Greatest Buckeye Teams of All Time (#7)

7. The 1942 Ohio State Buckeyes

The greatest football coach of all time was Paul Brown. Brown's record as a high school coach during the 1930's (primarily at his home town school, Massillon Washington) was 92-10-3 (.890 winning percentage), with seven state titles and four national championships. As the head coach of the Cleveland Browns from 1946 to 1962, Brown turned the fledgling franchise into the greatest power in professional football, with a record of 111-44-5 (.709 winning percentage), with seven titles (4 AAFC, 3 NFL). Brown even had a winning record with the Cincinnati Bengals.

Between high school and the pros, Paul Brown was briefly (1941-43) the head coach of Ohio State. Although he was on the job for only three seasons, Brown led the Buckeyes to their first national championship in 1942. The Ohio State offense was led by a pair of All Americans, fullback Gene Fekete (910 yards, 10 TDs) and halfback Paul Sarringhaus (618 yards rushing, 517 yards passing, 15 total TDs); future star Les Horvath (1944 Heisman Trophy winner) chipped in with 785 total yards and 6 touchdowns. The Buckeyes' line had three more All Americans: end Robert Shaw; tackle Charles Csuri; and guard Lindell Houston.

The season began well with a 59-0 rout of the Fort Knox Army Base service team. With World War Two in full swing, many young men were in the armed forces, and several military bases fielded football teams comprised of officers in training. The new Fort Knox squad was clearly unprepared for their opener, and the Buckeyes outgained them in total yards, 507 to minus-five, in a game that wasn't even as close as the blow-out score would suggest. In fact, Ohio State's second- and third-stringers scored 40 points in the second half of the game.

After the easy victory in the opener, Ohio State faced a surprisingly tough Indiana team that was led by quarterback Lou Saban, who like Paul Brown would later become a coaching legend in the NFL. Although IU led the game 21-19 at the end of three quarters, the Buckeyes scored thirteen unanswered points in the fourth to win the game going away. The following week, Ohio State beat Southern Cal 28-12, after which the Buckeyes were voted the #1 team in the country in the Associated Press poll.

However, the Buckeyes claim on the top spot was short-lived. After handily beating Purdue at home and Northwestern (led by quarterback Otto Graham) on the road, Ohio State travelled to Madison, Wisconsin, to face the Badgers. The sixth-ranked Wisconsin team was coached by Harry Stuhldreher, a member of the famed Notre Dame "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (he was "Famine", apparently); like Paul Brown, Stuhldreher was also a native of Massillon, Ohio. While Ohio State probably had the better team that year, Madison was a house of horrors even back in 1942. First, nearly half of the Ohio State team suffered from an attack of dysentery that had been contracted from drinking contaminated water on the train ride to Wisconsin. Then, the Buckeyes were housed on the sixth floor of a hotel without operational elevators. Finally, Halloween revelers from the nearby Wisconsin campus held loud pep rallies until the wee hours of the morning, which prevented the Ohio State players from getting a decent night's sleep. So, the stage was set for an upset, and the Badgers pulled it off, outlasting the Buckeyes 17-7 in a contest that has since been dubbed "The Bad Water Game". After the loss, Ohio State fell to sixth in the AP poll, and with the seemingly unstoppable Georgia Bulldogs now leading the pack, it appeared that the Buckeyes were out of the running for the national championship.

Even though the Buckeyes rebounded to finish the season with convincing wins over Pitt (59-19), Illinois (44-20), Michigan (21-7), and Iowa Pre-Flight (41-12), they still needed plenty of help to reclaim the number one ranking. But luck was on Ohio State's side in 1942, as several unlikely upsets propelled the Buckeyes back to the top spot in the AP poll. First, on the same weekend as Ohio State beat arch rival Michigan, previously unbeaten Georgia fell to a mediocre Auburn squad, 27-14, which left Boston College (#1 in the AP poll) and Georgia Tech (#2) as the only undefeated major programs in college football. However, with only one week left in the season, the third-ranked Buckeyes needed two things to happen in order to get back to the top of the AP poll: Of course, they had to cap their campaign with an impressive victory against Iowa Pre-Flight, a powerful military service squad which entered the game with a 7-1 record, and then they had to hope that both teams ahead of them in the poll would lose their respective season finales.

Ohio State took care of their own business by soundly defeating Iowa Pre-Flight, and then they waited for the other scores to come in. First, Georgia Tech was demolished by in-state rival Georgia, 34-0, thus ending the Yellow Jackets' title run (but ironically putting the Bulldogs right back in the thick of things). Then, the inconceivable happened: Heavily-favored Boston College, which had given up only 19 total points for the season, lost to unheralded Holy Cross by the score of 55 to 12 in a game that ESPN has called one of the greatest upsets in the history of college football.

So, which team was more deserving of a national title in 1942, outright Big Ten champs Ohio State (9-1-0) with five All-Americans and a young genius for a head coach, or outright SEC champs Georgia (11-1-0) with Heisman Trophy winner Frank Sinkwich (from Youngstown, Ohio) and a shut-out victory over UCLA in the Rose Bowl? According to the AP pollsters (voting prior to the bowl games), Ohio State was the slight favorite, earning 1,432 votes to 1,339 for Georgia.

The 1942 Ohio State Buckeyes
Final record: 9-1-0
Poll rankings: #1 AP (no CP in 1942)
Defeated #9 Michigan
Lost to #3 Wisconsin​

Final thoughts: In retrospect, this team could have finished second or even third in the final AP poll, and Buckeye fans would have no real cause to complain (but that never stops us from complaining anyway). The pollsters were kind to Ohio State in 1942, but that would not always be the case….
 
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