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Wayne Woodrow "Woody" Hayes (5x National Champion, OSU HOF, CFB HOF, R.I.P.)

This is some great stuff. I've heard of countless stories where Coach Hayes would go to a players home and recruit the parents rather than the player. Not just a great Coach, but a great salesman of TOSU.

Who the hell else could walk into a kid's house that everybody in the country wanted, tell the kid to leave the room and never ONCE mention football to the parents, and still get the kid to sign on the dotted line?

Coach Tressel may have similarities to Coach Hayes, but there will NEVER be another. As it was pointed out earlier, "HE" broke the mold. Peace.
 
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This is some great stuff. I've heard of countless stories where Coach Hayes would go to a players home and recruit the parents rather than the player. Not just a great Coach, but a great salesman of TOSU.

Who the hell else could walk into a kid's house that everybody in the country wanted, tell the kid to leave the room and never ONCE mention football to the parents, and still get the kid to sign on the dotted line?

Coach Tressel may have similarities to Coach Hayes, but there will NEVER be another. As it was pointed out earlier, "HE" broke the mold. Peace.

One of my favorite anecdotes about Coach Hayes was told by Archie. After dining with Coach, at the Jai Lai(sp?) I think, his mother asked him how it went.
Archie: "I don't think he wants me to play for him."
Mom: "What makes you say that?"
Archie: "Because he never once mentioned football. All he wanted to talk about is what I was going to major in and stuff like that."

To Woody, even the world's only 2-time Heisman Trophy Winner was still a student first.
 
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Woody had PASSION, for our nation, for tOSU, and for football. He wanted everyone to match his passion no matter what you did, from student to janitor or politician be passionate about it. He led by example and got the most out of his players and assistants. Work was not a dirty word to Woody.
 
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One of my favorite anecdotes about Coach Hayes was told by Archie. After dining with Coach, at the Jai Lai(sp?) I think, his mother asked him how it went.
Archie: "I don't think he wants me to play for him."
Mom: "What makes you say that?"
Archie: "Because he never once mentioned football. All he wanted to talk about is what I was going to major in and stuff like that."



To Woody, even the world's only 2-time Heisman Trophy Winner was still a student first.

It was the Jai Lai restaurant, which was spelled differently than the sport with the similar name. Here's an article from 1997, stating that the Buckeye Hall of Fame Cafe was built at the same location as Woody's old hangout.

bizjournals

Jai Lai site reborn as Buckeye Hall of Fame Cafe
Restaurateur Self plans to put $4M into `eatertainment' complex near OSU
Business First of Columbus - February 7, 1997
by Brian R. Ball Business First

Columbus ribs hawker Jon Self plans to renovate the landmark Jai Lai restaurant into a massive dining and entertainment facility called the Buckeye Hall of Fame Cafe.

Self, a Damon's International Inc. director and the dining chain's largest franchisee, bought the Jai Lai property in mid-January from developer Donald R. Kenney for $1.02 million. He plans to invest another $4 million or so to turn the Mediterranean-style facility on Olentangy River Road into an upscale "eatertainment" complex under an Ohio State University sports theme.

"We want to create another Columbus tradition," said Self, noting the Jai Lai's attraction to Ohio State's legendary football coach Woody Hayes and other regional luminaries over the years.

"Atlanta has its House of Blues, and other cities have their theme restaurants," he said. "We want this to be special for Columbus."
The Jai Lai closed Aug. 1 after nearly 45 years on Olentangy River Road between King and West Fifth avenues.
Construction will begin right away on the renovations, with an opening set for sometime this fall.

Plans call for knocking out most of the internal walls within the 50,000-square-foot building and reconstructing the interior into a restaurant, bar, billiard room, game room and banquet and meeting space. The decor will feature memorabilia from Ohio State football, basketball and other sports, as well as a "walk of fame" honoring numerous Ohio State sports heroes over the years.

The dining room and central bar will have combined seating for 250.
Huntington National Bank financed acquisition of the building for $1.26 million. Self said he is putting together an investment group to own and operate the restaurant.

Self has hired John Jones, former FiftyFive Group area director, to serve as general manager. A chef has not been chosen to operate the restaurant kitchen on the main floor and a banquet kitchen on the lower level, a fact that will postpone announcement of a menu, Self said.
 
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Great Woody pics, Wad!

Wadc45, those are great pictures of Woody. I look at those, and am taken back to when he strode the sidelines. While he was there, my Dad and I thought we would win the game, no matter what. Well, my Dad and Woody are in another place now, but your pictures stirred up memories of the Shoe, C deck, sitting with my Father, and sharing a crisp, autumny day of Ohio State Football. Thank you. :gobucks3: :osu4: :banger: Go Bucks Forever!
 
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Gotta admire an old guy at that age who is not afraid to mix it up with someone twice his size who talks smack to him. I know he was out of control, whatever, but geez, there he is, taking a guy on who is a third of his age and twice his size.

How do you spell cahoneys? :slappy:
 
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I've been reading through some of the interviews for Ohio State's oral history project lately, and something about Woody has really struck me as impressive. Many of the interviewees have mentioned how he ate lunch almost every day (often dinner too) at the Faculty Club. There, he'd have drinks and interact with the professors, discussing (sometimes arguing) history, Whitman, politics or the university. These old professors all note that even those faculty members who had philosophical problems with the role of big time college sports had a great deal of personal respect for Woody: the integrity with which he ran his program, his commitment to academics at Ohio State and the passion he brought to his hobby as an amateur historian.

The underlying contention is that Woody really represented the last of a dying breed of big time college coach who was a fully integrated member of the university's faculty. I personally think that his family, friends and former players could not have come up with a more fitting tribute to the man than in endowing a professorial chair in his name.
 
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Link

August 15. 2006 6:59AM
A fuzzy snapshot of Holtz

COMMENTARY

JASON KELLY
Tribune Columnist


With the benefit of hindsight, Lou Holtz knows now what he should have done.

He should have replaced his father with a professional wedding photographer.

Because he did not, only a guest's grainy Polaroid survives, reprinted in Holtz's new autobiography "Wins, Losses and Lessons". The fuzzy photo itself represents one of the lessons of the title.

"It is a constant reminder that it's important to be truthful with yourself and with others no matter whose feelings you might offend," Holtz writes. "If you want the best from others, you have to hire the best people, define what it is you want from them, and come to a common agreement on the terms and conditions of your relationship."

In other words, if the situation requires it, fire Dad.

Even if his wedding pictures weren't, the man's focused. On performance. On results.

His message in the book becomes a little blurry at times in a rush to pin the moral on the story.

Woody Hayes wanted to hire Holtz as an assistant at Ohio State, an honor for a young coach without much of a resume yet. Colleagues warned him not to accept. A similar offer from Georgia Tech included more perks, not the least of which would be avoiding Hayes, who Holtz's boss at the time called "a certifiable lunatic."

Holtz had Ohio in his heart after spending his formative years in East Liverpool, and Hayes assistant Tiger Ellison told him not to worry. "He's tough, demanding and aggressive, but overall he's a good guy," Ellison said. "He's also a great leader."

During Holtz's first staff meeting, Hayes and another assistant had to be restrained from fighting each other. To vent over some other infuriating matter in the same meeting, Hayes tossed a film projector through a glass door.

When Holtz saw Ellison in the hall afterward, the new guy wondered about that "great leader" recommendation. "Hey, Attila the Hun was a great leader," Ellison said. "Doesn't mean you'd have him over for dinner." That particular comparison didn't come up in their first conversation about Hayes.

Holtz, of course, goes on to lionize the Columbus legend. His compliments read like comments on a movie poster. Hayes was "exceptionally smart and well read" ... "a brilliant tactician" ... and "many of his tantrums were calculated to make a point."

That distilled description of Hayes provides the transition from Attila the Hun to this: "Today, I believe that next to Father Theodore Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame for thirty-five years," Holtz writes, "Coach Hayes was the most remarkable person I've ever known."

From Attila the Hun to Fr. Ted in two paragraphs, Hayes goes through the fastest character rehab in literary history.

After one volatile, national championship season at Ohio State, Holtz started along his own head coaching path, which reached its apex 20 years later at Notre Dame.

Already billed as the Great Turnaround Artist in the college football circus before he arrived in South Bend, the Irish reclamation project became his big top showcase.

Building to a championship crescendo in 1988 and sustaining that for one of the most successful eras in Notre Dame football history weighed on him.

"Once you win the championship, now they expect perfection every time," Holtz said in a telephone interview. "And you can't do it. That's what wears on you."

That and the admissions department.

Holtz first skirmished and then established radio silence with Kevin Rooney, the admissions director for all of Holtz's tenure. "During that time, he and I had many disagreements, so many in fact that I didn't talk to him the last eight years I was at Notre Dame," Holtz writes.

If not exactly insubordination, that conflict contradicts the respect for authority Holtz describes more than once as the most important lesson a child can learn.

Rev. Edmund P. Joyce had told Holtz before he accepted the job that "the head football coach has nothing to do with admissions." More than accepting the strict terms, Holtz said, "I looked forward to working in an environment where the rules were that clear and nonnegotiable."

One innocent, if presumptuous comment from Holtz tested that chain of command. Holtz told coveted quarterback Tony Rice he would be accepted, but the admissions department didn't see it that way.

Joyce "lectured me ... about my role within the university system" before arranging a compromise. Notre Dame admitted Rice, but he could have no connection to the football program his freshman year.

"Coach, I just want you to know one thing," Joyce says as stern punctuation to the episode, "this will never, ever happen again."

At least in public, Holtz didn't dispute that policy, but now he calls the system as he experienced it "admissions madness" -- and that old wheel of institutional football politics goes round and round.

Bottom line: Holtz found a way to win with whatever he had, wherever he went. Any complaints about restrictions, especially after embracing them in theory, have a tinny ring.

Combine his coaching success with his comic-motivational flair and Holtz became an icon big enough for corporations to covet his stirring presence.

Without the disarming lisp, the booming inflection and the perfect timing, his words don't have the same compelling power in print as they do in person.

The funniest line comes from, of all people, Bob Davie. In the wake of Holtz's resignation from Notre Dame, Davie offers to tap his connections at Maryland to help the outgoing coach land the vacant job there.

"I laughed out loud," Holtz writes, because he never intended to coach again.

Readers laugh because that's like a Dean Martin impersonator telling the real Frank Sinatra he could put in a good word for him with the promoters in Branson.
 
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wwhayeseh3.gif
 
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