Woody & Bo

My bathroom reading (Shiterature) for the past few days has been War As They Knew It, a chronicle of the "Ten Year War" between Woody Hayes and his protege, Bo Schembechler. Hayes is definitely the more interesting character - while Bo had tunnel vision, thinking and speaking only of football, Woody spent hours lecturing anyone who would listen on military battles, taught all his freshman an English class and would try to drive at least three players to practice every day so he could, in the 15 minute ride, improve their vocabularies. He would come to a recruit's house and spend four hours talking - without football coming up once in the conversation. The university had to fool him into getting raises to his already miniscule salary. He drove his coaches crazy by quizzing them every morning about current events (offering s silver dollar for correct answers!) He endlessly badgered his players to go to law school upon graduation. For chrissake, the guy wrote a book appropriating military battles with their corresponding football play - Napoleon ran power runs, Sherman ran the option. Hitler had taken France by running the 40 trap.

And the guy apparently memorized every work Emerson ever wrote. Fascinating.

Both coaches were borderline crazy of course, fanatical in their teaching of young men and competitive natures. As for the games themselves, the truth is that as you read, the games blend into each other. Every year, both teams would march towards their season-ending game, crushing opponents into submission. Throwing the ball about 4 times all season, and outscoring their opponents about 17,002 to 6. Every year. While reading I'd get lost and confused, "is this 1972? Or 1977?" And every game played with the Big Ten Title/Rose Bowl/National Championship on the line, a pair of teams who played the game by inches. Every game was close, usually decided by a mistake at the end - during one five-game stretch, 4 of the games ended such that the loser had a legitimate claim to the victory. Unreal.

Another thing as I'm reading is all of a sudden I'll start thinking wait a minute, haven't I been reading about these same players for about 100 pages now? Geez, a flashback to the days when players would come and play four years. These games had repeat starters for so long that while reading I got attached to the Michigan placekicker Mike Lantry, a Vietnam vet who had walked onto Michigan and in the 1973 game blew a kick that would've won the game and sent Michigan to the Rose Bowl to contend for a national title. History repeated itself the following year and Lantry, now a senior, found himself in the exact same postion. In a breath I can only recall being as bated as when I read the ending to Ethan Frome 15 years ago, I turned the page to follow the kick and...he missed it. Lantry was stunned, as were his teammates, none of whom (on national tv) walked up to him to comfort him. He walked to the sideline completely alone.

A few days later, letters started trickling in. And then a lot did. And by the time it ended, there were thousands of letters sent to Mike Lantry by people all over the country, some of whom weren't even football fans at all but had seen his moment of absolute loneliness on national television. All these people, either touched or horrified by the sight of him sitting alone on the bench with none of his teammates consoling him. They sent him letters reminding him how beautiful life was, they talked about Jesus, they told him they had cried their eyes out watching him on tv so alone, they told him to keep his head up. A certain college basketball coach named Dick Vitale wrote to him. Unreal.

A fascinating book with trivia speckled throughout for college football fans to oooh and aaaah on. For instance, I watched tons of Michigan games growing up (loved the Big 10, it was always raining/snowing!!), but I had no idea about his heart attack the night before his first Rose Bowl; players taking the field not sure if he was dead or alive. I also didn't know that Archie Griffin had a brother that played on the Buckeyes, or that he was an All-American db. And his last play in an OSU uniform? Getting ejected for fighting...about three minutes before Woody Hayes' career ended on the face mask of a Clemson Tiger.

I've gone from a casual knowledge of Woody Hayes to looking to make him one of "Xmas' Guys." I'm sure he'd be thrilled!

ps - I remember the eeriness of Bo dying the night before the "Game of the Century", the 2006 OSU-UM matchup of undefeateds. What I didn't know? Half an hour after the Ohio State-Michigan game ended, the Ohio Lottery PICK 4 evening drawing was 4-2-3-9, matching the final score of the game. Yeesh.