I'm just about fed up with the Cincinnati Enquirer's coverage of the Fiesta Bowl. Sunday's big story was about all the Notre Dame fans flooding the ticket office with requests, as if no one from OSU supports their team the way the Irish fans support theirs. To paraphrase Lou Holtz just before the 96 Buckeyes kicked the Irish all over Notre Dame Stadium, "Who 's Notre Dame? did they invent football? What about my team?"
I don't hold any pretensions that Ohio State invented the game, but I do recall a memorable ten weeks in my senior year:
MONDAY, JANUARY 8, 1967: It was pitch black and bitter cold as I walked from the student lot down to the far southern edge of the campus to the Dental School Building. It took me a few seconds to find the room. I took my seat near the back of the room as others scurried in, many wearing scarlet wool and leather jackets identifying them as varsity athletes. The bell went off at 8:00 and we heard Coach Hayes step inside the door, the door slam and then a tiny metallic 'click' as he turned the lock. He strode to the front, head down, pulling off scarf, overcoat and leather gloves. He didn?t go around with nothing but a shirt and tie in winter; that was strictly for game day. He placed his notebook on the lectern, grabbed a piece of chalk and began to write on the board. "Physical Education 416, Principals of Football"
We heard someone try the door. When it didn't open, the unseen student rattled it, hoping it would open. Soon we heard knocking, then pounding, followed by a pleading voice, "Coach, let me in!"
Woody had to have heard it, but he acted as if nothing had happened. "Now then," he said turning to face the class, "raise your hand when I call your name, Adams... Andrews... Bishop... Brandt?" I raised my hand and saw the coach peek over the top of his glasses, nod and go on to the next name. The pleading voice behind the door turned desperate and louder, "Coach, please, my car wouldn't start! Please, let me in!"
Hayes' voice remained calm and soft. "That young man," he nodded toward the door, "is learning an important lesson for life. When the catalogue says a course starts at eight that means it starts at eight. Not eight oh one, or eight oh three. Eight! That applies to anything you do, practices, classes, business appointments, you get there ahead of time so that you're sure to be on time. I hope the rest of you have learned that lesson and that you won?t make so much noise when I lock the door at eight because I'm not going to waste my breath on someone who's too lazy to get here on time."
He looked up at us for a second, his eyes making a sweep of the class to make sure everyone was sitting up. "If you want to stay in this course you get here five minutes before eight so you can be ready to learn. I can tell someone who wants an A in this class. They sit in the front three rows, they keep their heads up and they take notes. The guys who sit in the back don't care enough."
That hit home. I squirmed in my fifth row seat, sat up a little straighter, and wrote, "sit in first two rows" at the top of my spiral notebook page and then underlined it twice.
Hayes paused to look at his notes, then raised his head again, "Who's the 'Man of the Year' according to Time Magazine?"
I started to raise my hand and then thought, "Time" Time owns Sports Illustrated and Hayes hates Sports Illustrated. Is he asking this to find out who reads Time and thereby discover a traitor in his midst, or is he being the teacher I've heard about??
No hands went up. Hayes began to pace, "You mean to tell me that none of you bother to keep up with what is going on in the world?"
I wasn't winning any points sitting in the fifth row so I let my hand fly up. Hayes acknowledged me, "yes, you in the back."
"American Youth, they picked young Americans."
Hayes face brightened. "That's right. They picked college kids, just like all of you," his hand swept across the class, his finger pointing at each one of us for a split second, making his point. "They think you're the most important news story of 1966, that what you do and think is what will matter in the coming year." I want all of you to read that article. We'll have a quiz on it on Friday. It'll count just as much as the second quiz we take that day. That one will be on what you've learned about football." He stopped and looked down at the floor. When he began to speak again there was an unmistakable tone of sincerity in his voice, "You can't be a good football coach if all you know is Xs and Os. You've got to know what's going on in the country and in the world too or else you're just wasting your time and more importantly, you're wasting the time of those kids who trust and believe in you."
No one in the class made a noise. Some stared at their notebooks, but most looked straight at Coach Hayes. "You've got a big responsibility as a teacher and a coach. You've got to know what's going on so you can vote responsibly, so you can be an active member in society off the field as well as on it. We'll have a current events quiz every Friday in this class and I don't care if you get straight As on the football portion, you flunk those quizzes and you're not getting out of this class with a passing grade. I won't have anything to do with making someone a coach if he isn't a citizen and a teacher first. Is that understood?" Every head in the room nodded silently.
Hayes turned to the board and began putting a row of Os on the board, "This is the off tackle play, thirty five, that means the three back, that's your fullback, through the number five hole, that's this point between the tackle and the end." He stopped just seconds before the bell went off, put the chalk down, rubbed the residue from his hands, ordered up his notes and grabbed his coat as the bell rang.
I was early, ten before eight, on Wednesday. The front row was filled and I quickly slipped into a middle chair of the second row. By five till all of the chairs in the first three rows were occupied. I glanced at my watch, two minutes till. I could hear more feet scurrying in, but like everyone else, my eyes were trained to the front of the room, back straight and notebook and pen at the ready. I heard massive feet make two steps and then a weightlifter's grunt, "Ooooffff!"
"Hey, damn it, you can't do that!"
I peeked behind me. Rufus Mayes, a future NFL tight end, had just lifted a defensive back out of a third row seat and plunked him into the fourth row. Rufus settled into the coveted third row chair. Just then Hayes walked in, the bell rang, the door slammed and the lock clicked. "Is there some kind of a problem here?" Hayes barked.
The defensive back turned crimson, slid into his new seat, "No, sir," he muttered. Hayes took attendance, picked up the chalk, started with Xs this time, "And this is how you defense against thirty five?"
On Friday, as promised, we began the class with a ten question quiz on Time's Man of the Year, followed by a ten question quiz on thirty five, five on offense, five on defense.
It went like that for ten weeks. With mammoth folks like Dave Foley and Mayes in the class, men who had proven their ability to bench press the likes of me into fourth row seats, I continued to make sure I got to class soon enough to land in the first or second row. Hayes continued his punctuality, waiting for the first vibration of the bell to close the door and lock it and begin his lectures a few seconds later, each one magically ending with just enough time for him to wipe the chalk from his hands, sort his papers and nod to us to leave as the bell went off.
I walked out of the last class session with a notebook filled with the elements of an offensive and defensive playbook, with pages filled with drills to teach specific skills, with anecdotes? "You know, we had a darn good quarterback in Don Unverferth, and he'd put that ball right on Paul Warfield's numbers and gosh darn if Paul wouldn't drop that ball. So I gave him a football at the end of the season and I said, 'Now, I want you to take that ball with you and on your way to class, as you're walking along, I want you to toss that ball in the air, catch it and tuck it away. Now I'm going to be out there looking for you and I don't want to catch you with that ball under your arm and talking to some pretty girl.' And you know what? The next season Paul is one of the leading receivers in the nation. You just watch, he's going to be one of the best in the NFL too, cause he taught himself how to keep his eyes locked on that ball and put it away."
I also walked out knowing that if I chose to become a coach I would have to be a teacher first, a coach second and be ready to be a counselor, an athletic trainer, a parent, and a role model. I'd have to be willing to be someone who cared about all aspects of the lives of his athletes; someone who knew when to push and prod, when to listen, when to demand and when to offer a safe place to pour out life's problems. For this part of coaching there is no text book, nor classroom notes, only the sound mentoring of a storied coach.
