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Buckskin86
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'Way ahead of his time'
Francis Schmidt jump-started Ohio State football in 1934 with game plans filled with trick plays. Seven seasons later, he was gone, and his legacy of innovations faded.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
By Tom Reed
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
FILE PHOTO
Schmidt's early teams earned the nickname "Scarlet Scourge" for piling up points.
Dispatch file photo
Francis Schmidt, shown at Ohio Stadium in 1937. He was fired three years later.
In the 1930s, Ohio State football players with places to go and appointments to keep walked past the 15th Avenue home of Francis Schmidt at their peril.
At any moment, regardless of the hour or season, the upstairs window could fly open and the excitable Buckeyes coach would holler, "Hey, you sons of (guns), get over here. I got something to show you."
A summons to the dean's office might be met with less trepidation.
"(Former player) Jack Smith told me that he and a couple of teammates were called up to Schmidt's bedroom one spring day, and there were all these index cards spread across the bed," Ohio State football historian Jack Park said. "Schmidt kept those guys up there for an hour showing them the plays he drew up for that season."
Each play, scribbled by using stubby, colored pencils, was more audacious than the last. Shovel passes. Double laterals. Spread formations.
What the bewildered Buckeyes of the leather-helmet era couldn't conceive is that they were witnessing the future of wide-open football as taught by an eccentric, profane law-school graduate.
"A lot of the plays they're using in the pros right now, we used back then," former Buckeyes fullback Jack Graf told The Dispatch in 2003.
The idea of Ohio State as an incubator for imaginative offense runs counter to its reputation. Big Ten titles and national championships have been won with the fundamental precision of Paul Brown, the numbing orthodoxy of Woody Hayes and the conservative, sometimes Victorian tenets of Jim Tressel.
But from 1934 to 1940, the most exciting, high-risk college football was played in Columbus.
"Schmidt was the antithesis of Woody Hayes," said Kent Stephens, College Football Hall of Fame historian and curator. "There was no 'three yards and a cloud of dust' with him. He was so different from what you consider the typical Ohio State coach to be."
Schmidt led the Buckeyes to two Big Ten titles before his odd ways and impracticality spurred his resignation. Four years after leaving Ohio State, he was dead at age 58.
He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1971,
Schmidt is best known in Ohio State lore for his early success against Michigan and founding the Gold Pants Club, but his legacy is largely forgotten. The two-story brick house where he and his wife, Evelyn, lived on Fraternity Row is now rental property for college students.
BuckeyeXtra - The Columbus Dispatch : 'Way ahead of his time'
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ORD_Buckeye
Wrong glass, Sir.
I have to admit that I'd love to see UFM go back to the traditional black with red O hat on the sideline.
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Buckskin86
Moderator
Francis Schmidt got to know N.Y. teams
AP photo
Ohio State head football coach Francis Schmidt (center) seen here in 1938.
By Rob Oller
The Columbus Dispatch Friday August 30, 2013
New York is a mishmash of attitudes, where middle-of-the-road meets anything goes meets right and proper. From Buffalo on one side to Greenwich Village on the other, the state is as unpredictable as a Francis Schmidt offense.
Schmidt was the innovative and eccentric coach at Ohio State from 1934 to 1940, when the Buckeyes ran plays seemingly scripted by Rube Goldberg.
He also was at OSU for nearly half the games the Buckeyes have played against schools from New York.
As Buffalo enters the Horseshoe today, completing Ohio State’s directional coverage of the Empire State — far western New York is the only area the Buckeyes have yet to try to conquer — the Bulls will encounter a more liberal OSU offense than what has transpired over much of the past decade, but also one far more conservative than the trick-filled, wide-open schemes drawn up by Schmidt.
Never mind that 24 of Schmidt’s 39 wins at OSU came by shutout. He saw defense simply as what happened on the other side of the ball. The Buckeyes were best known for running the razzle-dazzle. They finished 7-1 in Schmidt’s first season, totaling a then-school-record 267 points, losing only to Illinois and edging Colgate, located in central upstate New York.
Two years later, in the 1936 season opener, New York University felt the full force of Schmidt’s screwball play-calling, losing 60-0 in Ohio Stadium. The “shrinking” Violets threw seven interceptions, two returned for scores. NYU got off easy, considering the Buckeyes had crushed Western Reserve 76-0 and Drake 85-7 in 1934 and ’35.
After the NYU rout, a sportswriter dubbed OSU’s coach Francis “Close the Gates of Mercy” Schmidt.
One thing Schmidt did not close was his mouth.
“He used profanity as much, if not more, than any coach in history,” Ohio State football historian Jack Park said. “He was a really eccentric type of guy, but he was really loved by his players. And he was years and years ahead in terms of football strategy.” cont...
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Francis Schmidt
Football Coach (1934-40)
Francis Schmidt was the head coach of the Ohio State football program from 1934 to 1940 and his comments about arch-rival Michigan – “Those fellows put their pants on one leg at a time, the same as everyone else” – led to the tradition of awarding gold pants to players and coaches following wins over the Wolverines.
During his seven seasons with the Buckeyes, Schmidt’s team went 39-16-1 with an offense that was dubbed “razzle dazzle” by the media because of its use of reverses, laterals and passes. His inaugural team in 1934 scored 267 points, second most in school history up to that point. His second team, in 1935, was nearly as good, outscoring opponents 237-57. Those Buckeyes finished 7-1 and won their first Big Ten title in 14 years. The season was punctuated with a 38-0 season-ending win over Michigan, part of a stretch from 1934-37 that saw the Buckeyes outscore the Wolverines 114-0. In 1939, Schmidt led Ohio State to an outright Big Ten championship, the school’s first in 19 years. Schmidt, who also coached basketball and baseball at various stops prior to Ohio State, was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1971.
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ORD_Buckeye
Wrong glass, Sir.
How in the living fuck was he not inducted until now?????? He is literally the coach that took the program to the level of being a consistent national power. Paul Brown inherited that machine and took it to its first NC. Jesus, he's already been in the CFBHoF for half a god damned century.
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