Jaxbuck;988835; said:
OSU football was huge before Woody. Most of the traditions pre date him.
Woody is an icon in OSU football history but he didn't start it, he presided over one of the golden ages just like Brown, Tress and to some extent Coop did. We can debate who's golden age was better and for what reason but OSU football is bigger than any one man, even Woody.
I beg to differ with you. before Woody was the "graveyard of coaches" era at tOSU. It was Woody's ability to beat Mich that kept him in the job the first few years otherwise he would have been gone long before. Brown was the coach here for just a relatively short time.
1941 thru 1943.
Wiki;
Paul brown
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Paul Eugene Brown (September 7, 1908 - August 5, 1991) was an athletics coach of American football and a major figure in the development of the National Football League. A seminal figure in football history, Brown is considered the "father of the modern offense," with many claiming that he ranks as one of if not the greatest of football coaches in history. Such claims are backed by significant evidence: Brown dominated as a gridiron general on every major level -- high school, college, and professional.
Born in Norwalk, Ohio, Brown's family moved to Massillon when he was nine. His father Lester, a dispatcher for the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad, was described as "very meticulous, serious-minded and highly-disciplined," all of which characterized Brown's later approach to coaching. Brown graduated from Washington High School in Massillon, Ohio in 1925, having played varsity quarterback in the wake of Harry Stuhldreher (one of the University of Notre Dame's legendary Four Horsemen). [1]
[edit] At Ohio State prior to his job as Head Coach
Enrolling at The Ohio State University as a freshman quarterback, Brown (also known as Bruno/Pot) found his 145-pound frame would not stand the rigors of major college football, and transferred to Miami University in Ohio, losing a year of eligibility in the process. Under Coach Chester Pittser, Brown played two years and was named to the All-Ohio small college second team by the AP at the end of the 1928 season.[2] In 1930, he graduated from Miami with a B.A. in Education. He would complete his academic career in 1940 when he received an M.A. in Education from The Ohio State University.
As his academic credentials indicate, Brown was as much a teacher as he was a coach. He qualified for a Rhodes Scholarship in 1930, but he had married Katie Kester, his "high school sweetheart", in 1929 and with the coming of the Great Depression, he needed employment. His coaching career began in 1930 when he was hired as a teacher/coach at Severn School, in Severna Park, Maryland, at the time a Naval Academy preparatory.
[edit] Ohio State Buckeyes
With avid support from influential groups including the Ohio High School Football Coaches Association and future Purdue University head coach Jack Mollenkopf of Toledo Waite High School, Brown moved into the college ranks by becoming head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes on January 14, 1941. Under Brown, the Buckeyes went 18-8-1 (1941-43). Brown's players were known for speed, intelligence, and contact; his teams for execution and fundamentals; and he was dubbed "Precision Paul"[3] at Ohio State.
In his first season at Ohio State Brown went 6-1-1, losing to Northwestern University and their running back Otto Graham, and tying Michigan. The Buckeyes tied for second place in the Western Conference, finished 13th in the AP poll, and Brown was voted fourth place on balloting for National Coach of the Year behind Frank Leahy, Bernie Bierman, and Earl Blaik.
The following year, despite losing 18 lettermen to graduation and to military service in World War II, Brown led the Buckeyes to the university's first National championship, using a team of 3 seniors, 16 juniors, and 24 sophomores. Among his players were senior Les Horvath and four former Massillon players, two of whom (Lin Houston and Tommy James) would play for the Cleveland Browns. The only loss in 1942 was on the road to Wisconsin in a game that came to be known as the "Bad-Water Game," because most of the team came down with dysentery from unsanitary water during their travel to Madison by railroad.
Brown had recruited what was reputedly the finest freshman team in Ohio history in 1942 but lost virtually all of them to military service. In 1943 Ohio State was handicapped when the school affiliated itself with the U.S. Army's ASTP officer training, which did not allow its trainees to participate in varsity sports, while schools such as Michigan and Purdue became part of the Navy's V-12 program, which did. Although the Big Ten promulgated a special wartime exemption in 1943 allowing freshmen to play varsity football, Ohio State found itself in competition against older and larger teams (both military and college) featuring players such as Elroy Hirsch. The 1943 "Baby Bucks" had only five returning players and one starter from the national champion team, six from the 1942 freshman team, and 33 17-year-old freshmen, going 3-6.
