The history of Ohio State Buckeyes football covers 125 years through the 2014 season. The team has represented the Ohio State University in the Western Conference, its successor the Big Ten, and in the NCAA Division I. Its history parallels the development of college football as a major sport in the United States and demonstrates the status of the Buckeyes as one of its major programs.
History Early history (1890–1950)
In the mid-1880s the growing fever of the Walter Camp-style of football, formulated between 1880 and 1883 among colleges of the future Ivy League, reached Columbus, Ohio. Abortive early attempts at forming a team occurred in 1886 and 1887. Future Nebraska governor Chester Hardy Aldrich captained the team in 1886, and Stevens Institute of Technology alumnus Joseph Frederick Firestone led the attempt in 1887. The Buckeyes' first game, played on Saturday, May 3, 1890, in Delaware, Ohio, against Ohio Wesleyan University, was a victory, but other projected spring games could not be arranged. The Delaware County Historical Society has set a marker at the site of that game. George Cole, an undergraduate, is generally given credit for organizing the first intercollegiate team at Ohio State, although more recent scholarship has put that claim in doubt.Roman Agreed by all is that by the fall of 1890 Cole persuaded Alexander S. Lilley to coach the squad. Lilley brought in a renowned Princeton fullback and soon-to-be coach of the Purdue Boilermakers, Knowlton L. "Snake" Ames, Ames also app. coached Northwestern in the same years to familiarize the team with fundamentals. Play resumed in November, with home games played at Recreation Park (near the current Schiller Park in south Columbus), but Ohio State lost all three. The next year representatives met with counterparts from Adelbert, Denison, Buchtel, and Kenyon Colleges to agree to various terms and laid the groundwork for the informal "Big Six" conference of Ohio colleges.Park, p.13. This scheduling arrangement was not formalized. Throughout its first decade nearly all of Ohio State's opponents were in-state teams. In 1892 Jack Ryder became Ohio State's first paid coach, earning $15 a week during a ten-week season. After losing his first game, against Oberlin College and its new coach John Heisman, Ryder compiled a 22–22–2 record.Walsh, Christopher (2009). Ohio State Football Football Huddleup!, Triumph Books (Random House, Inc.), , p. 69. Over the next eight years, under a number of coaches, the team played to a cumulative record of 31 wins, 39 losses, and 2 ties. Home games were moved to a field on campus at Neil and 11th Avenues, then in 1898 to Ohio Field at High Street and Woodruff Avenue. Play was brutal and dangerous but continued to grow in popularity. The first game against Michigan, in Ann Arbor, was a 34–0 loss in 1897, a year that saw the low point in Buckeye football history with a 1–7–1 record.
In 1899 the university hired John Eckstorm away from Kenyon College (Kenyon had beaten Ohio State 29–0 the previous year). He brought professional coaching skills to the program and immediately won the Big Six for the first time by going undefeated, as well as beating Oberlin College after previous teams had gone 0–6. His second season was almost as successful, as the 8–1–1 record included a scoreless tie against Michigan. In 1901, however, center John Sigrist, a 27-year-old senior, was fatally injured in a game against Western Reserve and the continuation of intercollegiate football at Ohio State was in serious question. Although the school's athletic board backed away from a confrontation and let the team decide its future, a faculty resolution to cancel the season was not easily defeated and Eckstorm resigned.Park, p.28 In 1902 the team won its first four games by a combined score of 86–0, then traveled to Ann Arbor and lost to the Wolverines—86-0. From that humiliation Fred Cornell, a freshman football player, wrote Carmen Ohio, which became the school's alma mater. In 1906, yet another coaching change saw the hiring of Albert A. Herrnstein, the coach of Purdue, who had been a running back for Michigan and had scored six touchdowns against Ohio State in 1902. Herrnstein's four years were successful (although not against his former team) and also saw the first use of the forward pass by the Buckeyes.Park, p. 37
In 1908 the name of University Field was changed to Ohio Field, and although the team continued to prosper, continuing losses to Michigan, Case, and Oberlin saw the cycle of coaching changes continue. By the end of the 1912 season, Ohio State's 23rd, the team had had eleven coaches, sixteen coaching changes, and stood 126–72–17, having never beaten Michigan. Among the oddities occurring during its formative years, the Buckeyes won a game by forfeit (its only win in 1897, over Ohio Medical), lost one by forfeit (Penn State in 1912), and had a player play for both teams in one game (Bob Hager, loaned to Marietta College in 1898, a game which Marietta won).Park, p.20, 23, 50 Football underwent a number of developments in 1912 that mark the year as a watershed point in Buckeye history. In the game itself, touchdowns were re-valued to the six points they are now. On April 6, the Western Conference approved Ohio State's application to join. The Bucks would play their first conference schedule in 1913 and be limited by its rules to just seven games a season. The price at the time was steep: Michigan had left the conference in 1906 and conference policy forbade playing the Wolverines. The program itself was removed from the Department of Physical Education and made a part of the new Department of Athletics, an organization under faculty control, but a move which saw the hiring of full-time coaches with faculty status. The new football coach, John Richards, was also named the first Director of Athletics but resigned from both positions at the end of the football season. Lynn Wilbur St. John, a medical student who had just been hired as business manager for OSU athletics, was named the second AD and served in that capacity for 35 years.
Ohio State's entry into the Western Conference initially saw a reduction in the number of games played each season but otherwise continued success for the program, with their first three seasons' record 14–5–2 and finishes in conference standings of 6th, 4th, and 3rd place. Coach John Wilce brought a stability to the program not previously experienced, and in 1916 he also brought Charles W. "Chic" Harley, OSU's first "triple threat" (runner, passer, and kicker), to the varsity team. The Buckeyes had their first undefeated-untied season in 1916, and repeated as conference champions in 1917, going 8–0–1. Harley left school for wartime service in the U.S. Army Air Service, and the Buckeyes saw an undefeated streak broken at 22 games as a result. Harley returned in 1919, named an All-American for the third time, but Ohio State finished second in the Western Conference when Illinois, in the season's last game, scored the only touchdown of the year against the Buckeyes, then kicked a field goal on the final play to win 9–7.Park, p.74 However 1919 also saw the first Buckeye victory over Michigan (which had re-joined the conference in 1917), 13–3 in Ann Arbor, the first of three straight wins against its rival. Harley's exploits prompted both a new surge of popularity in Ohio State football and higher attendance figures, with the demand far outreaching the capacity of Ohio Field. Discussion of a new, larger facility at a location away from High Street had begun as early as 1913 but plans took shape when a horseshoe design was presented by alumnus Howard Dwight Smith ('07) in 1918 and a professionally managed public fundraising drive begun in October 1920 that quickly pledged more than $1 million of the $1.34 million cost stipulated in the April 1921 construction contract. Ground was broken on August 3, 1921, and Ohio Stadium opened October 7, 1922. With the opening of the new stadium, however, Buckeye fortunes on the gridiron also turned sour. Ohio State had won its third Big Ten championship in 1920, losing its only game to California in the Rose Bowl, and a superb 1921 season had been marred by two inexplicable losses to Oberlin (the last Buckeye loss to an Ohio team) and to winless Illinois. The dedication game for Ohio Stadium was against Michigan, which became the first of six straight losses to the Wolverines, and the 1922 season the first of three losing seasons. The Buckeyes rebounded in 1926, losing only to Michigan as a result of a missed extra point with two minutes to play. The game was also notable in that more than 90,000 attended, a "standing room only" figure that exceeded stadium seating capacity by nearly forty percent. However Ohio State had otherwise unspectacular seasons and never finished higher than third place in the conference, going 28–21–6 in Wilce's final seven years as head coach. Criticism of Wilce was widespread, particularly from the "downtown coaches" (a term that came into usage in the 1920s to describe vocal businessmen and other influential supporters of the program), for both failing to win the conference and for the extended losing streak to Michigan. Wilce forestalled further criticism and possible removal by resigning on June 3, 1928, effective at the end of the upcoming season, to practice medicine. His sixteen years as coach had brought Ohio State to the forefront of intercollegiate football and his .695 winning percentage remains impressive.Park, pp.112–115 Wilce's assistant and former Buckeye letterman, Sam Willaman, was expected to inherit the head coaching position at the December meeting of the Athletic Board, but Athletic Director St. John refused to publicly commit the program to his succession. During 1928 there had been public speculation that Knute Rockne, famed coach of Notre Dame but enduring a mediocre season and stung by persistent criticisms of overemphasis of football at Notre Dame, might leave the Irish to take the position at Ohio State. At least two sources Park, p.118 indicate that St. John and Rockne met in early January in New Orleans and that Rockne accepted the position at OSU contingent on his release by Notre Dame. Whether Rockne was merely trying to gain leverage for a new, larger stadium at Notre Dame and fewer road games, or whether he seriously contemplated coaching the Buckeyes will never be known, for history records that he was "unusually silent on the matter."Robinson, p. 216 Willaman, a reticent, methodical man, was then selected and completely overhauled the coaching staff. Among the new coaches hired were Don Miller, one of Notre Dame's famous "Four Horsemen", and Ernie Godfrey, who went on to coach at Ohio State for 33 years. Willaman's stint began auspiciously with three wins that included a victory over Michigan, but the team finished poorly with an overall 4–3–1, and although the 1930 team had a better record, it lost to its rival and still managed only a fourth-place finish in the Big Ten. The situation grew worse in 1932 when an experienced Buckeye team disappointed expectations and the effects of the Great Depression significantly lowered attendance. The 1933 team lost only once, but it was to Michigan and again cost the Bucks a conference title. Heavily criticized within and without the university, Willaman resigned in January 1934 to become head coach at Western Reserve, hounded out of Columbus (according to Time magazine) by the "downtown coaches".