My father used to tell me, "Woody is Ohio State and Ohio State is Woody, but he'll knock your teeth out if you say the first part."
I like George W. Bush and I like Jim Tressel, but neither are quote kings. Heck, I don't even know what Coach Tressel's answers mean most of the time.
To that end, and now that the season is about 10 days from getting serious and Big Ten TV will be out of the way, we need to get in the right frame of mind.
Woody Hayes:
The man who became simply known as "The Old Man" was born February 14, 1913 in Clifton, Ohio. He grew up in a small town called Newcomerstown, graduated from Denison and coached at Denison and Miami of Ohio before coming to Ohio State. Over his career, he amassed a 238-72-10 record and 205-61-10 in the Big Ten. He won four national championships (five if you count the title given to OSU by the National Football Foundation in 1970), won 13 Big Ten titles, played in 8 Rose Bowls (including four straight from 72-75), produced 56 All-Americans, and had three Heisman Trophy winners, three Outland Trophy winners, two Lombardi Trophy winners, and some of the coaches that were assistants under him were Lou Holtz, Bo Schembechler, Rudy Hubbard, Bill Mallory, Earle Bruce, and Dave McClain.
Woody Hayes' quotes:
"Nobody despises to lose more than I do. That's got me into trouble over the years, but it also made a man of mediocre ability into a pretty good coach."
"So many times I've found people smarter than I was ... But you know what they couldn't do? They couldn't outwork me. They couldn't outwork me!"
"Anything easy ain't worth a damn!"
"Without winners, there wouldn't even be any god damned civilization."
"No, goddammit! We do NOT pull in and fill up. And I'll tell you exactly why we don't. It's because I don't buy one goddam drop of gas in the state of Michigan! We'll coast and PUSH this goddam car to the Ohio line before I give this state a nickel of my money!"
"I'm not trying to win a popularity poll. I'm trying to win football games. I don't like nice people. I like tough, honest people."
"I feel sometimes that the man upstairs sort of likes us. Maybe He was testing us, saying, 'Let's see what kind of people are at Ohio State. Do they take defeat lightly? Can they come back from adversity?'"
"Perfect preparation prevents piss-poor performance."
"Football is about the only unifying force left in America today. It is certainly one of the few places in our society where teamwork, mental discipline, and the value of hard work still mean anything. We stick to the old-fashioned virtues, and if the rest of the country had stuck to them, it would have been a different story in Vietnam."
"There's one thing that worries me about our lifestyle and civilization today. We're too often talking bad about ourselves. This, as far as I'm concerned, hurts us more than everything else put together."
"The problem comes from people believing they have too many rights, and the word 'rights' to them means acting like an idiot."
"Now I want to tell you that people need friends. I visited an old friend today, Dick Nixon. Right now, he has no friends. Nobody wants to be friends with him, but I am still Dick's friend. Dick can count on Woody. Woody will be there for Dick Nixon."
"We don't give a damn for the whole state of Michigan."
About Woody Hayes:
"Woody was the original Rush Limbaugh. There were no ifs, ands, or buts; he was right-wing for God and country. He was proud to be an American, and he instilled that in his players."--Tim Fox
"If I had to go into a battle and I needed someone loyal and courageous to cover my blindside, I know damn well Woody would be my man. I know, too, that God hasn't created a more generous, compassionate, or more understanding man than Woody Hayes."--Jack Tatum
"Woody studied the whole race issue. He came to camp in '68 and sat us down and told us we were not going to have any problems. We're going to play like a team. We looked at each other a lot differently then. From that point on, the race issue was devoid on our team. He put it to rest."--Dave Whitfield
"We had more personal contact with Woody Hayes than with any other faculty member outside of the classroom. I know of no other faculty member than Coach Hayes who made personal visits to students in their residences in order to inspire their pursuits of academic excellence."--Fred C. Sweeney, OSU student
"He was a legend in his own time. He taught me football, but more importantly, he taught me more about life than anybody else."--Lou Holtz
"Divorce, no. Murder, yes."—Anne Hayes
"Though his tenure at Ohio State spanned the turbulent years of the Civil Rights Movement, the only colors that ever mattered to Hayes were OSU's scarlet and gray; black and white were irrelevant."--Paul Hornung
"Coach Hayes truly epitomized what a head coach should be. He worked hard. He was a perfectionist. He was a true patriot. He was a true Ohioan."--Paul Warfield
"Woody is one of the greatest leaders our country has ever produced."--General Lewis Walt, Marine Corps commandant
Nixon recalled, "I wanted to talk about football and Woody wanted to talk about foreign policy. And you know Woody. We talked about foreign policy."
"Woody is a God-fearing man. It's good to know that he's afraid of somebody." --Archie Griffin
My father also told me about one practice where a great big 300+ pound guy wasn't giving it his all. Woody walked up to him and had a quiet and private conversation with this player who had to bend way over to hear. The player straightened up and practiced like a mad man the rest of the day. Everyone was impressed.
After practice when asked about it Woody said, "I explained that I kept a WWII bayonet in my office and that if he was going to play like a cheerleader, I'd fix him up so he could be a cheerleader. He must've believed me."
Much of this came from Bucknuts and Buckeyes and Sabermetrics, two great sites.
