By Robert Vare
In his younger days they called him Johnny. As a kid in the tiny Ohio town of Derby, where his parents ran a small farm and raised a family of six, it was even Little Johnny. Then, as now, he was short but athletically inclined, a spunky baseball player who hoped to become a Hall of Fame shortstop like his hero, Honus Wagner. Instead he became one of the wealthiest men in America, owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, breeder of championship horses, close friend of Coach Wayne Woodrow Hayes and chief benefactor of the Ohio State Football Machine.
Today almost every Ohioan knows who John Wilmer Galbreath is. They know he changes the face of cities with the stroke of a pen, puts up skyscrapers, factories, warehouses, housing developments and whole towns all over the world, and even now, at 77, may visit New York, California and Hong Kong within 24 hours to check on his holdings. And some are aware that next to concrete and steel, his heart belongs to the Buckeyes. It has been said that nobody, save Woody Hayes himself, has done more over the years for Ohio State football than John Galbreath.
Galbreath is an important component of the Ohio State Machine. He is the best known and one of the hardest working members of a group called the Athletic Committee, a predominantly alumni organization whose 300 active members in Ohio and across the country help recruit high school stars for the Buckeyes, provide Coach Hayes with his strongest personal support and contribute large sums of money to the football program. The committee, founded in 1946 with 100 members, used to go by the name "Frontliners" until the Big Ten said it sounded too predatory and requested a name change. But its activities haven't changed much. It is the heart of the Machine.
"You want to know what my attachment is to Ohio State football," says Galbreath. "Well, you can't live in Columbus and not be part of it. We don't have big-league baseball, football or basketball, so the Buckeyes are our team.
"I have all kinds of ties to the university. I myself graduated from Ohio University in Athens but my son got a degree from Ohio State in business administration, and my daughter went there and my sister, too. But the main thing is Woody. You just can't turn him down when he calls up to ask for a favor. Especially when you see how dedicated he is to the young people. I'm the same way. I just love talking to the young people and helping out wherever I can."
Galbreath has been helping Buckeye players for years, rewarding their gridiron efforts with jobs that ~``aren't difficult, hours that aren't demanding and salaries that aren't stingy. If a high school football star can just meet Ohio State's academic requirements, he can get a summer job working for Galbreath in one of his many many offices, on one of his many construction projects or at his 4,400-acre Darby Dan Farm.
In earlier days he could do much more. Players from poor families looked to Gal breath as a one-man welfare agency. He would tell them how to fill out their tax forms, find employment for the fathers, help pay their monthly bills. Sometimes a player would benefit more directly. He promised to lend money and give a job to Vic Janowicz if he would become a Buckeye. Later Galbreath admitted buying a convertible for Janowicz and a suit of clothes for him to wear in New York when he accepted the 1950 Heisman Trophy. NCAA crackdowns and conference rule changes forbidding players to hold jobs during the school year took away some of Galbreatrh's opportunities to aid the Buckeyes, but today there are still summer jobs to provide and blue-chip prospects and their parents to wine and dine at the farm. And rumors persist that even now, on occasion, he is not averse to throwing his arm around a high school star and promising to do all he can for him.
Galbreath is not a typical Buckeye recruiter, but he is not that unusual either. Most of the committeemen are wealthy. Some, like Galbreath, are company presidents. Many are contractors, insurance men, doctors, lawyers and judges. Others run government agencies, stores and hotels. For all of them recruiting is a full-time avocation and a labor of love.
Each one keeps his membership in the committee by flushing out and proselytizing the hot football prospects in his area. Most contribute to athletic department coffers and buy tickets to annual athletic department outings and dinners. And many enjoy doing favors for players, such as arranging lucrative summer jobs or giving stereos and clothes at Christmas or making loans that sometimes don't get repaid. Countless players have been made happy by their committeemen, and they, with their performances on the field, have made countless committeemen happy.
The recruiter's rewards are good seats at home games, status and identification with a successful football program. As long as he keeps finding and selling the prospects and Ohio State keeps winning games, it is an awful lot of fun to be a committeeman.
Some committee recruiters have helped land more quality players than they can remember. Take Frank Lafferty, who is in the motel business in Warren, Ohio. He has been recruiting in and around his hometown since the Hayes era began, and his track record is one of the best.
"We don't lose very many that we really want," says Lafferty, "and this is a great area for high school football. The idea is to keep after them and maybe help them find a summer job if they need it. We have contacts all over the area. Now, Paul Warfield [former Ohio State halfback and All-Pro receiver with the Miami Dolphins], we got him a job with the state highway department. We got Van DeCree, our starting defensive end this year, a job with Republic Steel. Randy Gradishar, the All-America linebacker...visited him about 25 times before we got him, but he didn't need a job. His father runs a supermarket.... Do we offer any other inducements? Well, we're not supposed to do it...uh...we don't do it."
Though men of vastly different resources and life-styles, Galbreath and Lafferty perform key functions for the Machine. With every one of the nearly 750 high schools in football-happy Ohio covered by a committeeman, it is almost impossible for an athlete with talent to go unnoticed. Upwards of 40,000 kids play varsity football annually in the state and they all have, thanks to the diligence of the committeemen, an opportunity to move on to Ohio State. The better the player, the better the opportunity. But in general fewer than a hundred of them will be considered blue-chippers and thus prizes to pursue.
Texas, Pennsylvania and California might argue the point, but it has been said by experts that Ohio is America's most fertile football recruiting ground. Besides filling two-thirds of Ohio State's roster and sending nearly 150 players to the other nine Big Ten schools last season, Ohio high schools supply dozens of college powerhouses across the country. Ohio boys appear regularly in the starting lineups at Notre Dame, Penn State, Alabama, Tennessee, Arizona State, Tulane, Nebraska and Oklahoma.
With at least 75 major schools participating in the annual chase for Ohio talent and competition getting fiercer, it is only natural that some committeemen are not above bending the rules. Big Ten regulations prohibit athletes from receiving financial aid beyond what is allocated for tuition and fees, room and board, and use of books. But it is tough to detect when a generous committeeman lends an athlete a color television set for a couple of years or sells him a car for five dollars.
One committeeman, a surprisingly candid wheeler-dealer who has helped recruit some of the best players in Buckeye history, is philosophical about the hanky-panky, concedes that it happens and even says: "A good committeeman can find a way to help his players." However, he asserts, "We have a much cleaner operation than most places because we don't have to cheat to win. Woody has the name and reputation. People know he's a winner and that year after year he turns out players good enough to go on to the pros and star there. And that's what most of these kids are thinking about, even if it is a little unrealistic: playing pro ball. So we don't have much trouble finding kids who like the idea of playing for Ohio State. It's like recruiting for IBM as opposed to a little 'Ma and Pa' outfit."
Above the committeemen in the Machine hierarchy are the assistant coaches. Each of the nine full-time Ohio State assistants is assigned an area. Seven cover various sections of Ohio; one is responsible for Pennsylvania, the other the East Coast, where recruiting activities have been stepped up in recent years. Each assistant coach travels through his designated territory whenever he can, gathering tips from high school coaches and maintaining close contact throughout the year with the local committeemen.
Since the assistant must know his turf, there is a good reason for who covers what. For example, defensive coordinator George Hill, who was born and raised in the Cleveland suburb of Bay Village, covers Cleveland as well as nearby Stark County with its football-famous tri-cities—Akron, Canton and Massillon; offensive end and tackle coach Ralph Staub, a native of Cincinnati who starred at the University of Cincinnati in the early '50s and later coached there and at Cincinnati high schools, covers Cincinnati; quarterback coach George Chaump, a native of Pennsylvania who coached high school football for a decade in Harris-burg, covers his home state; defensive backfield coach Dick Walker, who coached high school football in Cleveland for three years and is a Roman Catholic, covers Cleveland, concentrating on the city's talent-rich parochial schools.
The basic recruiting organization was devised a decade ago by Coach Hayes and an assistant coach named Lou McCullough. A short, tough and amiable man from Alabama, McCullough was surpassed only by Hayes himself in the ability to sell Ohio State to prospects in their own living rooms. After a decade of recruiting proficiency unparalleled in Buckeye history, McCullough quit in 1971 to become athletic director at Iowa State. But the recruiting army, now headed by assistant coach Staub, remains as strong and well disciplined as it was when McCullough left it.
"There isn't a better organization in the country," McCullough says flatly. "The key really is those committeemen. Their devotion is unbelievable. They go to the high school games, read all the newspapers, talk to the kids, to their parents, to their coaches, to their teachers—to anybody who knows the prospect. They're willing to work their tails off, and it doesn't hurt that they're usually very influential in the community.
"So when the assistant coach comes to a town, the first thing he does is meet with the committeemen in that town to get a thorough rundown on every decent prospect. And I mean it's thorough. Man, you find out everything about a kid right down to the brand of toothpaste he uses. You find out about the parents, too—what their likes and dislikes are. That gives the assistant coach a helluva head start. Recruiting is just like any other selling. You have to know what the customer likes and dislikes, wants and doesn't want."
Finding and selling are the gut work of the assistant coach and his committee recruiters. It begins in earnest in the spring of the high school prospect's junior year, when the assistants spend four weeks traversing their territories, talking to coaches and saying hello to a few players. In their briefcases are reports from committeemen on each prospect: his speed, size, moves, arm, statistics, family, leadership, church and handshake. To supplement the data, the assistants send out questionnaires to the prospects, get game films and confer with principals about classroom ability. The boy's academic work is important. The assistants know that few things make Coach Hayes angrier than losing a player to scholastic ineligibility. By the end of May the inquiries will have yielded a list of 300 to 400 preliminary candidates.
Finding and selling. In the fall of the prospect's senior year the recruiting army swings into high gear. Only then can active recruiting between coach and player take place. The coaches would like to start sooner—say, in the cradle—but NCAA rules prohibit it. By early fall the grade reports are in and so are the recommendations from coaches and opposing coaches, from teachers and employers, and. in some cases, from social workers. Meanwhile, graduate assistants crisscross the state every Friday night, viewing the candidates in action. Before long the original list is pared to between 75 and 100 top prospects. Then come the months when they will be courted, flattered, wheedled, cajoled and badgered, until they either say no or put their signatures on a letter of intent. By early April, the end of the recruiting season, about 25 will have signed, always fewer than the NCAA maximum of 30. With such quality, there is no need for quantity.
The Buckeye recruiting army does not wait until the high school season is over to start its assault. Soon after the first game the prospect is bombarded with more questionnaires, personal letters, brochures, then phone calls, house visits from committeemen and assistant coaches. Mail, calls and bodies arrive according to a well-ordered timetable.
It is Coach Hayes' firm belief that there is no such thing as overselling. "Ring the doorbells" is his recruiting slogan. By ringing the doorbells, the committeeman or assistant coach gets to know the prospect—every prospect—and is in a position to head off any potential competition that might also be camping on the front lawn. It is no accident that in Hayes' 23 years as head coach, amazingly few top stars have eluded him. Wes Fesler, Hayes' predecessor, shied away from high-pressure selling because he thought it unfair to the "kids." This has not troubled Woody. His adage, on the lips of every committeeman, is: "Paralyze their resistance with your persistence."
There are rules in the Big Ten designed to keep a prospect from stumbling over recruiters during his senior year—and to keep the recruiters from stumbling over each other. In theory, recruiters may make only two visits to a prospect's home. Since the two-visit limit does not apply to people not on the official coaching staff, the rule favors schools with strong alumni recruiting organizations. Buckeye committeemen can and generally do make all the visits the prospect or his family will allow.
Of course, there is another way to get around the rules. "Bump-ins," they are called, and they are not infrequent. A bump-in is when an assistant coach or committeeman just happens to show up at the hamburger stand where the prospect hangs out, or at the bar his father patronizes.
If all the visits, prearranged and "accidental," accomplish what they are supposed to, the prospect's appetite will be whetted and he will be invited to spend 48 hours on the Ohio State campus. For this, the only expense-paid visit allowed, an ordinary blue-chipper and his parents can expect to be entertained lavishly, considering that Columbus is not New York or San Francisco. They can look forward to a guided tour of the campus, from the weight room to the library, a conference with a friendly dean or professor, tickets to a hockey or basketball game, cocktails with the coaches and dinner at a downtown rooftop restaurant, usually with Hayes and his wife Anne. Sometime during the visit, the ordinary blue-chipper meets a few members of the varsity, and a player he might have something in common with is provided as an escort to a party where he can meet girls. If the blue-chipper is extraordinary, he can expect something more, namely a visit to John Wilmer Galbreath's Darby Dan Farm.
The farm is a vast stretch of landscape, 10 miles west of Columbus. The walls of Darby House are hung with the heads of game animals shot on East African and South American hunting parties. Where the stuffed animals leave off, the real ones begin. In Galbreath's very own game reserve roam zebras, impalas, water bucks, Thompson's and Grant's gazelles, sitatungas, lechwes and dozens of other exotic beasts. Nearby is the racetrack where his Kentucky Derby-bound thoroughbreds sometimes train. You almost forget it is really a farm until you see the 2,300 acres of corn, wheat and soybeans. For coming and going, there is a 6,000-foot airstrip, long enough to accommodate Galbreath's private jet. Surrounding it all are 35 miles of white plank fences that a lot of Ohio Slate players have painted for fun and profit. It is the kind of spread that might have dazzled Kubla Khan, not to mention a high school youngster who is just learning to shave.
Some prospects are impressed less by wealth than by sports figures they have been hearing about as long as they can remember. Jack Tatum, John Brockington. Rex Kern, Paul Warfield, Matt Snell, Jim Parker, Hopalong Cassady, John Havlicek, Jerry Lucas, Jack Nicklaus and many other premier ex-Buckeye athletes have been known to pitch in with phone calls and letters when called on by the Machine. Nicklaus once got on the phone with a prospect 40 minutes after winning the Masters.
When it comes to recruiting, the Machine can sometimes even count on Ohio's politicos. Quarterback Brian Dowling was watching television one afternoon his senior year in high school when a squadron of motorcycle police roared up to his front door. Terrified, Dowling opened the door to find his welcome mat occupied by Ohio Governor James Rhodes, who is best remembered for Kent State and his political rallying cry: "Profit is not a dirty word in Ohio." So impressed was Dowling with Rhodes' salesmanship that he enrolled at Yale. Such failures, however, are the exception.
The average head coach stays close to home during recruiting season. He may range afield for two or three exceptional prospects, but for the most part he assigns assistants to do the out-of-state work. As usual, Woody Hayes operates apart from the norm. He never seems to stop moving. From December to April he is likely to make eight trips to the New York area, six to Pennsylvania, two to Washington, D.C., three to the South and one to the Southwest, to say nothing of repeated forays throughout the Midwest. And despite the heart attack he suffered last June, no one who knows him expects the Hayes pace to slow.
Even the long-distance runner needs a finishing kick, and in the recruiting marathon few men run the gun lap like Hayes. Most coaches will sit on a prospect's living-room couch, rubbing their hands raw, looking nervous and wide-eyed, talking nonstop. Their pitch is predictable. They promise a starting spot by the youngster's sophomore year, at the latest, marvel at how he will fit in so well with their particular offense or defense, emphasize the big money such and such ex-player got when he turned pro, go on about why it is better to play on their artificial turf and in front of their fans and predict nothing but national championships and Heisman Trophies in the prospect's future. They harp on technical football, drawing diagrams of their pro-type offense or defense ad nauseam.
The Hayes approach is different. Inside the prospect's living room, with the appropriate committeeman at his side, he is an island of calm and composure. Serious and attentive, he sits up straight, hands folded on his trousers, and speaks sparingly. When he does talk, his voice is soft and low and the corners of his mouth turn up sympathetically.
The low-keyed manner is disarming and it is meant to be. He knows that because of his reputation most recruits and their parents expect him to be all hot lava and rage. So when he shows up at the door bestowing benign smiles, nodding respectfully, asking light-hearted questions and exuding charm instead of being pushy and antagonistic or, God help us, breaking up the furniture, the hosts smile back gratefully. They are relieved, if not entranced. And after he leaves they may ask: "Now how in the world could that wonderful man be the same one we've always heard about?" With that question, ever so common, the hook is in, the sale assured.
Actually, Hayes has two approaches, one for the prospect and another, much stronger, for his parents. With the player himself he is direct and businesslike, hoisting up a challenge and promising nothing. This tactic is designed to appeal to the athlete's competitive instinct. He is negotiating from strength. Everybody knows Ohio State is a very large school, spends a lot of money for football, plays on television two or three times a season, produces plenty of All-Americas and professionals and has won big for many years.
"Now, son, we think you're a hitter," he will say. "We think you can play a lot for Ohio State."
Then the prospect may nod and timidly offer up the observation that Ohio State might already have enough good football players to keep the seat of his pants in touch with the bench. Hayes' answer never varies.
"Now we think you're a 110-percenter, son. You come with us, dig in your heels and prove you're the best. You just have to ask yourself whether you're man enough to be a Buckeye."
The message hits hard. But the real work is done on mom and dad, and, with them, there is seldom a mention of football. The talk is all about education, or at least what you can get from one—about how so many of his players graduate, about Ohio State's wonderful faculty, lofty academic ranking, magnificent placement bureau. "Ah, so your son wants to be a doctor. Well, we've got the best darned medical school in the country and here's something that will interest you: three years in a row one of our football players was the No. 1 medical student.... You say your son wants to go into business. Well, we've got a great business administration program. Oh, it's a dandy program.... He wants to be a veterinarian? We've got a fine department there.... Law school? None better. And we can help him get in, too.... Ummm-hm.... Ummm-hm.... Don't believe what you hear about us being a football factory."
If the family still isn't convinced that Ohio State is a cross between Harvard and MIT, the educational line of talk will continue, with emphasis on practical advantages and end results. "Now if your son plans to live in Ohio, it just doesn't make sense to go anywhere but Ohio State. He can make the contacts he needs and we can help him. And at Ohio State, there's a good chance your boy will get his degree, because 84% of our ballplayers do and most graduate in four years." The claim is difficult to certify, since the OSU registrar refuses to release the names of football players who graduated with their class, asserting only that "most of them did." A check of the 1973 Football Register shows that only five of the 24 former Buckeyes on pro teams at the start of the 1973 season had managed to earn their degree.
Hayes will keep going until sunrise if necessary, with the loyal committeeman at his side, to help the boy and his parents make up their minds. Recruiting is the name of the game, and each prospect represents an investment—months of visits, official and unofficial, dozens of letters, postcards and telegrams, and hundreds of phone calls. The payoff comes every Saturday afternoon in the fall when the touchdowns and field goals are totaled. If the committeeman comes through, he will be patted on the back by Hayes and used again next season. If he does not, he will be ignored, his name scratched off the active membership rolls. That hurts. "Those committeemen really take pride in their work," says McCullough. "If a company has a man who doesn't produce, who isn't selling enough, they get rid of him for somebody else, don't they?"
Once or twice a year the Buckeye recruiting corps musters in Columbus. These gatherings exude the aura of a High Mass with the committeemen sounding their praise of the Hayes regime. The committee's "salesmanship school" in August, with Coach Hayes lecturing on how to recruit and passing out awards, is an example of organizational strength that should freeze the blood of opposing coaches.
"When you've got an organization like Ohio State, you're going to get the top prospects," says Duffy Daugherty, who coached at Michigan State for 19 seasons. "These sponsors take the boys under their wings and they have the resources to treat them royally. It's become the custom for them to arrange a job that will enable a boy to earn as much as $2,500 in two summer months. The small schools with piddling recruiting organizations don't stand a chance."
Besides the 300 core committeemen in Ohio, Pennsylvania and points east, the Machine has contacts from Florida to California, from Texas to Canada, and even in Europe, a good place to look for placekickers. Most of the contacts are drawn from the ranks of alumni who have scattered throughout the Western world. They don't get to Ohio Stadium much anymore and they are not official members of the Athletic Committee, but their memories are long, and it is nice to know they can still contribute to the cause by tipping off the Buckeye coaching staff whenever a "good one" comes up where they live. Then, too, there are the former assistant coaches and players, many of whom have remained loyal to Hayes. They prove it by keeping a sharp eye out for prospects and, when asked, working to get them.
The expanding terrain of the recruiting army is reflected by the Ohio State roster. Fifteen years ago, only one of the top 40 players came from outside Ohio, and he happened to be from a Kentucky town just across the river from Cincinnati. Today fully one-third of the squad is from out of state.
Along with recruiting, another Machine component that has been precision-honed is tutoring. It too has contributed to the extraordinary success of the big-time football operation at Ohio State. The purpose of the tutoring program is simple—to lift the grade-point average of every player to "C" or better so he'll be able to keep putting on the pads. It works. According to Assistant Director of Athletics James Jones, who as head of the tutoring program occupies the position known in football jargon as "the brain coach," only one Buckeye player has been lost to academic ineligibility in the last eight years.
"Sure, we have a commitment to football and winning games," says Jones, who supervises nightly study halls and a team of two dozen tutors, while keeping his speech, hair and handshake in the Marine drill sergeant style of the '50s. "We have an investment in each kid, and if he's a flunk-out, we've lost our money. O.K.? But we also have a moral commitment to each kid. O.K.? Our revenues from football are just tremendous. Now if these kids don't get an education we've cheated them, because we live off their efforts. And we're proud, mighty proud, of the fact that eventually about 85% of our players get their degrees. We really feel equally committed to the two goals—the winning and the education. O.K.?"
A different version is offered by Greg Thomas, director of Ohio State's black education center and unofficial adviser to a number of black players. "That's so much jive. They hold up these high graduation figures and, dig it, they say, "See what a fine education our boys get?' Well, damn, when they have to make the choice between eligibility and education, ain't no way they're going to pick the education. Like some of the black dudes have told me the coaches go through some changes when they ask to take courses that might be a little more demanding academically or ideologically oriented—that might mess up their head for football. They want the players taking popcorn stuff like physical education, recreation or business, which are easy and safe and where they know most of the teachers aren't going to give anybody a hard time, especially football players."
Another major component of the Machine is public relations. Ohio State has three full-time sports information officials and one unpaid publicist, Paul Hornung, who happens to be sports editor of the Columbus Dispatchand is no relation to the former Green Bay star. Hornung is Woody Hayes' idea of what a newspaperman should be, someone who is delighted to go along with Hayes' edict that local reporters be part of the team—a kind of propaganda arm of the Machine, parroting the official line and avoiding stories that could be distracting to Buckeye players or psychologically useful to the opposition.
If Hayes wants to see a certain story, he'll just tell Hornung, "Let's write this one up, Paul," and brief him on needed background. If the story is to be kept out, he will simply say "to hell with it" and go on with other work. Hornung never argues. He has been there since before the Hayes era began, a product of the Ohio State journalism department, sometimes even wearing the school colors, scarlet and gray, in the press box.
When an out-of-town columnist criticizes Hayes for tactics, temper or politics, Hornung will answer the charges by writing that the detractor is misguided and a fool. Then he will return to the bland player interviews, official pronouncements and dreary catalogs of how many Buckeye leaves the coaching staff awarded each player for his work in last Saturday's game. This is news that's fit to print, unlike blowups at practice, weaknesses in the passing game or disciplinary problems On the team. As Hayes so often says, "When I want to read about the bad things I look at the front page. When I want to read about the good things I turn to the sports page and Paul Hornung."
Other Columbus reporters are less friendly, but since they have to live with Hayes, they're rarely hostile. "Nobody ever really challenges Woody," says one. Tom Keys, sports editor of the Citizen-Journal, observes sadly, "You go to a practice. You see or hear something and the old man says, 'I don't want to see this in the newspaper' or 'I don't want to see that in the newspaper.' You make a choice: if you want to cover practice again, you don't put it in the newspaper."
Recruiting, tutoring, propaganda: each a vital component of the Machine. But the most important element of all—the fuel that keeps the parts running evenly—is money. Since most college football organizations spend more than they care to admit, finances are always a cloudy subject, and the situation at Ohio State is no exception. Only Hayes and a few administrators know precisely how much there is and how it is spent. As coach, Hayes controls the treasury and tells his athletic director what the budget will be, not vice versa as at most schools.
The spending is lavish. Even in a lean recruiting year, when most of the prospects are mediocre, Hayes may still shell out $100,000 for a recruiting campaign. Insiders say that Ohio State will spend as much as $50,000 just on its coaches' recruiting travel expenses, which is more than most Big Ten schools' entire recruiting budget. That, plus the long-distance phone call blitz and visits to the campus—another $50,000—means the money going out for recruiting easily surpasses that of almost every other school in the country.
So do the expenditures for nearly everything else, as the Ohio State athletic department's own figures attest. In 1972-73 the payroll for coaches and trainers ran to more than $350,000. Football scholarships cost another $260,000: clothing and equipment, $70,000; films for games and practice sessions, $37,000; meals and lodging for the team, $124,000: and transportation, $37,000. The spending is higher than nearly every other school's and going higher. And sitting on top of what is officially reported to be a $1.6 million football budget, Woody Hayes pronounces it all worthwhile. "Football," he says, "is the most wholesome activity on our campus."
It is also the most profitable. Unlike Texas, Tennessee, Michigan State and other major powers that have recently fallen on hard financial times, Ohio State's football program still operates solidly in the black, cranking out a surplus of as much as, and sometimes more than, $2 million a year.
The money flows in from a number of sources. Gate receipts, or "'turnstiles," as Buckeye athletic officials like to call them, are far and away the biggest revenue producers. The Buckeyes grossed $3 million from ticket sales in 1972-73 along with $250,000 in ancillary income from program sales, concessions and parking fees. From television and radio another $250,000 went into athletic department coffers, and alumni gifts earmarked for scholarships added $100,000.
"I don't like to talk about our budget because the figures get used out of context," says OSU Athletic Director J. Edward (Big Ed) Weaver, a physically imposing man of 6'4" and 230 pounds who played for the Buckeyes in the '30s. "I will say this, though. We make a small profit from basketball, but I'd say 98% of our income comes from football. We are totally self-sustaining and I'm proud of the fact that we never take a dime from the university, even though costs are rising all the time. We haven't had the apathy that you have at a lot of other schools. I think you'll find football interest here higher than anywhere else in the country—I don't care if you're talking about Lincoln, Nebraska, South Bend, Indiana or Tuscaloosa, Alabama."
What happens to the football profits? Much of it goes back into the football program to assure its lopsided superiority. Out of what is left the athletic department has enough to finance 17 other intercollegiate varsity sports, pay the $135,000-a-year debt service on its sports arena and field house and add to its $2 million investment fund. But not a penny goes to the intramural or club sports programs that are available to most of Ohio State's 46,000 students. Some of those students are upset about it.
"It's a rip-off," says David Litt, a journalism graduate who covered sports for a year on the Ohio State Lantern. "'They always have plenty of money for football. But when it comes to a student participating in athletics, that has to come out of the university's general funds and there's never enough money around. Only this year after a big lobbying campaign did the athletic department break down and finally give some money to women's varsity sports. But they still have to be forced to care about students participating in athletics. Why shouldn't they do something for the student? Business is good."
And getting better. It's no accident. The Machine's vast resources have made it nearly impossible in recent years for Big Ten opponents—except Michigan, which also has a financially successful football program—to present anything more than quivering resistance on the gridiron. Week after week Hayes makes his fans happy, keeps his team motivated and shows his muscle for the national rankings by rolling up landslide victories over adversaries who cannot afford to recruit, train or equip the way his Machine can. The undermanned, underfinanced opponents are lucky to score even one touchdown against him, just as they are lucky, in certain cases, to field a team at all, since they don't fill their stadiums, don't play on TV and don't get much in the way of donations from grateful alumni. It's a classic rich'-getting-richer cycle.
"We smaller schools in the Big Ten just don't have the wherewithal and, as a result, there's no balance anymore," says Francis Graham, athletic department business manager at the University of Iowa. " Ohio State has the highest athletic budget in the country—$4.3 million. Michigan has a $4 million budget. Our budget is $1.5 million for all sports and we're just breaking even. We really can't afford to bring kids all the way across the country to visit our campus. Either we drastically cut back on scholarships and de-emphasize winning or all you'll have left is the Ohio States. And I personally don't think college football should boil down to the survival of the fittest."
Graham, like many athletic officials in similar straits, believes the only answer may lie in sweeping NCAA reforms: imposing spending ceilings; limiting or even eliminating recruiting; reducing the size of football squads; returning perhaps to one-platoon football.
With calls for change getting louder, the widely respected Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, along with the Ford Foundation; has decided to support a proposed study of college athletics. The result is expected to be even more scathing than the first Carnegie Report—the most thorough and scholarly on the subject to date—which found many abuses in collegiate sports, especially football, stemming from what it called "the growth of professionalism" and "'excessive organizational discipline." The Carnegie Report was published in 1929.
Woody Hayes, in countless speeches, lambastes the criticism, any and all, past and present, as "a plot to undermine football" and concedes nothing. "I say again, and I am proud of it, football is the most wholesome activity we have on this campus...the only place a youngster learns teamwork, mental discipline and the value of hard work...where the men who teach the youngsters aren't openly encouraging permissiveness and protest.... And I can't think of an activity that's more valuable. The whole student body benefits from what we do, not just the athletic department.... University fund raisers tell me every time we win and fill the stadium and unify the students and alumni, it makes raising money much easier.... We provide wonderful publicity for the university. I don't think anybody will deny that."
Hayes knows that most people around him say he is right. He does not have to find excuses for any part of the powerful conglomerate of money, high-pressure recruiting, tutoring and special treatment out of which emerge his winning football teams. The distant rumblings of discontent with big-time, big-business college football are beginning to be felt across the country by students, faculty, administrators, alumni, players and even some coaches. But not by Woody Hayes.
"I don't think many people around here are against a big-time program," he has said. "We have more than 85,000 seats in our stadium and every one of them is filled every game...people from all over the state, no matter what their politics or religion or color...they love and rally round the Buckeyes."
It was almost 45 years after the Carnegie Report was issued that Hayes got up to speak before a downtown Columbus Rotary Club meeting that began with prayers for Richard Nixon and an undefeated season. Amid loud applause, grim but full of confidence, Woody said: "Somebody asked me the other day what I thought these so-called critics wanted and I said, I know what they want. They want to destroy college football." Well, dammit all, they're not going to destroy a very wonderful American institution."
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