Bo reflects on Woody and Ohio State vs Michigan game

Just remember, before Bo coached for that school up north, he played for Woody at Miami (of Ohio naturally) and coached for him at Ohio State.

He reflected on some of his memories of Woody and the upcoming game at a recent press conference. Mlive.com has a write up of the conference.

I was having some trouble with that link so if it doesn’t work, I am including the transcript below:

“Geez, I haven’t been to a press conference like this in a long time. I was thinking about this game with two great undefeated teams playing against each other, and last night we lost Tom Slade, he passed away. Tom was our quarterback in 1971. I don’t know whether you recall or not. But we went through the regular season 11-0 and played what I call a great Stanford team in the Rose Bowl and they beat us 13-12 on a last minute field goal. And so there are some things that are more important than this game on Saturday.

“But nevertheless, as you know, I’ve hung around here for 15 years since I retired, and I watched every Michigan game. I know something about the Michigan-Ohio State series, because I spent six years at Ohio State. I escaped from Columbus when I got the head coaching job at Miami. But I had a wonderful experience there because I coached for Woody (Hayes) when Woody was really Woody. He was the most irascible guy that ever lived, and the worst guy in the world to work for. But I wouldn’t change that experience for anything in the world because it was I learned a lot. And we won a few games here and there.

“I’ll never forget the time that we beat Michigan up here, 50 to something. I believe it was 1961. We had an alumni dinner in Cleveland, and when we went to the dinner, they called Woody out to tell him that the faculty had voted that Ohio State would not go to the Rose Bowl. And that was something else. And so Woody said, get your coat. So I got my coat.

“Now, this banquet is packed, because we had a great year and beat Michigan and all that. And we started walking through the streets of Cleveland until it was nine o’clock, I guess. We talked some and walked in silence, some. When we got back to the hotel, Woody went to the podium and gave one of the great speeches you ever heard. It took him that long to walk around there to be able to go up there and say that the faculty has a right to their opinion. And how dastardly wrong it is, that’s their job. And it was all a political thing. Nobody took into consideration the players and the people that had worked hard to go through an undefeated season, because that’s a very difficult thing to do. I’ll never forget that part of the Michigan Ohio State series.

“Of course when I came here, the great win for us in ‘69, and I’ll never forget when Woody said at the dinner we had for him after he retired, and when he looked down at the podium at me and said, “God damn you, you will never win a bigger game than that.” And he was right. I don’t think I ever did.

“This is something special. I went back and checked. We never went we went into this game both of us undefeated I think some times, but we never went in ranked No. 1 and 2 in the nation. This is a first. That’s pretty clear cut that everybody feels that these are the two best teams in the nation. And I would say that I don’t think there will be a football game played this year with so many gifted athletes, so many good football players on the field.

“And so, when you ask, ‘What’s it going to look like?’ I’ll tell you, anything can happen. But the great players that are in the game have got to make great plays, and if they make great plays, then the other guys in there have got to play the best they can play. Even though they may not be the superstars that you all are going to write about, there will be some nondescript right guard down here who will have to make a lot of great plays in there for that team to win.

“I’m as excited as you are about this game, because I love to see Ohio State and Michigan come down to the end and let’s play it. Now, if you look at the teams, they are not similar, but they are similar. I mean, there are receivers on both sides, there’s runners on both sides, there’s a quarterback on both sides. But the key to it probably will be the defense. Because up until late in my career, there were never games that were high scoring games. The defenses always dominated in this game. But the last few years that I [coached], there were five or six touchdowns scored, so that kind of changed. And I think it’s more difficult to hold teams to low scores nowadays than there was back when I coached.

“But I see this game as being a great classic and I hope the weather’s nice. And I hope the people behave on both sides, because sometimes we get too emotional about this game and we should not do that. And may the best team win.”