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Ohio State Football: The Forgotten Dawn - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Ohio State Football: The Forgotten Dawn

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THE Ohio State University." That’s how Buckeyes in the NFL introduce themselves on nationally broadcast football games. And this incredible history of the team will only increase that pride in Buckeye football for players, coaches, students, alumni, and fans who love the team.

Author Robert J. Roman draws on extensive archival research to tell the untold story of the early days of football at Ohio's flagship public university. The game was different. Fields were rarely level and often rocky. Eleven men played both sides of the ball, quarterbacks were often the smallest men on the team, and coaches were not allowed to communicate with the players during a game. The travel was different. The faculty of rival Ohio Wesleyan forbid their team from traveling to Columbus, where the vulgar, "godless" public university students might corrupt their young men. After Ohio State's first game outside the state-a victory in Kentucky-the team had to run for its life, chased by an angry mob of stone-throwing locals. But the students were the same. Eager to establish their school as the equal of older, wealthier, and more strictly religious colleges, Ohio State students saw intercollegiate athletics as their path to respectability. "Do you not believe that our athletic clubs have generally represented the University with great credit to themselves and the University?," asked a student in the campus paper. "Do you not believe they have spread abroad our good name and won friends for us all through the State? I tell you, in this day athletics are becoming just as much a part of a great University as Greek or mathematics."

Ohio State Football: The Forgotten Dawn will not only fascinate readers interested in the school’s team history, but also those interested in the early history of athletics at American public universities. Familiar debates over the construction of facilities, hiring of coaches, academic eligibility, and the authority of the faculty and the administration are all part of the story here. But above all, college football fans will see themselves, with pride, in this history of one of the sport’s most famed programs. Includes forty rare photos from the Ohio State archives.

ISBN-13: 9781629220666

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: University of Akron Press - The

Publication Date: 10-31-2016

Pages: 230

Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

Robert J. Roman was born in Connecticut and raised in Ohio. He attended the Ohio State University where he double-majored in psychology and American history/American studies. There he saw tens of thousands of students, who otherwise seemed to agree on almost nothing, be of one mind about their football team. He holds a master's degree in psychology from New York University and currently lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Part 1 Let us have a varsity team that would do honor to its name

1 Foot hall has suddenly made its appearance 3

2 Integrity, ability, energy, earnestness, and true worth 17

3 A little more regard for the rules 32

4 What shall be done with the challenger? 39

5 Foot ball is to reign supreme in this period 50

Part 2 The long looked-for boom in athletics has come at last

6 Class colors fade into insignificance 61

7 The reputation of the University is at stake 71

8 The 0. 5. U. can "Yell like Hell" 80

9 We know too much of the Delaware boys ourselves 91

10 Our boys knew a little more about the game 100

Part 3 There is no reason why we should not have the best eleven in the state

11 The indomitable Jack and the inevitable Mike 113

12 It is an honor to be a player in the Ohio State University foot ball team 121

13 Does anyone still persist in saying that we can play foot ball? 131

14 Everything that will add to the glory of the O. S. U. 140

Part 4 Our place is at the head of Ohio's athletics, not at the foot

15 Well, why can't we play football? 153

16 Victory at last 165

17 Part of the proud and cherished history of O. S. U. 177

18 The sake of truth and conscience 186

19 What does it mean? 194

20 Are we not quite as godly as they? 204

Part 5 We want to get a great football team and we shall then he a great University

21 Our athletic clubs have spread abroad our good name 213

22 We are to enter upon a period of real Thanksgiving 226

23 Football can do more than all the catalogues you can publish 234

24 Not only marvelous but without an equal 241

25 The same crowd of leather-lunged Buckeyes 250

Part 6 But campus work is unchanged-It goes on forever

26 The father of football at Ohio State 265

Acknowledgments 277

Notes 279