Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

I took this picture just before we did our pregame show at the ‘71 Rose Bowl

A couple days ago I was inspired to dredge up a story from my OSU days. It was the spring of 1970, during the Cambodia bombing campaign, and campuses all over the country were in turmoil. Each school approached these events according to its own personality, as I will relate.

I was more cynical than passionate about political issues at the time, and in my more cynical moments it seemed to me that Ohio State, with 50,000 students on campus and a Big Ten sports culture, approached student activism as more of an opportunity to party than to make a lasting political statement. In the core of any demonstration, of course, were truly dedicated activists, but milling at the periphery, and outnumbering them by a lot, were gawkers, sunworshipers, frisbee-throwers.

Many saw the demonstrations as a way to get classes cancelled and grading liberalized. For instance, two of my classes that quarter offered students the opportunity to state the lowest grade they’d accept, and to take ‘pass/fail’ if that grade wasn’t achieved.

Anyway. With this image in mind of how demonstrations went down at OSU, envision this one day on the Oval (a large grassy area at the heart of campus). Several podiums had been constructed for that day’s events, one run by the Black Student Union, one by someone like the SDS, and one apparently by the faculty senate, with crowds clustered around each one.

I had stopped at the ‘faculty senate’ one between classes and heard one or two earnest but unheeded profs plead for an orderly protest process that kept classes open. I think they saw the political upheaval of the day as perhaps the teaching opportunity of a lifetime, and didn’t want to be cut out of the dialogue. They garnered mostly derision from the committed and ennui from the groundlings on the periphery.

Suddenly, there was a disturbance from the back of the stage, and in a moment a ham-sized fist reached forward and grabbed the microphone. The body attached to the fist next emerged, and it was Woody Hayes. Some cheered, as many hooted, but everyone hushed a bit as Woody launched into a garrulous but impassioned exhortation. In the end, though, it was typical of a pep rally stump speech, minus the player introductions.

As he seemed to be winding to a close, he exclaimed, “If there’s one thing I teach my players, it’s not to HATE!”. This was apparently just one toke over the line, even from one of iconic stature. A girl who had been following intently stood up and yelled, “WE HATE MICHIGAN!”, and the place just erupted in chanting and howling. Woody was somehow disengaged from the microphone and squeezed from the stage.

In the next several days, the Kent State killings took place, our demonstrations became more chaotic and violent, and the National Guard stationed itself on the Oval to prevent anyone from congregating there. Tear gas permeated the air, even to the 7th floor of my dorm. One day, word came that the school would close at noon, and everyone had to be off the campus by 4pm. In no mood to go home, I decided to head for Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon and my girlfriend (now wife). A friend offered me a ride to Wheeling, and as we drove off campus, Columbus police were arresting students who were hitchhiking as a method to comply with the precipitous order to vacate.

Arriving on the Carnegie Mellon campus, I found a large congregation of students on a lawn in front of a makeshift stage, all seated on the grass. The president of the university was speaking, and answering questions from the audience. They were following Roberts Rules of Order. Carnegie Mellon does not play in the Big Ten.

School did eventually resume at Ohio universities, except of course for those four kids at Kent State. I took the picture above of Woody on the floor of the 1971 Rose Bowl just before we did our pregame show. We lost to Jim Plunkett and Stanford that day, and whiffed at the first of 4 or 5 national championships that would elude Woody during the 70s. Woody was enough of a wingnut that you had to cringe sometimes when he opened his mouth. But I credit him for his commitment to his values (even if I didn’t share all of them), and for taking the risk to speak that day when he could have hidden out and watched film.