When the Buckeyes snatched away TCU’s coach, an Ohio State football tradition was born: Doug Lesmerises
Ohio State Football: For upon |COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State, willing to overpay and keen on beating Michigan, forced out its coach and stole a rising star.
It’s a story fit for the modern day, but one that happened 84 years ago, when the Buckeyes snatched away TCU’s football coach.
Saturday night, Ohio State and TCU will meet for the first time since 1973, and the sixth time overall, with the Buckeyes holding a 4-1-1 lead in the series since they swooped into Fort Worth and plucked out an offensive genius.
In 1934, in search of a replacement for Sam Willaman, whose departure was seen as a foregone conclusion the moment he lost to Michigan in 1933, though it was the Buckeyes’ only loss of the season, The Plain Dealer listed up to 20 names of college football coaches in the running for the job. The coaches at Purdue and the University of Chicago turned down the Buckeyes. No others on the list got the nod.
“In an effort to hire a mentor well-known to Ohio fans,” Milton Yelsky wrote in The Plain Dealer on March 11, 1934, “the Texas Christian coach was neglected during early stages of the coach-seeking game.”
Yelsky also called Ohio State “skeptical at first at hiring a ‘minor league’ coach.”
Eventually, athletic director Lynn St. John, the namesake of St. John Arena across from Ohio Stadium, got on the phone with this man from Texas and asked the innovative, hard-charging, Nebraska-bred football coach at TCU to take a train to Columbus.
“There is little doubt but that the Ohio State job is considered an advancement,” wrote Bill Van Fleet in the Galveston (Texas) Daily News in late February, as the eventual hiring was viewed as a certainty, “for the Buckeyes play in the Big Ten and have 15,000 students behind them. Ohio State was considered one of the strongest teams in the country last fall, and the clash with Michigan held the spotlight over our weekend.”
On those same newspaper pages, Francis A. Schmidt was surprised that the Associated Press caught wind of his discussions with the Buckeyes.
“I don’t know what to say,” Schmidt said. “I didn’t know anybody knew anything about it.”
A week later, after a 1,000-mile journey to Columbus, Schmidt became the 14th football coach in Ohio State history. He’d win more games than all but one of his predecessors, fueled by a diverse offense that served as a forebearer to the West Coast offense. The modern passing game draws a line from Schmidt to the legendary Bill Walsh. Those two are connected by Sid Gillman, an assistant to Schmidt at Ohio State who is credited by Walsh as one of his greatest influences.
Weeks after Schmidt was hired, OSU assistant Ernie Godfrey told John Dietrich of The Plain Dealer at a banquet in Cleveland that Schmidt’s offense “includes almost every conceivable formation — double wing and single wing backs, semi-punt formations, balanced and unbalanced lines, with something new all the time.”
Schmidt “adds tricks to his offense as he thinks of them,” Yelsky wrote in his assessment, “and is primarily concerned with getting that elusive touchdown.”
It was an offense developed at the smallest school in the Southwest Conference, with an enrollment of about 1,000 students back then. But the Horned Frogs beat the big boys, as Schmidt went 45-6-5 in five years. He still ranks fourth on TCU’s all-time wins list, a list headed by current coach Gary Patterson’s 160 victories.
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A former Cleveland Indians minor leaguer named Dutch Meyer was promoted from assistant to head coach upon Schmidt’s departure and won 105 games himself, and TCU claims national titles from Meyer’s 12-1 season in 1935 and 11-0 season in 1938.
So the Horned Frogs survived, though they knew what they were losing in the 48-year-old Schmidt, who more than doubled his salary to $9,500 a year in his new job.
Weldon Hart, writing in The Austin Statesman, the city paper for the University of Texas, thanked Ohio State for getting Schmidt out of the Southwest Conference, where he’d won two titles in five years.
“That bird was getting too tough!” Hart opined.
In Ohio, Schmidt made it clear he knew exactly what was expected of him. In his Texas twang, he explained his approach to his new rival with a phrase heretofore known only in the Southwest. Legend has it that Schmidt unveiled the phrase to the world, and in the process put his stamp on the rivalry.
“Hell, they put their pants on one leg at a time, the same as we do,” Schmidt said of the Wolverines, as quoted by The Plain Dealer and others. Seizing the theme, Ohio State adopted the tradition of awarding Gold Pants trinkets to the Buckeyes who defeat the Wolverines on the field of play.
In another nod to the modern day, the PD editorial page wondered why everyone made such a fuss over one game and made light of Schmidt’s words.
“Schmidt, or someone, should impress upon Ohio alumni the folly in attaching so much importance to a single game,” the editorial read. “As strong as Michigan has been over the years, it is folly to believe and hope that an Ohio team year after year can meet its greatest rival on even terms.
“Schmidt says something about Michigan players putting their pants on one leg at a time. His problem will be that of keeping the shirts on overzealous Ohio alumni.”
Schmidt kept those alumni at bay, winning his first four games against Michigan, the Buckeyes shutting them out each game between 1934-37.
He never beat Michigan again. His career ended on a three-game rivalry losing streak, his last loss to the Wolverines 40-0 in 1940. Weeks later, the OSU Board of Trustees met to discuss Schmidt’s status, and aware of their doubts, Schmidt resigned, his final record with the Buckeyes 39-16-1. He would be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1971.
“Francis A. Schmidt, the tall, graying Texan who made football a spectacle with his wide-open razzle-dazzle style of play, stepped out tonight as head coach at Ohio State University,” the Associated Press wrote on Dec. 16, 1940.
Four years later, at the age of 58, Schmidt, who had been in failing health, was dead. He is survived by the offense you watch today, and the Gold Pants the Buckeyes fight for each November.
When you watch the Buckeyes and Horned Frogs on Saturday night, you may thank TCU for him.
This article was first published here.
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