Goodbye, Columbus

WOODY HAYES

My NFC Championship ring bears the score; Eagles 20-Dallas 7. Although I spent most of that season on injured reserve, it is the same ring that stars like Ron Jaworski, Bill Bergey, and Wilbert Montgomery were awarded; an injustice no doubt, but a fact nonetheless.

The loser of the Super Bowl gets either the AFC or NFC championship ring. The winner gets the world championship ring. The conference ring features the score of the game they won to get there. Somehow it wouldn’t look right to have a losing score displayed on a keepsake we were to proudly wear for eternity. The world champion’s ring is bigger, gaudier with more diamonds, and every professional athlete’s ultimate fairy tale.

The day after the NFC title game was the most anticipated Monday film session of the season. You have to understand, Monday morning a professional football player wakes up and feels like he has a bad case of the flu. Your body aches to high heaven and is incredibly stiff and sore. Usually teams bring you in on Monday’s to study film from the previous days game, but more importantly to have the players run and lift weights to alleviate some of that lingering soreness. Tuesday is normally your day off unless you’re injured, and everyone is always injured. So on this day your job is to meet with the trainer, get some treatment, and get ready for Wednesday practice. Then the vicious weekly cycle begins all over again.

On this particular Monday however, there was no evidence of pain on the faces on my teammates as they made their way into the meeting room to discuss our plans for the next two weeks. This year there was an off week prior to the Super Bowl, so GM Jim Murray and owner Leonard Tose had time to prepare for the ultimate road trip. I have never been in a happier room of people as I was for this particular meeting. To make things even better, we were informed that all players would be given two Super Bowl tickets, with the right to buy up to eighteen more. The price was $40 per ticket, and I couldn’t get my checkbook out fast enough.

Coach Vermeil backed off our practices a little that off week, but not much. I can remember being in full pads on the rock hard turf of freezing Veteran’s Stadium (pre practice bubble) while the starters were back to their normal thud tempo routine. There was some grumbling amongst some of the vets that practice should have been a no pads walkthrough, letting their battered bodies heal for the big game. I was fresh as a daisy however, and was so happy and excited to be a part of this that I would have worn someone else’s pads on top of mine just to be included in this event. Totally oblivious to the rules on scalping, I was planning on selling the eighteen tickets I had purchased at face value and make a killing. When a ticket broker approached me and offered me a mere $300 per ticket, I laughed at him. When I countered at $500 per ticket minimum, he wished me luck. So I planned to have my Dad down to the game and figure out what to do with these prime tickets when I got down there.

We left the following Monday for New Orleans and were swept up in a media and fan frenzy. From the moment we disembarked from the plane, there was a never ending list of meetings, practices, media appearances, and activities that would keep us busy for just about every waking moment. The broad smiles were evident on everyone walking down the airplane steps; from hard working assistant coaches Chuck Clausen and Dick Coury to player personnel director Carl Peterson to the equipment managers and everyone in between, this was a moment of a lifetime.

I shared a hotel room that week with Randy Logan, a devoutly spiritual veteran strong safety out of Michigan. Although I was somewhat abused as a lowly rookie free agent by a few of the established players, Randy couldn’t have been nicer and I was thrilled with my lottery pick of a roommate. Soon after we arrived and checked in the team hotel, we were hustled over to the Saints training facility for a brief workout. As we entered the practice locker room, we each had a large dressing space with our name over it, and it front of the locker was an eye high pile of gifts from every shoe and apparel company that had access to the area. T-shirts, spikes, sweats, and hats were abundant as we each filtered through our stash like kids on Christmas morning. And each day we arrived to work, there were more trinkets to stuff in your travel bag.

We practiced diligently that week, and Coach Vermeil had issued a strict eleven PM curfew every night for all players. Since our team hotel was near the airport far from the French Quarter, it made enjoying the New Orleans nightlife a little difficult. Our practice and film study usually ended around 6pm, so after a shower and a bite to eat it was either a rush trip to Pat O’Brien’s or the hotel bar. We were told later that each room had been given a rental car, but the team had decided not to allow us to have them. Our opponents the Oakland Raiders however, had been to the “show” previously and were taking full advantage of the transportation and the nightlife. We had read were a few of the Raiders were fined for coming in at 3AM during the week, and we sat there smugly in our comfy Super Bowl prison with confidence that we were going to beat this partying band of thugs in the big game.

My Dad arrived midweek, and the Eagles got him a room at the team hotel. I gave him the duty of scouting around town to see what he could get for my tickets. He would call me every night with a report that he couldn’t find a buyer, but would keep trying. I even called the guy who originally offered me $300 per ticket, but he laughed at me and told me to “take my tickets to the Super Bowl and shove them up my super hole.” Negotiations were never my strong suit.

Near the end of the week, Vermeil had invited legendary Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes to address the team. Although he exited football in 1978 due to a sideline confrontation with Clemson nose guard Charlie Bauman in the Gator Bowl, with a career record at Ohio State of 205-61-10 the pep talk seemed like a plausible idea. Hayes spoke of character and work ethic, and how it was not only right for the Philadelphia Eagles to be IN the game, it was right for the Eagles to WIN the game. It was a great speech, and even though I wasn’t going to play due to injury, when I left that meeting room I could have taken on the Ted Hendricks and Rod Martin myself with no problem.

Woody Hayes was an interesting and complex man. Like Coach Vermeil, he was driven to win, and found that his way to do it was to outwork his opponent. An honored veteran having served as a Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy during World War II; over the years coaches like Lou Holtz, Ara Parseghian, Bo Schembechler, and Earle Bruce had worked under him. Players Archie Griffin and Art Schlichter had played for him. And when he taught English at Ohio State (yes he was also Professor Hayes) fabled future basketball coach Bobby Knight was tutored by him. My favorite quote from Hayes was when asked why he went for a two point conversion when up by 36 points against Michigan, his reply was “because I couldn’t go for three.” A classic win at all cost and no holds barred philosophy.

There was also speculation that Hayes was faltering a bit at the end of his career, but was such an iconic figure in the state of Ohio that neither the AD or the President of Ohio State would dare let him go, so he orchestrated the career fatal blow to the Clemson player in order to give the OSU administration reason to fire him. You see, he was done, but he couldn’t quit. It wasn’t the Woody Hayes way.

History will show that we lost the game to Oakland 27-10. My Dad sold the tickets for face value five minutes before kick off. And Woody Hayes never coached again. You see, sometimes even the best of fairy tales have inglorious endings.