Glenn Edward Schembechler Jr. (left) and Wayne Woodrow Hayes
November 24, 1973: The football teams of Ohio State University and the University of Michigan play each other at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. This was intended as the 30th time that the winner of this game would win the Big Ten Conference Championship. (And there have been many more since.)
Wayne Woodrow Hayes, known as Woody, had coached at Ohio State since 1951, and had already won the Big 10 title 7 times, and the National Championship in 1954, 1957, 1961 and 1968. Glenn Edward Schembechler Jr., known as Bo, had played for him at Miami University in Ohio, and had coached under him there and at Ohio State, before becoming head coach at Miami and then at Michigan in 1969.
Ohio State was going for back-to-back National Championships in 1969, with a supposedly unbeatable team, but Bo's Wolverines shocked Woody's Buckeyes in Ann Arbor, re-establishing Michigan as a national football power, and beginning what would eventually be known as "The Ten-Year War" between not just the two programs, but between the two men. Ohio State won in 1970, Michigan in 1971 and Ohio State in 1972.
Ohio State came into the game at 9-0, having been ranked Number 1 for most of the season. The closest any team had come to beating them was Wisconsin, and they lost 24-0. The Buckeyes had hung 60 points on Northwestern, 56 on Minnesota, 55 on Iowa, 37 on both Texas Christian and Indiana, and 35 on Michigan State. With sophomore running back Archie Griffin, on his way to becoming the only 2-time Heisman Trophy winner, and future All-Pro linebacker Randy Gradishar, they looked unbeatable -- just as they were in 1968, and just as they looked in 1969.
Michigan came into the game 10-0, and ranked Number 4. They'd had some closer calls, only beating Navy by 14 points and Illinois by 15. But they scored 49 on Indiana, 47 on Stanford, 35 on Wisconsin, and 34 on both Minnesota and Purdue. And they had a strong defense, shutting out Navy, Oregon and Michigan State. Only Stanford and Indiana reached double figures against them. Cornerback Dave Brown, defensive tackle Dave Gallagher, tight end Paul Seal and placekicker Mike Lantry were named All-Americans.
A crowd of 105,223 plowed into the enormous bowl in Ann Arbor, nicknamed The Big House. Millions more watched Chris Schenkel and former Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty call the game on ABC. It was Ohio State vs. Michigan. It was "The Game."
It rained before the game. Coupled with both coaches' distaste for the forward pass -- Hayes famously said, "There are three things that can happen when you throw the football, and two of them are bad," meaning an incompletion and an interception -- this game was destined to remain mostly on the ground. Michigan passed for only 90 yards, and Ohio State attempted only 4 passes.
The game was scoreless after the 1st quarter. Early in the 2nd quarter, Blair Conway kicked a field goal to put Ohio State up 3-0. Michigan struggled, and Ohio State gained a lot on the ground through Griffin. But it was the other big back, Pete Johnson, who ended up scoring the Buckeye touchdown, putting them up 10-0 just before halftime.
Midway through the 3rd quarter, Ohio State got to the Michigan 34-yard line, but on 4th and 2, Hayes, that most conservative of football coaches, refused to gamble on a 51-yard field goal attempt, and went for the 1st down, and couldn't convert it. That gave the Wolverines new life, and they drove 11 plays, and Lantry got them on the board with a field goal.
Midway through the 4th quarter, Michigan was able to drive down to the Ohio State 10-yard line, but the Buckeyes held them, and it was 4th and inches. Hayes put 9 men on the line of scrimmage, making a "goal-line stand" on the 10, because he had predicted that Wolverine quarterback Dennis Franklin would once again hand off to Ed Shuttlesworth.
But Schembechler, unlike Hayes, was willing to gamble: He had Franklin fake the handoff to Shuttlesworth, and got himself through the line for a touchdown. It was 10-10.
With 6 minutes left, Michigan got the ball on their 10. Franklin drove into Buckeye territory, but with 2:23 to go, he was injured and had to leave the game. Schembechler decided to gamble again, and had Lantry try a 58-yard field goal. It had the distance, but was just wide left.
Ohio State couldn't do anything with their opportunity, and quarterback Greg Hare threw an interception that must have driven Hayes up the wall. The Wolverines got the ball to the Buckeye 28, and Lantry attempted a game-winning 45-yard field goal. But he missed, and 10-10 was the final score.
So now, there was a tie not just in the game, but for the Big 10 title. And, at the time, the Big 10 had a rule that now seems ridiculous: Only the league's Champion could go to a bowl game, the Rose Bowl. Until 1971, they had another ridiculous rule: No team could go to the Rose Bowl 2 years in a row. In other words, if a team won back-to-back titles, the 2nd place team would go to the Rose Bowl instead.
With that rule having gone by the wayside, and the title being tied, the Big 10's representative to play the University of Southern California (USC) in the Rose Bowl would be up to a vote the next day, held in a telephone conference call of the league's athletic directors. Since Ohio State had gone to the Rose Bowl the year before, it seemed simple enough: It was Michigan's turn.
Even Hayes agreed. He hated Michigan as much as any coach has ever hated his school's arch-rival. You approached him with great care during "Michigan Week." And he usually referred to them as "that school up north." Ohio State fans began referring to them by the initials of that epithet: "TSUN." But as competitive as Woody was, this time, he admitted, "We had to win this one to go, and we didn't. If they vote Michigan, Michigan deserves to go." And if the vote were a 5-5 split, then the old rule would be observed, and Michigan would go.
The vote was 6-4 for Ohio State. The Buckeyes voted for themselves, of course; and also got the votes of Illinois, Northwestern, Purdue, Wisconsin and Michigan State. The Wolverines voted for themselves, and also got the votes of Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota.
Bo blew his stack. He would have blown it again if he had lived long enough to hear a recording released on connection with the 2013 Big Ten Network documentary Tiebreaker, of Michigan State athletic director J. Burt Smith, 4 days after the game and 3 days after the vote, that he had voted for Ohio State, because they "best met the definition of the most representative team."
Another rumor came out that MSU voted for Ohio State in retaliation for Michigan's "No" vote on their admittance to the Big Ten in 1949. (The University of Chicago had dropped out in 1940, and so the league was a Big Nine for a few years.) Granted, Michigan State hates Michigan as much as Ohio State does, but 24 years is a long time to hold a grudge, especially over a move that didn't even work.
In his 1989 memoir, Schembechler said that Illinois coach Bob Blackman was told by his athletic director, Cecil Coleman, that he would vote for Michigan, but that Coleman voted for Ohio State anyway.
Bo also suggested in that memoir that the Big Ten knew that Franklin's injury would make it problematic for Michigan, and they'd already lost the last 4 Rose Bowls to the league then known as the Pacific-Eight, and they thought Ohio State would have a better chance to win. As it turned out, they were right: Ohio State won the 1974 Rose Bowl, beating USC 42-21.
But the tie ended up hurting Ohio State, if not as much as it hurt Michigan. Notre Dame, ranked Number 3, upset the new Number 1, Alabama, in the Sugar Bowl, and were awarded the National Championship. Ohio State ended up Number 2 in both the Associated Press poll (AP, the football writers) and the United Press International poll (UPI, the football coaches). Michigan finished Number 6 in both polls.
In 1972, '73 and '74 combined, Michigan went 30-2-1, their only non-wins being the '72 loss to Ohio State, 14-11; the '73 tie with Ohio State, 10-10; and the '74 loss to Ohio State, 12-10. Three non-wins, by a combined total of 5 points. And yet, they didn't go to a bowl game in any of those seasons. Finally, in 1975, the Big Ten voted to open postseason bids to as many as 4 teams, which has since been expanded to 6. Michigan became the 1st team to benefit, going 8-0-2 in 1975 before losing to Ohio State, and then going to the Orange Bowl, where they lost to Oklahoma.
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November 24, 1973 was a Saturday. And there were other big games in college football that day, some of them rivalries, besides Number 1 Ohio State vs. Number 4 Michigan:
* Number 2 Alabama had already played 2 days earlier, on Thanksgiving, beating Number 7 Louisiana State, 21-7 at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
* Number 3 Oklahoma played the day before, the day after Thanksgiving, beating Nebraska, 27-0 at Memorial Stadium in Norman, Oklahoma. This clinched them the Big Eight title. However, they were on probation, and couldn't accept the Big Eight Champions' bid to the Orange Bowl.
* Number 5 Notre Dame had also played on Thanksgiving, beating the Air Force Academy, 48-15 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana.
* Number 6 Penn State beat Number 20 Pittsburgh, 35-13 at Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania. Led by Heisman Trophy-winning running back John Cappelletti, Joe Paterno's Nittany Lions went on to beat LSU in the Orange Bowl, and finished undefeated. But they only finished Number 5 in the polls, behind fellow undefeated Notre Dame, undefeated-but-one-tie Ohio State, undefeated-but-one-tie Oklahomna, and one-loss Alabama.
* Number 9 USC beat Number 8 UCLA, 23-13 at the Los Angeles Coliseum. This clinched the Pac-8 title. But, as I said, USC lost the Rose Bowl to Ohio State.
* Number 11 Texas played on Thanksgiving, beating Texas A&M, 42-13 at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas. That clinched the Southwest Conference title. But they lost the Cotton Bowl to Nebraska.
* In a rare Sunday game for college football in those days, Number 13 Arizona State played arch-rival Arizona the next day, November 25, and won, 55-19 at Sun Devil Stadium in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, Arizona. This clinched the title of the Western Athletic Conference. In 1978, Arizona and Arizona State left the WAC, and made the Pac-8 a Pac-10.
* Number 16 North Carolina State, then coached by Lou Holtz in his 2nd season of his 1st NCAA Division I-A head coaching job, beat Wake Forest, 52-13 at Carter Stadium in Raleigh. (It's now named Carter-Finley Stadium.) This game won N.C. State the Atlantic Coast Conference title.
* Dartmouth beat Princeton, 42-24 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton, New Jersey, to wrap up the Ivy League title.
* New York City's only remaining major-college football team, Columbia, lost to Brown, 37-14 at Brown Stadium in Providence, Rhode Island.
* And Rutgers got pasted by Colgate, 42-0 at Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway, New Jersey.
There were 5 games played in the NBA that day:
* The New York Knicks lost to the Golden State Warriors, 107-99 at Madison Square Garden. Walt "Clyde" Frazier scored 34 points, but it wasn't enough.
* The Buffalo Braves beat the Kansas City-Omaha Kings, 143-131 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. Bob McAdoo had 43 points and 17 rebounds for the Braves, who became the San Diego Clippers in 1978 and the Los Angeles Clippers in 1984.
* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Atlanta Hawks, 112-91 at The Omni in Atlanta.
* The Chicago Bulls beat the Detroit Pistons, 114-112 in overtime at the Chicago Stadium.
* And the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 113-108 at the Portland Memorial Coliseum.
There were also 5 games played in the ABA:
* The New York Nets beat the Utah Stars, 119-113 at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City. Julius "Dr. J" Erving scored 38 points for the Long Island club.
* The Virginia Squires beat the Indiana Pacers, 108-102 at the Scope in Norfolk, Virginia.
* The Denver Rockets beat the Carolina Cougars, 127-122 in overtime at the Greensboro Coliseum. The Rockets became the Denver Nuggets in 1974.
* The Kentucky Colonels beat the San Diego Conquistadors, 124-121 at Freedom Hall in Louisville.
* And the San Antonio Spurs beat the Memphis Tams, 121-118 in double overtime at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio.
There were 6 games played in the NHL:
* The New York Rangers played the Los Angeles Kings to a tie, 5-5 at The Garden.
* The New York Islanders lost to the Detroit Red Wings, 6-4 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.
* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 5-2 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.
* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
* The Minnesota North Stars beat the California Golden Seals, 6-3 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.
* The Philadelphia Flyers beat the St. Louis Blues, 1-0 at the St. Louis Arena -- or, as it was known from 1973 to 1980, when St. Louis-based Ralston Purina, with its Checkerboard Square logo, owned the Blues, the Checkerdome.
* The Atlanta Flames, the Boston Bruins, the Buffalo Sabres and the Vancouver Canucks were not scheduled.
And there were 2 games played in the World Hockey Association. The Cleveland Crusaders beat the Toronto Toros, 2-1 at the Cleveland Arena. And the Houston Aeros beat the Chicago Cougars, 5-3 at the Sam Houston Coliseum in Houston.