By: Eric Lyttle (TheOtherPaper.com) —
When you place your football fortunes on the shoulders of a freshman quarterback, sometimes the indiscretions of youth prove costly. No, we’re not talking about Terrelle Pryor casually running out of bounds short of the first-down marker in Ohio State’s heartbreaking loss to Texas in Monday’s Fiesta Bowl.

We’re talking about an even more hard-felt bowl loss, 30 years earlier. That’s when another OSU freshman quarterback named Art Schlichter made one of those rookie mistakes—a short third-down pass, forced over the middle into the hands of Clemson middle guard Charlie Bauman. The interception, with 1:59 left to play, thwarted what likely would have been a game-winning field goal attempt, inside the Tigers 30-yard line, on the next play

But it was so much more than that. Schlichter’s pick in the 1978 Gator Bowl in Jacksonville sparked what may be the most infamous incident in college football history—the punch.

As soon as he threw the errant pass, Schlichter wrestled Bauman out of bounds on the Ohio State sideline, virtually at the feet of Buckeyes coach Woody Hayes. As Bauman leaped up, obviously thrilled to have clinched a Clemson victory, Hayes grabbed him by the back of the jersey, and—in front of a national television audience—threw a wild haymaker, striking Bauman in the neck just under his chinstrap.

In that one angry, confusing, bat-shit crazy moment, a legendary coaching career was brought to an abrupt halt with a sad and infamous exclamation point.

An announcement the next morning by OSU athletic director Hugh Hindman stated the inevitable: Woody Hayes had been fired.

“It was sad, just very sad,” said Bill Jaco, a tight end on that ’78 team who was standing directly behind his coach when he snapped. “It’s one of the worst experiences of my life.”

The season

The 1978 season was odd almost from the beginning. In the first game of the year, against then-non-conference Penn State, Hayes gave Schlichter the starting job at quarterback over senior Rod Gerald. It didn’t sit well with some of the veterans.

“Art Schlichter wasn’t our guy,” said guard Ernie Andria. “Rod Gerald was our guy. One of the biggest mistakes Woody ever made was promising Art he’d start as a freshman.”

Schlichter didn’t help his cause by throwing five interceptions in a 19-0 loss to the Nittany Lions.

After a win over Minnesota, the Buckeyes squeaked by unheralded Baylor and tied unranked Southern Methodist before falling to Purdue. Worst of all, the season ended with a 14-3 loss to Michigan.

“The whole season just felt out of whack,” said Andria.

To make matters worse, a number of players on that ’78 squad say Hayes had slipped dramatically in recent years.

“It was really noticeable in just my four years,” said Jaco. “The diabetes was really getting him. He didn’t even know my name my senior year. He was calling me Bill Jobko, some player from the ’50s.”

“People didn’t realize how bad he was. The coaches covered a lot for him.”

“He’d changed,” agreed former lineman Jim Savoca. “The eruptions had become more prevalent.”

“Sometimes I’m still pissed at the university for letting him go that long,” said Jaco. “I loved him more than anything, and I truly believe he shouldn’t have been there.”

Ohio State finished 7-3-1 and fourth in the Big Ten. Still, the Gator Bowl came calling.

The bowl

“You have to remember, just a few years earlier—our freshman year—it was the Rose Bowl or nothing,” said former guard Jim Savoca. “The first non-Rose bowl we ever went to was the Orange our sophomore year, and then in ’77 it was the Sugar Bowl against Alabama and Bear Bryant. No one had ever heard of the Gator Bowl.”

“We didn’t even want to go,” said Andria. “The team voted to just stay home. But Woody came to us and said, ‘They said we have to go. It’s too much money to pass up.’”

Things didn’t get better once the Buckeyes arrived in Jacksonville to spend Christmas break. “It was funky,” said Savoca. “It was rainy, dreary, dark, dank.”

Ohio State entered the Gator Bowl as a two-point underdog to the seventh-ranked Clemson Tigers, who were being coached for the first time by Danny Ford, after Charlie Pell—who had led the team through the entire season—announced he was accepting the coaching job at Florida.

The Buckeyes jumped out to an early 3-0 lead, but the momentum shifted in the second and third quarters, and Clemson took a 17-9 lead into the fourth quarter. With 8:33 remaining, Ohio State closed the gap when Schlichter capped an 88-yard drive with a 2-yard touchdown run. On the two-point conversion attempt to tie the game, however, Schlichter was stopped.

But when Clemson fumbled the ball right back to Ohio State near midfield, the stage was set for a comeback. With 2:30 left to play, the Buckeyes looked poised to win, trailing by two, 17-15 at Clemson’s 24-yard line, but well within field goal range.

The pick

Guards Ernie Andria and Jim Savoca alternated shuttling the offensive plays into the huddle. On third and five from the 24-yard line, Andria took the play from assistant coach Alex Gibbs. Surprisingly, it was a pass play.

Hayes is attributed to once saying, “Only three things happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad.” But in 1978, with Schlichter at the helm, the Buckeyes were transitioning away from their traditional three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust style.

Still, “Given the time and place in the game, it seemed out of character to be throwing when we had a great kicker,” said Savoca.

Andria said his former teammates have accused him—in jest, he says—of announcing the wrong play once he got into the huddle.

“If they tell you that, don’t believe them,” said Andria. “I got the play right. I don’t remember the exact play now—a 37-Streak, or something—but I remember the instructions: ‘No interceptions. If it’s not there, throw it away and we’ll kick field goal.’ So I jinxed him right there.”

Former team manager Mark George was in the press box charting the plays that day. He remembers what play it was.

“I still have the notebook,” said George. “It was a Y-77 Cross. Art was supposed to drop back, and tailback Ron Springs was to come out of the backfield and cut across the middle for a little 5-yard dump pass.”

The play unfolded as designed, except Schlichter—who didn’t return calls for this story—apparently didn’t see Bauman standing in the way. The pass went right to the Clemson linebacker. It was the only interception of his college career.

Schlichter grabbed Bauman around the head and corralled him out of bounds on the OSU sideline. The television broadcast of the game—which aired last month on ESPN Classic—clearly shows Hayes step over to Bauman. It initially appeared as if the 65-year-old coach might be helping Bauman up, but instead, he grabbed the linebacker by the shoulder pad, turned him slightly and leveled a straight right forearm to Bauman’s throat. The Clemson player looked momentarily confused, as if he wasn’t sure quite what had just happened.

A skirmish quickly erupted, as Clemson players and Buckeyes alike pushed and shoved their way out onto the field, with Hayes—hardly repentant—trying to bulldog his way into the middle of it before OSU defensive tackle Byron Cato grabbed his coach from behind and pulled him from the scrum

If ABC’s game announcers, Keith Jackson and Ara Parseghian, saw what had happened, they never let on. After calling the interception, Jackson said simply, “And we’ve got a big fight going on, the officials buried in the middle. Aw, come on now. Quiet down, folks.”

Everyone else seemed to know, including the cameramen, who closed in on a shot of Hayes, grabbing the facemask and wrestling to get away from guard Ken Fritz, who was fighting to contain his volatile coach, as Jackson continued to talk: “Schlichter threw the ball right smack into Bauman’s hands. I don’t know what it was that triggered the fight.”

ABC then showed a replay—from a different, and wide, angle—that reveals Hayes grabbing Bauman’s jersey from behind, but then the shot was obscured by Clemson players and the punch couldn’t be seen.

“Can’t tell there,” Jackson told the TV viewers. “I don’t see anything that would have triggered it except a lot of glum faces.”

The punch was never mentioned on the air.

Everyone but Jackson and Parseghian, however, knew what had happened.

Team manager Mark George saw the punch from the press box. “I said, ‘He hit him!’ Then there was silence. Someone said, ‘Maybe you didn’t see it right,’ and I said, ‘He hit him.’ There was more silence. Coach (Gary) Tranquil was the only one who spoke up. He said, ‘Mark, if what you say is true, it’s all over.’”

“That was it. Nothing else was said about it. But they’re words I’ll never forget.”

From the sideline, Bill Jaco had a front-row view of the punch. Still, it took him a few moments to process what exactly had happened. Hayes was notorious for hitting his own players in practice, he noted.

“I’d seen it a million times. I’d seen us run the same play, and he’d always say, ‘No interceptions.’ He wanted to see the play run out, and if one of our defensive guys intercepted it, Woody would be pissed. He’d hit him,” said Jaco. “In my opinion, Woody totally forgot where he was. He thought he was at practice. I’ll go to my grave believing that.”

Savoca had a similar take. “I was on the sideline, and when I saw the interception, I kind of turned away in disgust. I turned back to see the kid get up, and I see Woody slug him. To us, it’s no big deal. He’d hit us a million times. Except this time, the kid’s wearing the wrong shirt. I immediately knew he was toast.”

The aftermath

Hayes didn’t address the team after the game. He sat in the coach’s office and even shooed out his assistants. He called Mark George, his longtime manager in.

“He had his glasses in his hand,” said George. “He said, ‘I’m going to need your help over the next few days.’ That’s all he said. I knew what it meant. It meant it was over.”

Ohio State announced Hayes’s firing at 9:30 the next morning, as the Buckeyes were flying back from Jacksonville.

“It was a surreal plane ride home,” said Andria. “As we’re about to land in Columbus, he got up and said, ‘I’m sorry to say, I won’t be your coach next year.’ I just remember how bad I felt, very tired, very sad. I went out and got drunk that night.”

Hayes never apologized for hitting Bauman. The few times he ever spoke of the incident, he’d claimed he’d only been trying to knock the ball out of Bauman’s hands because the Clemson player was wagging it at the OSU players, taunting them. The tape, however, shows no taunting.

“It was bullshit. I’m sure he knew it,” said Savoca. “But years later, I saw him. He came up to me and said, ‘I was going for the ball, wasn’t I?’ And I said, ‘Yes, sir.’”

“That was Woody. He wasn’t going to apologize. There was only A to B with him. There was nothing in between.”

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