Worst Moments in Big Ten Football History #1: 1978 Gator Bowl

FanHouse is counting down the ten best, ten worst, and ten weirdest moments in the history of Big Ten football.

With the ten best moments accounted for, it's time to move on to the ten worst. There will be some silly moments on this list, and some moments which can best be described as "stupid," but there's only one moment which qualifies as senseless, and it's the closing moments of the 1978 Gator Bowl.

To set the stage: The Clemson Tigers were facing off against Woody Hayes' Ohio State Buckeyes. Late in the fourth quarter, OSU was trailing, 17-15. Quarterback Art Schlichter had to know the famous axiom attributed to Hayes, "There are three things that can happen when you throw the football, and two of them are bad." But the situation called for a pass, and Schlichter (a true freshman) tossed it where Clemson defender Charlie Bauman could catch it. Which he did. Bauman ran towards the near sideline, knowing that the Tigers just needed to run out the clock to lock up the victory. Unfortunately for Bauman, the near sideline was not his own.

He was met by Woody Hayes, a man in whom there was not an ounce of quit. If Hayes couldn't win this game (and he couldn't), he could at least let everybody know he wasn't happy about the outcome. Now, nobody would've blamed Hayes for being upset, or even for letting it show. The problem was in how he chose to display his anger: by punching Bauman in the chest, right there on the field, in front of thousands of people and ABC's cameras.

You'd have to be triple-distilled stupid to think that Woody Hayes was a bad coach. It's probably a close call between him and Michigan's Fielding Yost as to who was the greatest Big Ten football coach of all time. Hayes was at least the equal, if not the superior, of his contemporaries, legends like Bear Bryant, Bud Wilkinson, and Bob Devaney. It's unfair that the public memory of Hayes portrays him less as a coaching great and more like the Tasmanian Devil. However, even Hayes himself acknowledged that he had a rather short fuse. This was far from Hayes' first on-the-field incident, though his rage was usually targeted at camera operators and referees.

This, however, was a new low, even for Hayes, and it would have set a dangerous precedent if OSU had done nothing. Shortly after the team returned to Columbus, Hayes was fired.

While it wasn't a popular move in Columbus, what choice did they have? Woody spun his firing by noting, "Nobody despises to lose more than I do. That's got me into trouble over the years, but it also made a man of mediocre ability into a pretty good coach." Some of that was false humility, however. Hayes' abilities were far beyond mediocre, and he knew it. Likewise, there's a world of difference between hating to lose and displaying poor sportsmanship. We can admire Hayes' tenacity, but who among us would teach our kids to imitate his example?

And that's what's so senseless about the Gator Bowl incident. Woody Hayes didn't need to be a loose cannon to be a great football coach. It's unfair that his punching Charlie Bauman has become the lasting image of his 25-year tenure in Columbus. Unfair, but fitting, because he crossed a line he knew he shouldn't have crossed.