Woody Hayes asked a lot of his staff.
After all, the legendary Ohio State football coach lived by the mantra that hard work could take you anywhere and that approach for him paid off: 205 wins, 13 Big Ten Championships, five national championships, three Heisman Trophy winners, and generations of adoring Buckeye fans.
For his staff, it was much of the same. Long hours preparing for opponents, watching film, meetings on top of meetings, monitoring the grades of their players, and more. Their time was such a valuable commodity that Hayes ended the practice of allowing assistant coaches to teach classes at Ohio State. The two to three hours spent in the classroom each week was simply incompatible with beating the Michigan Wolverines.
For much of the better and some of the worse, it worked. Hayes himself worked hard, his assistants worked hard, and they all reaped accolades and more importantly, they stacked wins on Saturdays.
Sometimes, they even worked hard in in unrelated ways.
Lou McCullough, who served as Woody's defensive coordinator before leaving to become the athletic director at Iowa State in 1971, shared the following story in the book Woody Hayes: A Reflection from long-time Columbus Dispatch sports editor Paul Hornung:
"One night Woody read an article in Reader's Digest about a physical fitness program at a high school in California," McCullough relates. "He was all fired up for our 8 a.m. meeting the next day and promptly told us we were in lousy shape and should be running to the top of St. John Arena every morning. He started reading the article, then decided instead he would march us to to the top of the arena immediately. When we finally struggled up there, he lined us up and read the entire article. Then he marched us down to our offices and gave us a test. He got his point across. Everybody got 100 percent."
Coaches running steps inside St. John Arena! Hornung goes on to share a similar tale:
In another physical fitness effort at one spring practice, Woody decided that staff members—including the head coach—were carrying around too many extra pounds. He proposed a diet for all. When the Buckeye players returned for fall practice, they were struck by how trim their coaches—including the head coach—had become over the summer.
But the coaches worked hard that fall, diet-diminished appetites revived, training table food was tasty and plentiful, and the pounds somehow crept back on. The head coach looked just about the same to fans attending the opening game in Ohio Stadium. He weighed in at a robust 220 pounds.
Let's start by acknowledging that the word "proposed" is doing a lot of work in this passage. Woody may have proposed it, but everyone on his staff knew the deal: they'd be dieting as well, whether they felt the need to or not.
The story is just classic Woody Hayes: disciplined, demanding, and all-in. He didn’t just preach toughness and accountability, he lived it. But in true Woody fashion, the intensity of the season, when football superseded absolutely everything else in life, brought the weight back.
