2017 is the 75th anniversary of Ohio State's first national championship season. To honor the achievement, this series will post articles from the Columbus Citizen Journal on the day they ran in 1942.

In Today's Paper:

• Don Hawk introduces the Iowa Seahawks.
• Byrer looks back at the Michigan game and delves into the season stats.

With the Western Conference Championship safely signed, sealed, and delivered to their alma mater, Buckeye footballers today begin preparation for the game this Saturday with the Iowa Naval Cadets coached by Bernie Bierman, mentor at Minnesota during the Gophers "reign of terror."

Although the game, last of the season for the Bucks, will be an anti-climax to one of the most hectic football years in history, it will bring to Buck fans one of the top teams in the nation today.

Bierman has an all-star squad of former college and professional players well-seasoned with men whom he coached at Minnesota and he has guided it to a successful season through one of the hardest schedules a coach ever faced.

Had "Breather" Saturday

The Cadets prepped for the Ohio State game by smashing Nebraska 46-0 last week-end, the worst defeat inflicted upon the Cornhuskers in the 52 years they have been playing college football.

Earlier in the season, Northwestern had fallen 20-12, Kansas had been annihilated, 61-0, Minnesota had been beaten in a thrilling 7-6 defensive jamboree, Michigan had been walloped handily by a 26-14 score. Indiana had been beaten by a surprisingly small score, 13-7.

Irish Did It

The only team that holds a decision over the Naval Cadets this year is Notre Dame and that was a smashing 28-0 victory. But the loss is not so surprising when several factors are taken into consideration.

Notre Dame had spent several weeks preparing for the game and come gradually to peak strength, both mentally and physically, for the game. The sailors, on the other hand, had been meeting such teams as Northwestern, Minnesota and Michigan the three weeks before they just weren't able to concentrate on the one game alone.

Fisher Heads Backfield

The special pride and joy of Coach Bierman is his star-studded backfield headed by Dick Fisher, former Buckeye halfback, who has been one of the real offensive threats for the Iowa Cadets all season.

Fisher has been the left halfback all season and has kicked, passed and ran with the ball in a manner much like his college days. Last week he accounted for the first Iowa touchdown, passed to Forrest Evashevski for the second, and gained ground consistently when he was in the game against the Cornhuskers.

Behind Fisher is Bob Swisher, the former Northwestern ace. Swisher is a fine triple-threat man and was considered one of the best in the Big Ten during his college days but he rates on the second team.

Langhurst Second Stringer

The fullback is Ed Jankowski, formerly of Wisconsin, and he had to beat Jimmy Langhurst before taking over the position. Langhurst was the Buck fullback on the 1939 championship team and was the captain of the Bucks a year later but he rates only a second-team berth behind the line-busting Jankowski.

At right halfback last week was Babe Levior, one of Bierman's Gopher players. On the college team, "Babe" was a quarterback but on this team he fills in at the fight halfback position.

Evashevski at Quarter

The quarterback is the former Michigan captain, field general and leader. Forest Evashevski, who is one of the finest leaders in the game today. He is a good signal caller and an excellent diagnostician of opponents' plays.

That same sort of material is available for Bierman all across the line and that's the kind of team the Bucks will be meeting this week.

The Cadets are a talented and experienced team that has battled through a demanding schedule. If Ohio State is able to defeat them it will be back-to-back headline grabbing wins for the Buckeyes.

One thing probably has Fritz Crisler and his Michigan assistants still wondering today as they review Ohio State's 21-7 title-winning victory in the rain before 71,000 drenched fans Saturday.

That is how it happened that a team which wasn't supposed to have a pass attack could complete three forward passes for touchdowns against a team as good as Michigan on a wet field with a wet ball.

There IS an answer, of course. Perhaps there are a couple of answers.

One is the Ohio State does have a pass attack, regardless of what Michigan scouts may have figured. Ohio didn't have to use it much this season. The running of Fekete, Horvath and James proved effective enough against all other teams Ohio State met except Wisconsin.

In that Wisconsin game the Buckeye pass attack was like just about everything else Ohio State tried that day. It just didn't click. 

Another reason was that Michigan played a seven-man line much of the time Saturday in a concentrated effort to bottle up the power slashes of Feket and Sarringhaus. They did a pretty good job of doing that. But by doing it they left some weak spots in their pass defense.

First Horvath and then Sarringhaus pitched strikes to those vital spots and first Sarringhaus, then Shaw and then Horvath grabbed the apple in those weak spots and lugged it on over for touchdowns.

It was a beautiful job of crossing up a defense. Credit at least an assist to Fritz Mackey who scouted Michigan and did it well.

Rounding 'Em Up

When the Irish Krieger called a piling-on penalty on Al Wistert after the big Michigan tackle had fallen on Horvath Saturday and then didn't enforce it, it was the first time in his officiating career that he was talked out of exacting a penalty he'd called...It wasn't Michigan which talked Irish out of it...Frank Birch saw something that Krieger didn't see---that Wistert had been tripped as he rushed up on the play and the piling-on was not only unintentional but unavoidable...There were some boos when the penalty wasn't enforced...In this observers' opinion the officials were right.

Dick Fisher, Jim Langhurst and Charlie Ream, former Buckeyes, are on Bernie Bierman's Iowa Seahawk team which meets the Bucks Saturday in Ohio Stadium in the season's finale...There are still plenty of good tickets left for the Seahawk game. Bernie Bierman has scouted the Buckeyes personally twice this season and is certain to have some trouble cooked up for them for Saturday.

Now is a good a time as any to reveal that Ohio State coaches weren't surprised by the Buckeye victory over the Wolverines...They knew Michigan was good but figured, before the game, that the Wolverines had been at their peak the preceding Saturday against Notre Dame and wouldn't be quite as tough.

Will Brown Be Ohio's Rockne? 

Mack McGinnis, of Elyria, asks the above question in a letter received in the morning mail.

Mr. McGinnis' letter follows:

"The little guy Brown 'dood' it Saturday just as he has been doing all season with the exception of the Wisconsin turf tussle and what is the nearest thing to an apotheosis is no doubt in execution this week at Columbus as the avid gridiron fans gyrate about the Capital City paying their respects of glorification and tribute to the master-mite.

"The Buckeye backers visualize in Brown the answer to their prayers for a coach that will bring them championship team after championship team. They see in the diminutive dynamo the Knute Rockne; the Bernie Bierman of Ohio State football.

"And well they might! For what happened Saturday as the Buckeyes demonstrated an air attack heretofore unobserved on this year's Buckeye eleven in passing over Michigan to annex the undisputed Big Nine championship may be but a prefatory of the thrilling chapters that are to come.

"I make this optimistic statement because although Brown has had around 18 qualified players this year at Columbus, the material of this season is but a tin can in a scrap pile compared to the wealth of talent that will matriculate in the future at the Capital City university and the explosion created this season by Brown's team in the nation's football warfare is therefore only a shotgun volley compared to the 21-gun salute that will ring out from Columbus before the welterweight coaching genius turns the masterminding of the Scarlet Scourge over to his successor.

"Brown demonstrated his predilection for title teams at Massillon as his teams won victory after victory and state championship after state championship. The little guy is good. In my opinion he's one of the best coaches in the nation if not the best.

"In this correspondent's cranium there beats a pulsation that says that just as 1942 is known as the annum in which Mr. C. C. discovered America, 1942 will become known as the year that the football world discovered the exceptional creative ability and the precise efficiency of one Mr. P. Brown.

"And I'd be willing to bet you my pair of war-styled pants on that---Lew. 

"Good writeup you had Sun. "Mack McGinnis"

Defense Fair, Offense Tops, Buckeye Statistics Disclose

Statistics at the end of nine games on Ohio State's 10-game football schedule show clearly that the defense has been only mediocre to good but nothing to brag about---while the offense has been superb.

The defense has been fairly pregnable, giving up a total of 102 points, more than 10 per game; opponents have averaged about 105 yards per game rushing and another 100 yards per contest on passes and have a total of 81 first downs, nine per game.

Bucks Offense Shines

But the Buck offensive totals shine like a bright new penny when compared with this total. In rushing, the Buck average is close to the 300-yard-per-game mark with a total of 2652 in the nine games. In passing Ohio still was better than the opponents with 1060 yards as against the opponents' 903 while in first downs Ohio showed another great advantage with a total of 146 to 81 for the opposition.

Gene "Big Bertha" Fekete was still the king-pin in the attack on the ground. He had carried the ball 169 times for a total of 889 yards, an average of 5.26 yards each time he took the ball. That is only 11 yards short of the 900-yard total that would give Fekete an average of 100 yards per contest. He is the team's high scorer with 81 points and virtually clinched the Big Ten scoring crown with a season's total of 52 points in conference play, four points ahead of teammate Paul Sarringhaus. Their only serious competition comes from Pat Harder, Wisconsin fullback, who had 40 points.

Sarringhaus Top Passer

Sarringhaus was the leading Buck passer with a total of 478 yards on 18 completed passes in 40 attempts. This yardage added to his rushing made him the leading ground gainer on the team with a total of 1,022 yards.