December 10 - Heisman Trophy

On Saturday night, Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith captured college football’s most prestigious player award, The Heisman Trophy.

It seems like it was just 2002 when Jim Tressel pulled a great coup by landing the #1 rated High School quarterback recruit, Justin Zwick. Troy Smith was also in that recruiting class. It makes you wonder what 2003–2005 could have been had Troy emerged as the starting QB earlier.

I have my own piece of Heisman history.

While living in Northern California, I was the President of the Sacramento Valley OSU Alumni Club. Although you might think we could have held our meeting in a phone booth, actually we had almost 200 members.

On September 23, 1989, I took a group of Ohio State boosters to Los Angeles for an OSU football game against USC. We had over 30 people on the trip. Before the game, there was an OSU pep rally with over 2000 Buckeye faithful. The band played, the cheerleaders performed, and there was a raffle. I won an OSU football signed by the 4 Heisman Trophy winners from Ohio State.

Les Horvath, 1944
Vic Janowicz, 1950
Howard "Hopalong" Cassady, 1955
Archie Griffin, 1974-75

Someone offered me $2000 on the spot for the football, but I declined. It has probably increased in value as two of the players have since passed. OSU lost the game that day, 42-3.

In 1994, we were looking for a speaker for our annual banquet for the Sacramento OSU Alumni Club. We had secured Coach John Cooper as the headliner. The week before, Cooper informs us that he would only fly first class and he wanted to bring along 3 family members. Our club did not have enough money in the bank to cover the expense. Most of our fund raising was spent providing scholarships to people from Northern California who wanted to go to OSU. Being a club of small means, we declined Coach Cooper’s request.

Working with the OSU Alumni office in Columbus, we were able to get a replacement speaker: Archie Griffin. Archie was incredible. He was a class act. He answered questions, posed for pictures, and told us many wonderful Woody Hayes stories. He also did NOT bill our club for his travel expenses.

I met another OSU Heisman winner: Eddie George. George won the trophy in 1995. In January 2000, I was staying at the same Jacksonville hotel as the Tennessee Titans. They were preparing for the AFC Championship game against the Jaguars.

I saw Eddie in the hotel lobby and gave him a rowdy “O-H”. He responded in kind with an “I-O”. We talked for few minutes and I asked him if he missed OSU. He said, “Every Day.” I didn’t have my Heisman football with me, but I’m sure he would have signed it, if asked.

Eddie George represented himself and The University very well. He showed his continued passion for OSU Football when he showed up on the sidelines for the Texas and Michigan games this year. I have no doubt he will be in Glendale on January 8th.

Based on what I have heard about Troy Smith, I believe he will continue the tradition of class illustrated by Archie and Eddie.

Congratulations Mr. Smith.