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True to his gods, Woody won: more victories (238) than any active big-time coach except Alabama's Bear Bryant; undefeated national championships in 1954 and 1968; 13 Big Ten titles (six shared); college, coach of the year in 1957 and 1975. His players captured three Heisman Trophies, and 58 made the All-American lists. Hayes was fanatically loyal to his athletes, who usually were loyal in return, and he was genuinely respected in Ohio for his personal integrity and little-publicized acts of charity and kindness.
Yet he was always frighteningly—even pathologically—at the mercy of private demons. "When we lose a game, nobody's madder at me than me," he said five years ago. "When I look into the mirror in the morning, I want to take a swing at me." Literally. After losing to Iowa in 1963, Hayes slashed his face with a large ring on his left hand. Pacing the sidelines, he sometimes bit into the fleshy heel of his hand until it bled. Even a heart attack in 1974 did not make Hayes ease up.
In recent years the pressure took a greater toll, and his ruminations about the sport became more strident. "This game of football used to be pretty important to me. It isn't any more. Now it's just damn near everything," he said last month. The past season was especially frustrating: his young Buckeyes had a mediocre, for him, record of 7-3-1, and he lost his third straight game to archrival Michigan. What's more, the losses came after Hayes introduced a passing offense, a strategy he used to ridicule as "frivolous."
Still, Ohio State was invited to play Clemson in the Gator Bowl, and there, with 1 min. 58 sec. left to play and a national television audience looking on, Woody's volcanic temper erupted yet again. Clemson's Charlie Bauman, young enough at 20 to be Hayes' grandson, intercepted a pass to halt an Ohio State drive and preserve a 17-15 victory. On the play, Bauman was forced out of bounds right in front of Woody. Bauman did not taunt the old coach, as some accounts had it. He did not have to. For Hayes, losing was goad enough. He swung his hefty right forearm at Bauman's throat, then beat on the face mask of one of his own players who tried to restrain him.
At 7:45 the next morning, Ohio State fired its fallen idol. Kelton Dansler, one of the coach's top linebackers, later tried to find the right words for what had happened. Loyally, he called Woody Hayes a "great man," but then he said of his coach: "He pushed a little too hard and tried to hang on a little too long." That was summing it all up as kindly as possible.