\u201cIt is safe to say that the teams will never meet again.\u201d \u2013 Columbus Sunday Dispatch (November 17, 1912)
\tThe first gridiron encounter between Penn State and Ohio State on November 16, 1912 was an unmitigated fiasco that devolved into something more akin to an MTV Celebrity Deathmatch than a genteel college football contest.\u00a0
\tThe game was played on Ohio Field and the official final score was 1-0 in favor of the Nittany Lions. The rare tally was the result ofa\u00a0decision by Ohio State\u2019s coach John R. Richards to \u201c[withdraw] his men from the field\u201d so that he could \u201cprotect them from unnecessary injury and roughness.\u201d There was 9:06 remaining in the fourth quarter and Ohio State was trailing 37-0 when Richards pulled the plug in the name of safety.
\tOther than Michigan, Ohio State played almost exclusively against other Ohio schools in the early 20th century. So much so, sports editors rarely referred to OSU as the Buckeyes. In fact, in 1912, the Columbus Dispatch referred to both Mount Union and Denison football teams as the Buckeyes, but not Ohio State.
\tBut after years of slowly mounting pressure to schedule games with bigger foes from abroad, the Scarlet and Gray began to venture outside of Ohio. The 1912 schedule included Michigan, Penn State and the first-ever game with Michigan Agricultural College (Michigan State) as well. Ohio State joined the Western Conference (which would eventually become the Big Ten) that year and would begin playing a Western Conference schedule in 1913.
\tFor its part, Penn State played a schedule laden with Keystone State schools but one of them, Penn, was considered one of the powerhouse programs in all of college football at the time. The Nittany Lions usually played strong out-of-state programs such as Cornell and Colgate, as well. Eastern football was considered the benchmark in college football in the early 20th century and Penn State competed in the thick of it. The Scarlet and Gray\u2019s only taste of Eastern football had been a 0-23 loss to the famed Carlisle Indians in 1904 and a 0-6 defeat to Syracuse in 1911.
\tWisconsin alumnus John R. Richards had been hired as athletic director and football coach to help prepare Ohio State\u2019s athletic program for its step up to what would come to be known as the Big Ten Conference.
\tHis team entered the PSU game 5-1 with wins by impressive scores over Otterbein, Denison, Cincinnati, Case and Oberlin, with the loss coming to Michigan, 14-0. Even though some of the men on the roster were regarded as being among the very best to have ever donned Scarlet and Gray moleskins, their names (despite seemingly unforgettable nicknames) have almost entirely faded from our collective memory. Tackle Arthur \u201cBugs\u201d Raymond, guard Irving \u201cGeissy\u201d Geissman, halfback Maurice \u201cWindy\u201d Briggs and fullback Campbell \u201cHonus\u201d Graf\u00a0were selected to Ohio State\u2019s all-time team that covered the first quarter century of OSU football, and end Boyd \u201cSmash\u201d Cherry was the first OSU player to be named as an All-American.
\tPenn State was coached by Bill Hollenback, a former All-American fullback at Penn. The Nittany Lions hadn\u2019t been considered an elite Eastern program before Hollenback\u2019s arrival, but PSU thrived under his leadership and posted an 18-2-4 record during his first three seasons. The 1912 squad was 6-0 and had yielded only six points when it came to Columbus. Their roster included three players who would eventually be enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame: fullback James \u201cPete\u201d Mauthe, end Dexter Very and quarterback Eugene \u201cShorty\u201d Miller.
\tAccording to various accounts, Hollenback felt his team was disrespected by the Columbus media and decided to motivate his team by peppering his pregame speech with press clippings that \u201cbelittled\u201d the Nittany Lions.\u00a0
\tAlthough accounts differed as to the \u201creal seat of the whole trouble,\u201d a squib in the October 1956 Ohio State Monthly magazine suggested that the extracurricular activities were triggered by a comment by Miller, who was only 5\u20195\u201d and 145 pounds, to Ohio State fan favorite, \u201cBugs\u201d Raymond:
\t\t\u201cAccording to legend … \u2019Shorty\u2019 Miller, the diminutive Lion play-caller, walked up the big guard and said, \u2018Well Mr. Pride of Ohio, Mr. Mauthe is coming right through you.\u2019 On the next play, Miller sent \u2018Pete\u2019 Mauthe\u2026crashing into Raymond and he went all the way to paydirt.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 \t
\tFrom there, the game fell into what the Dispatch described as \u201chand-to-hand combat.\u201d The Lantern opined that the crux of the problem was the umpire, Clark F. Hinman. It argued that had the former West Virginia player \u201cexercised his proper duty\u201d and expelled troublemakers early in the game, the \u201cbad blood\u201d that boiled over into \u201clittle fights\u201d later could have been avoided. For his part, Hinman was so distraught that he responded to his critics in a letter to the Dispatch.
\tThe Nittany Lions and their coach maintained that it was just hard-nosed Eastern football, but the description of play by Ohio State\u2019s backup center Earl Maxwell, who played the second half with a broken nose, sounded more like team fisticuffs.
\t\u201cThe slugging in the middle of the Penn State line toward the close of the game was something awful,\u201d Maxwell said. \u201cGuard [James] Bebout played opposite of me part of the time. He not only kept playing on my damaged nose every play, but used foul language as well. It was the roughest football game that I was ever in.\u201d
\tRichards received a fair amount of flack for pulling his team, but he defended himself by stating he did it to protect his players from injury. He told reporters after the game that \u201cit would be necessary to teach [his team] pugilism\u201d in order to have \u201cany chance to win\u201d games when such tactics were used.
\tIn an op-ed in The Lantern under the headline SPORTSMANSHIP VS. MUCKERISM WAS CONTEST, Richards defended his actions and spoke briefly about the \u201cstandards of sportsmanship\u201d and \u201ceducational and ethical ideals\u201d before launching a fuselage against gamblers and called \u201cthe gambling idea … one of the worst enemies of clean sport.\u201d\u00a0 Apparently there were factions of the \u201cgambling constituency\u201d who were angry because wagers concerning the spread weren\u2019t being paid out due to the 1-0 official score.\u00a0
\tPerhaps the most inglorious moment of the afternoon for OSU officials occurred when a freshman set fire to white and navy bunting that had been attached to one of the goalposts as a welcoming gesture to their guests. Ohio State administrators were particularly upset because among those guests in the PSU entourage was Penn State\u2019s president Edward E. Sparks, who happened to be an Ohio State grad. A committee representing Ohio State formally apologized to Sparks at his hotel that evening and the freshmen arsonist was ordered to go to Union Station to apologize to Sparks in person.\u00a0
\tOhio State finished the season 6-3 and Richards\u00a0abruptly quit. Lynn St. John was promoted to replace Richards\u00a0as athletic director and John Wilce was hired as head football coach.
\tOhio State and Penn State did not meet on the gridiron again until 1956, 44 years later.
\tYou can learn more about the early years\u00a0of Ohio State football in the author\u2019s book\u00a0\u201cDays of Yore: The Men of Scarlet and Gray,\u201d which is available for purchase on\u00a0Amazon<\/a>. You can follow McQuigg on Twitter\u00a0@dpmcquigg<\/a>.<\/em>
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