Saint Woody: The History and Fanaticism of Ohio State Football

Bob Hunter

Aug. 2012 · Potomac Books, Inc.

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The Ohio State Buckeyes have been a powerhouse in college football for decades, with numerous national championships and NFL draftees to their credit. With such a successful history, it’s no wonder that the passion for Ohio State football has reached a level of devotion that has religious overtones.

Saint Woody: The History and Fanaticism of Ohio State Football is a Bill Bryson–style look at Ohio State football and the spiritual fanaticism that surrounds it. Bob Hunter tracks the development of this powerhouse program from its earliest days to its heights under Woody Hayes, the de facto king of Ohio State football. Hayes led the team to three national championships and a record of 205-61-10 over a twenty-eight-year period and was at the heart of the “Ten-Year War,” a particularly intense period in the infamous Ohio State–Michigan rivalry. Hunter also looks at the present-day state of Buckeye football and the team’s scarlet-and-gray-clad followers, as well as its legion of detractors, who voted Ohio State as the “most hated” college team in a nationwide survey. America loves—and hates—a winner.

Irreverent, honest, insightful, and always entertaining, Saint Woody will appeal to anyone whose spirit has ever lifted when hearing that famous cry “Go Bucks!”

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Bob Hunter has been a sportswriter at the Columbus Dispatch for the last thirty-four years and covered Woody Hayes’s final two years of coaching (1977–1978) as a football beat writer. In 2009 he was voted best sports columnist in Ohio by the Associated Press. The coauthor of The Buckeyes: A Story of Ohio State Football (1982) and author of Chic: The Extraordinary Rise of Ohio State Football and the Tragic Schoolboy Athlete Who Made It Happen (2008) and Buckeye Basketball (1981), he lives in Westerville, Ohio.