We all know that Woody Hayes was one tough S.O.B. Anyone who has lived in the Columbus area for any amount of time or who follows Buckeye football has heard their fair share of Woody stories. There was that time that he pushed his car across the Ohio border when it ran out of gas in Michigan, simply because he didn’t want to spend a dime in That State Up North, for example.
They all seem somewhat unbelievable, but they are told by so many that were close to Woody that you can’t help but think they are true. Woody was Bill Brasky before there was a Bill Brasky. He was The Most Interesting Man in the World before Dos Equis was even imported to the US. He was a living legend.
For this reason, there was only mild shock when Urban Meyer talked about that time in the locker room when Woody Hayes…oh…just read it below.
“So I guess Ohio State had lost the bowl game, so Earl Bruce brings in Woody Hayes. I had been there just a week and I’m thinking, ‘Holy, this is Coach Hayes.’ I’m sitting in the back. Coach Hayes was not healthy at the time, but stands up and starts laying into the coaching staff about toughness. That we have no toughness in the program. That’s why we lost the game. On and on and screaming, this old guy pounding the table. He says, ‘We have no toughness, and the reason is because you’re not tough. No one on this staff is tough enough, and that’s a problem.’
“He reaches down and grabs this box, slides the top and there was something in the box moving around. He reaches in and he pulls out this turtle. He reaches down, this turtle’s snapping and he says, ‘I’m going to show you toughness.’ He unzips his pants and takes out whatever he takes out. The turtle reaches up and snaps at him. You see the veins and the sweat (on Hayes). He screams at the coaches, ‘That’s toughness! That’s f’n toughness!’ He reaches down, pokes the turtle right in the eye and it falls off. He wipes the sweat off his forehead and says, ‘That’s the problem. We don’t have anybody in this room tough enough to do that right there.
“(One assistant) raises his hand and says, ‘Coach, I’d do this. Just promise not to poke me in the eye.’”
One would think there are other ways of proving your toughness, but Woody was never one for subtlety.
