Historic ties
Oklahoma and Ohio State play Saturday, and they have someone in common — Gomer Jones.
Gomer Jones never talked much about his days playing college football. Gomer never was a big talker about anything concerning himself.
“There are very few coaches you can go through life and never hear anybody say a bad word about,” former OU center Harry Moore once told historian Harold Keith. “Gomer was one of those people. He was a professional guy, and he had the respect of everybody.”
The Little Round Coach, Gomer was called by the Saturday Evening Post, which did a feature story on the lieutenant who helped Bud Wilkinson build the Oklahoma football dynasty. Gomer was an assistant coach all 17 years of the Wilkinson era, 1947-63. When Wilkinson resigned to run for the U.S. Senate, Gomer wasn’t all that thrilled to take over the job, though he did.
Oklahomans who remember Gomer know him as the coach who went 9-11-1 in two years as Wilkinson’s successor, or as the jovial, beloved staple of the Wilkinson years.
But Gomer Jones is remembered in Ohio, too, and it’s not for his coaching. Gomer was one of the greatest players in Ohio State history.
The Sooners and Buckeyes play Saturday in a showdown at the Horseshoe in Columbus, Ohio, and their common ground is more than just the memorable meetings of 1977, 1983 and 2016.
Gomer Thomas Jones was born Feb. 26, 1914, in Cleveland. By 1920, the Ohio metropolis sported a population of 800,000 and was the fifth-largest city in America.
Gomer graduated from Cleveland South High School and went to Ohio State, where he studied industrial arts and biology. And played a little football.
Don’t ever believe that big-time Buckeye football began with Woody Hayes in 1951. Ohio State was a national power decades earlier, and Buckeye coaches felt pressure even during the Depression days. Gomer, as a sophomore in 1933, played for Sam Willaman, who then resigned under pressure despite a 7-1 record. A 7-1 record is quite good at Ohio State unless the loss is to Michigan.
Francis Schmidt replaced Willaman, and Gomer became a star center and linebacker. He was the first Buckeye twice named team MVP and made all-American in 1935. Ohio State went 7-1 each of those two years, beating Michigan by a combined 72-0. In 1935, the Buckeyes’ only defeat was an historic 18-13 loss to Notre Dame that was labeled the game of the century. Gomer was the 1935 Ohio State captain.
“Gomer Jones without question was one of the greatest centers to ever play at Ohio State,” said Buckeye historian Jack Park.
Jones once said his greatest thrill as a player was in Ohio State’s 1935 victory over the University of Chicago. The Buckeyes trailed 13-0, tied the score in the fourth quarter and won 20-13 on a touchdown with four minutes left. The TD, Jones said, involved perfect blocking by the entire team.
In 2000, he was named to the Buckeyes’ allcentury team. In 2015, elevenwarriors.com, an Ohio State website, picked Gomer as the No. 33 player in Buckeye history. Recently, landof10. com picked Gomer as the No. 42 player in Buckeye history.
In 1978, Gomer was voted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a player. Only six other Buckeyes have twice been named team most valuable player.
“Gomer was not a self-centered guy,” said Leon Cross, who played for OU in the early 1960s and then began a long career as a coach and administrator at his alma mater. “He didn’t talk about his success, but I knew he was a real successful player. We just heard it mainly from the other guys on the coaching staff.”
Schmidt at Ohio State was disorganized as a coach but years ahead of his time in strategy. His playbook included 300 plays and seven formations, unheard of in 1930s football.
Schmidt hired Gomer to help coach the Buckeyes in 1936. Two years later, Schmidt added Sid Gillman to the staff. So Schmidt knew how to surround himself with quality coaches. Gillman became a passing-game pioneer.
Schmidt was quite a character. He had come from TCU and is credited with taking a Texas phrase and making it nationally known, saying that an opponent was just like the Buckeyes, “they put their pants on one leg at a time.”
But Schmidt didn’t maintain his initial success. Ohio State beat Michigan 21-0 in both 1936 and 1937, then the Wolverines won three straight in the series and Schmidt was out of a job. He was replaced by Paul Brown. Yes. That Paul Brown.
Gomer was out of a job, too. So he coached at John Carroll University and Martins Ferry High School, then joined the Navy during World War II and coached at St. Mary’s Pre-Flight, where he met his fellow Big Ten star, Wilkinson, who had played at the University of Minnesota.
After the war, Wilkinson took a job as Jim Tatum’s OU assistant in 1946 and Gomer took a job as an assistant at Nebraska. When Wilkinson was promoted a year later, he brought Gomer to Norman, and Gomer’s traveling days were finished. Gomer was the OU athletic director from 1964-71; he died of a heart attack in New York City while with the Sooner basketball team for the National Invitation Tournament.
“He wanted every guy he coached to love him like a brother or a dad,” Norman McNabb once said of his old line coach. “And we all did.”
I once wrote a profile of Gomer and said “he was a fisherman, a Presbyterian, a cabinetmaker. A devoted friend and husband. And a coach. Gomer Jones was many things, but he was all football coach.”
And before he was a football coach, Gomer was a football player. One of the best Ohio State ever had.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at (405) 760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman. com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. You can also view his personality page at newsok.com/ berrytramel.