HORSESHOE HEROES
OHIO STADIUM IS SACRED GROUND TO THE BUCKEYES
SCOLUMBUS, OHIO — tanley Jackson was a high school quarterback from Paterson, New Jersey, when he visited
Ohio State University in the early 1990s.
Jackson walked through the gate of Ohio Stadium and onto the hallowed grounds where the Buckeyes play football.
“I stepped foot in the stadium,” Jackson recalled, “I said, ‘OK, I get to play in this building? Where do I sign?’”
Ohio Stadium has that effect. Saturday night in the Ohio capital, the Oklahoma Sooners play in the famed Horseshoe for just the second time ever. Forty years after the most famous field goal in OU history, Uwe von Schamann’s 41-yarder that beat Ohio State 29-28, the Sooners return to one of the most revered venues in American sport.
College football is tradition-rich. Its pageantry celebrated. Its rites cherished.
But its stadiums aren’t always exalted. Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium? OU’s Owen Field? Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium? Loved by their fan bases, no doubt.
But adored? Worshipped, even? Not really.
Not the brick and mortar. College football’s cathedrals don’t rise to the status of baseball’s Fenway Park or Wrigley Field, basketball’s Madison Square Garden or Allen Fieldhouse.
Notre Dame Stadium is a notable exception. And so is Ohio Stadium.
“They take the Horseshoe pretty seriously,” said Buckeye radio analyst Jim Lachey, an Ohio State offensive lineman in the 1980s. “It’s kind of reverent ground for all the great athletes that played in that Horseshoe. It’s sacred ground, if you’re a high school football player or go to Ohio State.”
Ohio Stadium’s status comes from history and from design. The stadium sits on a floodplain, right next to the Olentangy River. So when Ohio Stadium was built in 1922, it went straight up. It was not dug down. When decks were added later, Ohio Stadium became a gargantuan structure.
The stadium has Roman-style columns and arches and a rotunda on the north end adorned with stained-glass football murals, patterned after the dome in the Pantheon in Rome.
“The stadium is as big of what Ohio State football is as Woody Hayes,” said Ryan Miller, an Ohio State linebacker in the 1990s. “Feels mythical, like gladiators. Players feel privileged and honored to play where the ghosts of football past have done great things.”
And the statewide connection with Ohio Stadium goes back almost a century.
Ohio Stadium was born from the stardom of local-boy Chic Harley, a Buckeye star from 191619. The crowds were so big at Ohio Field that the
university decided to construct a stadium.
In 1922, Ohio Stadium opened with 66,210 seats modeled after the horseshoe design of Harvard’s stadium.
Ohio Stadium cost $1.49 million to construct; $975,000 of the funding came from a public-subscription campaign. So literally thousands of Ohioans were responsible for the new stadium.
It became a state icon as Buckeye football flourished in the ‘30s and beyond. Woody Hayes arrived as coach in 1951, and Ohio State football became even bigger.
Today, after several expansions, the stadium seats 104,944, and for big games, there’s that many and more fans in the 10-block area surrounding the coliseum. Ohio State football euphoria is massive.
And it all comes back to the mysticism of the Horseshoe, where Jesse Owens ran track, and six Heisman Trophy winners called their gridiron home and the Best Damn Band in the Land marches to the script Ohio.
“It’s a truly sacred landmark for anyone who ever played there or graduated from Ohio State,” Miller said. Running onto the field in a Buckeye uniform, he said, was a thrill rush “like jumping out of an airplane. There’s an enormous pride. Ask most guys, they want to run out again. I’m not running down on a kickoff anymore. But I’ll put on a uniform and run out.”
The Sooners will run out onto that field Saturday night. Not to cheers, of course, but onto the consecrated ground revered for 95 years by Ohio State players and fans alike. Win here, and you’ve conquered not just the Buckeyes, but Buckeye lore.
“The stadium is as big of what Ohio State football is as Woody Hayes. Feels mythical, like gladiators. Players feel privileged and honored to play where the ghosts of football past have done great things.” Ryan Miller, an Ohio State linebacker in the 1990s.