MEMORIES OF  PAUL WARFIELD, WOODY HAYES AND THE OHIO STATE BASKETBALL TEAMS OF 1959-1962

In February of 2010, two events occurred almost simultaneously that were meaningful to me:  a telephone call from Paul Warfield and the commemoration of the Ohio State NCAA men’s 1960 basketball championship.  

To anyone else, those two events would not be obviously related; for me, they were.

In 1958, Mickee and I and two very young daughters moved from Circleville to Warren, where I had been hired to become the head basketball coach at Warren Harding High School.  One of the young men that I inherited was Paul Warfield, who was entering his junior year at the time.  Paul was the greatest athlete--by far--that I have ever been associated with, and one of the all-around greatest athletes in this nation’s history.  

In track and field, Paul, as a sophomore had won the Ohio high school long jump championship, and in subsequent years he won the low hurdles events.  In 1962, he participated in what some have called “the greatest track meet in history”--one of the dual meets between the United States and the Soviet Union  that were held in non-Olympic years between 1955 and 1978, the height of the “Cold War” between the two nations.  Ralph Boston won the long jump event, with Paul finishing third.

In football, Paul went on to play for Ohio State, then the Cleveland Browns and Miami Dolphins.  In 1983, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Paul was also an outstanding baseball player, and the sport in which I coached him--basketball--was probably his weakest.  His natural talent, though, made him a contributor even there.

During my years in Warren, I took our basketball team on an annual “barnstorming” tour over the Thanksgiving weekend to scrimmage against other high schools.  I did this to help us face good teams in an “away” environment and to build camaraderie, and our players and I usually stayed overnight in those places with families who were connected to their basketball teams.

In 1960, I had scheduled our team to scrimmage Columbus East, always a good team.  And this is where the connection with the Ohio State basketball team and Woody Hayes comes into play. The Buckeyes had won the NCAA championship in March with a team composed primarily of sophomores:  Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, Mel Nowell, Joe Roberts, Larry Siegfried, Bob Knight and others, most of whom went on to greater stardom in the NBA.  Fred Taylor, their coach, was a friend of mine who had grown up in Zanesville.  He was a bit older than I, but Zanesville and Coshocton, where I played, were members of the Central Ohio League and we had that connection.  We had also played against each other on a couple of occasions after college on independent teams.  In setting up the Thanksgiving trip, I had contacted Fred to see if we could visit his basketball practice on Friday afternoon and he readily welcomed us.  

In the summers of 1954 through 1957, while teaching and coaching in Circleville, I traveled every day, up and back, to Columbus to take courses at Ohio State toward an M.A.degree in school administration.  In 1957, I had completed all of the requirements and had room for two elective courses.  When I cautiously approached my advisor to ask him if he would permit me to take Woody Hayes’ football coaching course as one of the electives, I was a bit taken aback when he immediately approved my request.  Turned out that he frequently had lunch at the Faculty Club with Woody and admired him very much.  Unlike most other big-name coaches who taught those summer classes at their institutions, I believe Woody missed only one class during the term.  I still have my notes from that class.

So, knowing that Woody badly wanted Paul to come to Ohio State, I let him know that we would be at the basketball practice.  When Woody arrived, he sat down beside me and we chatted for awhile.  During that conversation, I mentioned to Woody that Paul was still very young and that he wouldn’t turn 17 until the next day.  (In Warren, as with many other school districts during that era, mid-year admission to school was a practice, which of course typically also led to mid-year graduation.  Paul was a mid-year admitted, but during his early years in school Warren abolished the practice and moved all of those students forward by a full semester.  So even though he was the best athlete in Ohio, he was still only 16 years old when he entered his senior year.

I then introduced Woody to Paul and they had a brief conversation before practice ended and we headed toward the Fort Hayes Hotel, where we were staying overnight before scrimmaging Columbus East the next morning.  When I went to the desk to check us in, the woman behind the desk said, “Mr. Boyd, Coach Hayes just called and asked that you return his call.”  I did so, Woody answered, and he asked me if he and “Bo” could come to the hotel and have breakfast with us the next morning.  Of course I said yes.

The next morning when I got to the lobby, there were Woody and Bo Schembechler, with Woody holding a birthday cake for Paul.  I wasn’t excited about our guys having cake for breakfast just before a long scrimmage, but what was I to say to my former professor?   (Bo had played for Woody at Miami, and in 1963 became the head coach at that institution before moving on to great fame as the coach at Michigan.)

Paul, of course, went on to Ohio State, where he really didn’t achieve as much fame as he did later when he moved on to the Browns and the Miami Dolphins.  Everyone knows of Woody’s “three yards and a cloud of dust” philosophy, which didn’t leave a lot of action for a talented receiver.

The Ohio State basketball team went on to two more great years in 1961 and 1962, but lost in the NCAA championship game to Cincinnati both years.      I was present in Louisville for the 1962 Final Four (a term that wasn’t invented until 1975).  In the semi-final game against Wake Forest, Jerry Lucas sprained an ankle and he was far from his best the next night against Cincinnati.

For our spring banquet at Warren Harding following the 1961-62 basketball season, I asked Jerry Lucas to be our speaker and he accepted.  As it turned out, most of his other teammates played in a tournament that night in Farrell, Pa., just across the Ohio border a few miles from Warren.  When their game ended, they came over to Warren and joined us at a reception following the banquet, something that would not likely happen these days.

Paul and I have been in contact only a few times since he played for me 50 years ago, but I recently sent to him (and some of my other players) a few Warren newspaper clippings that I had stored in one of the boxes of memorabilia that I have moved from place to place over the years.  He then called in February and we talked for well over an hour.  Paul and his wife, Beverly, are now living in California, and Paul continues to work for the Browns by evaluating college players.  

Richard Boyd