Ohio State-Illinois, Thirty Years Ago – Ohio State Buckeyes
10/7/1998 12:00:00 AM | Football
October 7, 1998
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio State ’68
All the Way to the Top
by Steve Greenberg and Larry Zelina
Ohio State ’68: All the Way to the Top will be released in mid-September. Reserve your copy now by calling 1-800-327-5557.
Ohio State 31, Illinois 24
Oct. 26, 1968
at Champaign, Ilinois
With just four minutes, thirty-eight seconds to go in the game, No. 2-rated Ohio State and its Big Ten and national title hopes were sagging against the ropes. The Buckeyes had given up twenty-four consecutive second-half points against the host Illini and were staring at the possible end of their eight-game winning streak over two seasons. It was 24-all, and stomachs in every corner of Buckeye Kingdom were churning like the wheels of a semi rig mired in three feet of mud.
Enter Ron Maciejowski. Because feisty sophomore starting quarterback Rex Kern had to leave yet another game with yet another injury, this one to his head, coach Woody Hayes opted for Mace, the Super Sub, as a result of his running ability.
“We were on our own 30,” Hayes said, “and I felt we’d probably have to run ourselves out of trouble.”
Seer, he.
With second-and-16 at OSU’s 30-yard line, the sophomore Maciejowski calmly engineered the game-winning drive, which was capped by fullback Jim Otis’ 2-yard run. Along the way, he passed to wingback Larry Zelina for 10 yards, ran for 12, nailed a pass to Zelina on the 27 (which the speed demon ran to the 4), then turned things over to Otis, who, with two 2-yard bursts, saved the season with 1:30 left.
“Zelina had a doggone good day, and Maciejowski, too,” said Hayes, the master of the understatement.
The 24-0 halftime lead was nothing more than a memory after backup fullback Ken Bargo barged in from the 2-yard line and ran in the two-point conversion for the apparent tie.
In that productive first half, the Buckeyes held Illinois to 84 yards and three first downs while rolling up 294 yards and 17 firsts. So where did OSU go after halftime? As the second half began to unfold, Zelina’s reception from Kern accounted for a yard. Then Kern was picked off, giving rise to Illinois’ first scoring drive, this one of 30 yards. The Buckeyes’ defense began to give up big chunks of yardage to Illini fullbacks. Something was missing. More to the point, some bodies were missing: linebacker Dirk Worden, cornerback Tim Anderson, safety Mike Polaski and defensive end Mark Debevc, starters all, were out with injuries.
So, the Illini went on the offensive once more, churning up turf and Buckeye defenders-and converting two fourth-down plays along the way-to score again. Ohio State helped Illinois climb to dead-even with a personal foul penalty deep into another Illini drive. A series of short gains from the 10-yard line was culminated by Bargo’s 2-yard TD dash and a third two-point conversion.
And then Maciejowski saved the day.
Kern finished 12-of-21 for 102 yards with two interceptions, Maciejowski was 2-of-2 for 54 yards, Leo Hayden ran 14 times for 77 yards, Kern 14 for 57 yards, Otis 11 for 72 and Zelina eight for 61. Zelina led the receivers with five catches for 76 yards. And Jim Roman made all four extra-point attempts and a 21-yard field goal.
“It was good for us to play a game like that,” Hayes said.
If he only knew.
The post-game huddle
Zelina: What about those splits, Schmids, did you notice that?
Schmidlin: Oh, you could feel it, yeah. It took a while to decide what to do. Did we get on the phone …
Stillwagon: No, it was just fingertips. If we could go like this (demonstrates) and touch each other’s fingertips. We didn’t care what splits they had. We’d just go like this (demonstrates again) and if we could touch each others’ fingertips they would take that feeling of spreading us out and run that big fullback right up in there. We started keeping ourselves at arm’s length, we started shutting them down. That’s what turned it around for us.
Schmidlin: I remember one interception, I don’t know if you (Stillwagon) hit it or who hit it, but the ball went straight up in the air. I was standing there underneath it, waiting for it to come down. And it was coming into my arms, when all of a sudden Brad Nielsen comes FLYING out of the other side, and he’s grabbing and he’s scraping at that sucker and I’m trying to pull it down. I pulled it in and said, “If we keep this up, we’re gonna lose.” I grabbed that sucker and shoved it into his gut, and he took off. He got the Buckeye leaf for that …
Zelina: And Schmids was saying, “Aw, shucks.”
Schmidlin: Yeah, I was.
Zelina: I think they fed off that, because we (had) scored twenty-four straight, real fast points and then we didn’t score again. I mean they stopped us in the entire third and fourth quarters. And …
Polaski: That’s because you guys didn’t get the ball very much in the second half, because …
Zelina: They were running it.
Polaski: They were just eating up the clock, and they just kept moving the chains. They were moving the ball three and four yards down the field, and they just kept moving the football.
Stillwagon: They had a big fullback.
Schmidlin: A big one.
Tatum: I don’t remember too much about the first half because I didn’t play the first half.
Zelina: Why’s that?
Tatum: I had sprained my ankle against Northwestern and they held me out as a precautionary measure. And during the second half, Illinois started moving the ball against us, scored two TDs. Woody told McCullough to put me in. McCullough says, “I can’t put him in, Coach. He’s not taped up and he’s got a twisted ankle and can barely run.” So they were a TD down and they finally score to tie the game up. Woody comes up to me and says, “Get taped.” So I got taped and went in.
Stillwagon: I remember Bill Mallory comes to me at halftime (with OSU up, 24-0), and he says to me, “We’re going to play Vic (Stottlemyer).” And I said, “Great.” I’d taken my tape job off and I was listening to that halftime speech about Abraham Lincoln campaigning on the riverbanks over here, and I’m going, “Holy cow!” We didn’t talk about football. We talked about Abraham Lincoln. I remember thinking, Man, that’s really great. I can take my tape job off. And then later in the game when things got screwed up, I said, “I don’t have a tape job.” This was a wild game wasn’t it?
Zelina: It was scary. And I don’t know whether there was a (second-half) letdown, because that was the first game we got off to a real big lead, and maybe offensively we might’ve …
Jim Roman: I think we might’ve gotten a little complacent.
Polaski: But, again, it might have been the best thing for us, because if there’d been a blowout there it might’ve led to big-headedness down the road. As it was, Mace had to come in and win it at the end …
Zelina: Yeah, we snapped their garter … But we could do no wrong in the first half.
Otis: You know, sometimes when that happens, sometimes you let up a little bit. First of all they come out in the second half and score three TDs against us. And they run for the extra points and make them all. And tied the game. Then Kern gets hurt and Mace comes in and he throws a big pass to you.
Zelina: Then we bang in there a couple times and you finally score to put us ahead. The thing was, though, we almost scored with too much time on the clock. When we went ahead, there was still a little over two minutes left, we kick off and they start moving the ball again.
Otis: Do you think we passed a little too soon?
Zelina: Finally, Baugh intercepted a pass with a little less than a minute left and we won the game.
Otis: We were lucky to get out of that game.
Polaski: And all of a sudden, it’s back to reality. Everybody you play is gonna be good. You’ve gotta play for the full sixty minutes.
Ohio State vs. Illinois
Ohio State 3 21 0 7 – 31 Illinois 0 0 16 8 – 24 OSU – Roman, 21-yard field goal. OSU – Otis, 1-yard run (Roman kick). OSU – Kern, 11-yard run (Roman kick). OSU – Kern, 16-yard run (Roman kick). ILL – Johnson, 2-yard run (Johnson run). ILL – Naponic, 2-yard run (Naponic run). ILL – Bargo, 2-yard run (Bargo run). OSU – Otis, 2-yard run (Roman kick). Attendance – 56,174
OSU ILL First downs 25 21 Rushing 55-290 51-200 Passing 14-23-163-2 9-23-102-3 Total yards 453 302 Punts-avg. 4-32.2 6-43.2 Punt returns 0-0 6-77 Kickoff returns 3-39 0-0 Int. returns 3-36 2-26 Fumbles-lost 3-0 0-0 Penalties-yards 3-29 5-45
