By Roi Johnson
While many of you were giving witness to the national championship game last week, my thoughts took me back to a different place in time as I watched Ohio State make rightful claim to their victory over Notre Dame.
I was proud of Notre Dame, coached by a man who was a former Ohio State player but who carries himself with great poise and dignity. My thoughts were of how far we’ve come across the chasm of the years.
I looked at the players on both sides of the ball and watched in wonderment the number of African American players making a great name for themselves in this memorable experience as they were now the standard bearers for schools known as PWIs.
I even recalled my first understanding of OSU football, going all the way back to 1961 when the Buckeyes’ fullback was the husky Bob Ferguson, the one who people in my part of the country were rooting for to win the Heisman Trophy over “the Express” from another PWI, Syracuse University, where the ultimate winner, Ernie Davis appeared on the New York stage as the first AA to win the award.
Ferguson shared the Ohio State backfield in 1961 with halfbacks Paul Warfield and Matt Snell. Ferguson was a power runner and Warfield supplied speed. The common description of the time said, “Warfield is the lightning, Ferguson is the thunder.”
The Buckeyes won the Big Ten Conference that year and were voted national champions by the Football Writers Association of America (FWAA).
Ferguson’s first year of eligibility at Ohio State University was 1959. The starting fullback at the beginning of the season was the senior, and Heisman Trophy candidate, Bob White.
Through the course of the season, however, Ferguson supplanted White as the starter and led the team in rushing that season, averaging 6.1 yards per carry.
Ferguson finished his career at Ohio State with 2,162 rushing yards. This rushing total was at the time second in team history behind Howard Cassady.
Ferguson owns the distinction of never having been thrown for a loss during his college football career. Ferguson was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1996, and into Ohio State’s own Varsity O Hall of Fame in 1987. He was selected to the Ohio State Football All-Century Team in 2000.
It is worth mentioning to this group the Bob Ferguson was initiated into the Iota Psi chapter at OSU in 1960.
My thoughts last night were that Davis whose fate was a medical misfortune, should have been the second to win the award, because five years earlier in 1956, the Syracuse all-around athlete, Jim Brown, should have won as the first AA to win.
I am still chaffed that almost 70 years ago it still hurts that America was so small in a Notre Dame player named Paul Hornung.
In the 1956 season he led his team offensively in passing, rushing, scoring, kickoff and punt returns, and punting. He also played defense, led in passes broken up, and was second in interceptions and tackles made.
In spite of Notre Dame’s 2–8 record, Hornung won the Heisman Trophy in 1956 as the season’s outstanding college football player – the only time a player from a losing team has been so honored.[3] Nicknamed “The Golden Boy”, the highly versatile quarterback could run, pass, block, and tackle.
A young sports writer named Dick Schaap said at the time that he would never cast a Heisman ballot again because of the travesty dealt to Jim Brown.
I filtered all of this last evening through the prism of the inauguration at the nation’s capitol earlier yesterday. America has voted again for a POTUS one who was suspected to be sleazy eight years ago, but now that same sleaze oozes from his pores and the decision was we want him anyway.
White Evangelical Christian America has decided that it better to have a known and convicted cheat, a sexual assault perpetrator, and a white supremacist, than to have decency and order in the White House.
It is not lost on me that this is the crowd and it was the thinking 65 years ago when Brother Bob Ferguson at Ohio State came in second in the Heisman voting, a time when those who touted their Christian values longed for a day when old times there were not forgotten, and did all that they could to look away to Dixie Land.
I was reminded as I viewed the gladiators on the field last evening that whereas Charlene Hunter and Hamilton Holmes might be proud that UGA is overrun by Black student athletes, and James Meredith might look upon Ole Miss with wonderment when he sees the AA athletes there, the struggles of no-name Black student at either institution, or any other SEC institution for that matter, sees that great athletes of today as at best performers and ignore their personhood.
Yes, Coach Marcus Freeman made it to the big game last evening, but I pray that he is aware that even he is judged by a different standard than the rest who have led teams under the mural of “touchdown Jesus” in South Bend.
I would admonish him to be careful that Tyrone Willingham got but three season to lead the Irish, when those who came before him and after him (Gerry Faust, Bob Davie, and Charlie Weiss) got five season to further propel the football fortunes of Notre Dame downward to mediocrity.
It’s a different standard by which the coach of color is judged, and a different standard by which the student-athlete is judged, and a different standard by which the POTUS is judged, and a different standard by which the American Christian judges.
And oh, my Brothers, there was another contest happening in America, and Christian America in 1961.
Bishop Edgar Amos Love was seeking to transform the minds and hearts of White Christians in methodism to judge by the content of character and not color of skin.
Yesterday was also King Day weekend, and I went to bed last night wondering whether or not the more things change the more they stay the same.
