Sid Gillman. Josh Katzowitz
music, though. When a sophomore named Kenneth Rasmussen was added to the squad before the 1933 season, he was called a “morale builder.” Rasmussen would tell stories, sing songs, and play the piano. Sometimes, Gillman would sit down with him on the bench, and they’d rattle off a duet to much applause. Gillman’s favorite band was Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians, and he was also a fan of Sergei Rachmaninoff because the Russian romanticist’s music sounded so big to Gillman’s ears. Once, he was asked by a reporter named Harold Davidson if he was glad he had kept up his study of the piano. Said Gillman: “Sure. I am. You bet. The ability to play football and piano gives one prestige around the campus.”
He was building his own prestige with the way he played football. And with his car. One June before summer classes let out, Gillman purchased a Model T for the princely sum of $12.50. The automobile wasn’t in the best condition, and one newspaper caption writer penned, in a massive understatement, that it was “somewhat outmoded.” Gillman drove home to Minneapolis with halfback Jack Greenburg, and the trip home, including gas, oil, food, and one night at a hotel, cost them only $6. On his return trip, a solo venture, he skipped the hotel and spent the night sleeping on the worn interior upholstery of his car. He could get the car up to 65 mph, but it rattled like a baby’s toy. He nicknamed the car “Dangerous Dan McGrew,” and he was right about one thing. It was dangerous as hell. Just like Gillman on the football field in 1932.
The Buckeyes were on their way to another unimpressive season with Willaman at the helm—in 1932, their final record was 4-1-3 with another fourth-place finish in the Big Ten, and the cries for St. John to fire Willaman were growing louder—but Gillman continued his outstanding play. As one United Press reporter wrote, “Sid Gillman, Buckeyes right end, is one of the best all-around wingmen in the west…. He was good enough for the all-Big Ten team against Northwestern but they say his game against Wisconsin was the greatest ever played by an end in Ohio’s big horseshoe stadium.”
Gillman made important fumble recoveries in the Michigan and Pittsburgh games, he caught the second touchdown pass of his career in the Northwestern contest, and in that game, he blocked a punt that was recovered for another Buckeyes score. His defense was noteworthy—he finished with 34 tackles that season, second-highest total on the team—and his pass-catching ability was beginning to raise eyebrows. It landed Gillman on the All-America squad, one of the biggest honors in college football. As one reporter wrote, “He was not only a tower of strength on the offensive line throughout the entire season, but he was a bulwark on the defense, time after time, breaking through to spill enemy runners before they were able to get underway and often throwing them for losses. His play was outstanding consistently.”
Would Gillman’s play and the Buckeyes’ results be enough to save Willaman’s job the next season? Even though Gillman’s play was constantly improving, the Buckeyes as a team were treading water. Willaman’s job was on the minds of St. John, the media, and the vocal fans who were not shy about calling for his head. Willaman had some convincing to do.
By the time Gillman—who had begun refusing to shave after the Wednesday of every week so he could enter Saturday’s game looking animalistic and menacing—was midway through his senior season in 1933, his role had been defined in Willaman’s head. Even though he had coached Wesley Fesler—a three-time All American, one of only eight Ohio State players ever to accomplish that feat—Willaman declared in October that Sid was “the greatest end I have ever coached.” Along with Joe Gailus, an orphan from Cleveland who gave up grave-digging to become an All–Big Ten tackle, Gillman had been named co-captain of the 1933 season, the first time in school history two men shared the post. But Gillman wasn’t a superhero. Gillman couldn’t be the only one to save the only college coach he had ever known.
Eventually, Gillman would have to defend his coach, but it would be too late by that December. Sam Willaman, nicknamed “Sad Sam” because of his cheerless demeanor and deficit of charisma, was in real trouble before the 1933 season kicked off.
The fans were disappointed in the Buckeyes’ coach, and they could do nothing but reminisce about 1929 and wonder about the state of the program if Lynn St. John’s first choice had agreed to take the job. The primary choice was one of the titans of the coaching industry, Notre Dame’s Knute Rockne. At that point in his career, he was 40 years old, and he had compiled an 11-year record of 86-12-5. Rockne either looked to make a move into the Big Ten or, more likely, wanted to gain leverage against the Notre Dame administration. Rockne and St. John first talked at an American Football Coaches Association meeting in New Orleans in early January 1929, and apparently, the two reached a deal on a contract under the condition he could be released from Notre Dame. That never happened, because Notre Dame convinced Rockne, who died in an airplane accident two years later, to stay in South Bend. Instead, the Buckeyes settled for Willaman.
Up to the 1933 season, Willaman’s squads had combined for a 19-9-5 record, the team had never finished better than fourth in the conference, and the din to replace him grew louder after every loss.
Despite beating Virginia 75–0 in the season opener, Willaman felt the pressure. During the Northwestern game, where Gillman scored a touchdown to help win the game before he landed in the hospital with a knee injury, Willaman looked to his bench and saw Ohio State legend Chic Harley. The former Buckeyes star sat on the bench, dressed warmly in his top hat, gray overcoat, and leather gloves. Willaman walked over to Harley, nearly 40 years old by then, and proclaimed, “I wish I could send you in there.” Responded Harley: “I wish they’d let me go in.”
It might have saved Willaman’s job. Instead, the Buckeyes lost to Michigan—the only blemish on an otherwise impressive 7-1 season—and after the 13–0 defeat, the pressure on Willaman and his team grew even more intense. Following the game, Willaman barred reporters from the locker room, and in the emotion of that moment, Grant Ward of the Columbus Journal Dispatch wrote the following: “There was a lack of coordination and team play in the Ohio ranks, probably due to the fact the Buckeye offensive combination was constantly being changed and heretofore was uncertain regarding its assignment.”
The criticism, by today’s standards, seems pretty tame—it wasn’t all that incendiary in those days either—but it riled up the Buckeyes players. What also might have gotten their attention was Ward’s insistence that he would request that the Ohio legislature investigate the activity of the athletic department unless athletic director Lynn St. John fired Willaman. Considering Ward also performed the radio play-by-play duties on WOSU, the players sent a statement to school president Dr. George W. Rightmire demanding that Ward be barred from broadcasting the game over the school’s station.
The players did not believe having Ward discuss the Buckeyes during the next week’s homecoming game to be “fitting and proper.” The statement was issued after Gillman and co-captain Joe Gailus held a secret meeting with the team at noon on the Friday before the game and 18 other teammates—all of them unnamed—decided it was unfair to allow Ward to broadcast the game. Ward had written basically that Willaman was a failure as a coach, and the players wanted him out of the spotlight. Gillman and Gailus intimated the team wouldn’t play if Ward was at the mic, but they also made sure to note that it was more a request than a demand.
Rightmire denied the request, but when told that story 80 years later, knowing what was to come in her dad’s future, Bobbe Korbin—Gillman’s second daughter—wasn’t surprised by her father’s outspokenness. “There you go,” she said. “He was doing it all the way back then.”
Even after the Buckeyes commenced winning again in 1933, the stigma around Sad Sam never ceased. The storm of dissatisfaction that eventually would blow him out of Columbus continued to build. Much of the swirling wind was caused by those who Gillman believed should have been the ones protecting the program and their peers who played in it—the writers for the school’s student newspaper.
Much of the acrimony came in an October 26 editorial that exclaimed that the Michigan game branded “the season a failure, regardless of the outcome of the remaining five contests.” But in December, after the successful 7-1 season, complete with a second-place finish in the Big Ten behind