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May 20—Aside from being the home of the Ohio State football team, Ohio Stadium is known as The House That Harley Built.
If the 2024 Buckeyes go on to win the national championship, they could be called the best team name, image and likeness payments built.
And Ryan Day sees similarities in the way each was built.
“When Chic Harley came, everything changed, and then you know Thomas French and (Lynn W.) St. John came in and said, ‘Hey, here’s what we’re gonna do: We’re gonna build a stadium of like over 60,000 people,’ and everybody thought it was crazy,” the Ohio State head coach told WBNS radio this week. “They said, ‘What is going on with college football? It’s insane!'”
Harley was a star halfback for the Buckeyes in 1916, ’17 and ’19. He led the Buckeyes to their first win over Michigan and their first Big Ten championship, but even more than that he helped turn the Ohio State football brand into one that reached beyond the Midwest.
That fame helped convince the university that St. John and French, a Dayton native who became essentially the first director of athletics at Ohio State around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, might be onto something when they suggested Ohio Field on north campus be replaced by something much larger.
If Ohio State fans, not to mention the athletics department, were skeptical about the power of name, image and likeness (NIL), they needed to see no better example than Michigan winning the national title in January.
Coach Jim Harbaugh built his team to win with power football and defense, but it was a three-year project that relied heavily on maintaining veteran players who were more likely to stick around Ann Arbor because they could collect some extra cash before trying to make it as a mid-round pick in the NFL. The previous two offseasons, Harbaugh also supplemented the roster with…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/ohio-state-buckeyes-ryan-day-141100898.html
Author : Dayton Daily News, Ohio
Publish date : 2024-05-20 14:11:00
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