COLUMBUS — Nov. 25, 1950.

On that date, Ohio State and Michigan battled in one of the oddest, most memorable college football games ever played.

“The field was totally covered with snow. What many people don’t realize is that the game was played with half the field covered with a tarpaulin because it was frozen to the ground. It didn’t matter because there was so much snow on it,’’ said Marv Homan, the former OSU sports information director, who did play by play for university station WOSU that day.

Just how bizarre was the game?

• Michigan won 9-3 without a first down or a pass completion.
• Teams routinely punted on first, second and third downs in hopes of winning the field position battle. The teams combined for 45 punts, by far a Big Ten record.
• The Michigan player who blocked a punt into the end zone for the only touchdown of the game had a brother playing as well — for Ohio State.
• Many players wore sneakers instead of football cleats in hopes of getting better traction on the icy field.

The temperature that day was about 10 degrees, with strong winds steady at around 30 mph. Homan said there were 4 to 6 inches of snow at game time. Kickoff was delayed as volunteer crews tried to get the field ready. By the time the game finished, there was nearly a foot of snow.

“There were times when it snowed so hard I could not see the other side of the field,” Homan said. “It was totally enveloped in snow.”

Lancaster resident Jim Hietikko was an offensive tackle for OSU from 1950 to 1952. In 1950, he was a sophomore backup to Buckeye captain Bill Trautwein. Hietikko said players had no idea how bad the weather would be that Saturday.

“It wasn’t real bad that week,” Hietikko said. “We got up in the morning, probably around 6:30, and it was coming down like you wouldn’t believe.

“The streets were almost impassable. We boarded the bus to go to the stadium around 10:30, and along the way you saw a lot of motorists having difficulty. Even the bus was having difficulty getting down to the stadium.”

Dick Logan was a starting defensive tackle for Ohio State in that game. The former Mansfield Senior star now runs a sporting goods store in North Canton.

“We sat around for quite some time waiting for a decision to be made (on whether to cancel the game),” he said. “We had all these people come down from Michigan and the athletic directors decided they had to play the game.

“We found some long underwear somewhere and put that on and gloves and went out and warmed up. We still didn’t think we would play the game. We came back in to the locker room, and they said it’s a go. It was quite a mess.”

Hietikko said it was impossible to get warmed up.

“When you released downfield to block, you couldn’t find the opposing team member from Michigan until you got right up on him. It was that bad,” Hietikko said. “When you did hit somebody, it hurt, because your hands were frozen and your feet were frozen.”

Dick Ellwood, 71, is retired from Anchor Hocking in Lancaster. Originally from Dover, he was a senior OSU linebacker in the game and a defensive captain.

“The attitude was: We’re going to play the game and we’re going to beat Michigan. Who cares about the weather,” he said.

“It was a dumb football game, a really stupid football game. When you put the ball down on the field, and it just blows off, that’s unreal. It was a nightmare.”

All the scoring was in the first half. The first time Michigan had the ball, OSU’s Joe Campenella blocked a punt and OSU took over at the Michigan 6. Not only could the Buckeyes not score a touchdown, they lost 16 yards back to the Michigan 22.

“(OSU’s Vic) Janowicz tried to throw a pass in the end zone, and he threw it away. In those days, you were penalized if you threw it away,” said Hietikko, now president of Behrens Insurance in Lancaster.
So Janowicz, who went on to win the Heisman Trophy as a junior that year, tried a field goal.

“When he kicked the ball, it went up into a cloud of snow. It just disappeared,” Homan said. But it split the uprights for the Buckeyes’ only points of the day.

That 38-yard kick later was voted one of the “Greatest Feats in American Sports” by a panel of sportswriters.

“When Janowicz kicked the field goal, I’ve always maintained that that would be the most memorable field goal in OSU history had the game ended up 3-2, and it could have very easily,” Homan said.

Michigan scored two points in the first quarter when Janowicz dropped back to punt deep in his own end. It was blocked, and the ball went out of the back of the end zone for a safety.

The key play in the game occurred with just 20 seconds left in the first half. On third down, Michigan’s Tony Momsen blocked another Janowicz punt. Momsen’s brother, Bob, played for Ohio State.

“Officials had to stop the game and call time to see if it had been recovered in or out of the end zone. There was a long delay,” Homan said. They actually had to call for ground crew and literally dig down to see whether it was in the end zone or out of the end zone.’’

OSU head coach Wes Fesler was criticized heavily for punting on third down. He later said he just wanted to get the ball out of the OSU end of the field. Under pressure, he resigned a few months later and was replaced by Woody Hayes for the 1951 season.

“It was terrible,” Hietikko said. He could have ran one play and ran out 45 seconds, or whatever it was, and got to halftime without punting."

The announced attendance for the game was about 50,500.

“I don’t know if there were 50,000 there at any one time. There sure as heck weren’t in the second half,” Homan said, estimating about 5,000 people in the stands at the end of the game.

“Those 5,000 left were down on the field helping to clean the place off,” Hietikko said.

“The funny thing about this is over the years, I’ll bet there must have been a million-and-a-half people there,” Hietikko said. Everybody I talked to was at the game. Everybody. They want to make sure they were there in their own mind. Everybody tells you, ‘Sure, I was at that game. I was there.’ Baloney.”

Homan said the fact anywhere close to 50,000 showed up is a tribute to OSU’s football following.

“Anybody that went any distance to see the game, you would have to question their sanity.”

A good example of someone who should have had his sanity questioned is Harold Henry, says his son, Dick.

The younger Henry, who is a Lexington resident and the athletics director at Marion Harding High School, was only 4 years old at the time, but remembers the tale quite well as it was told to him through the years.

Dick grew up in Marion. In the 1940s and 1950s, his father ran the Pure Oil Co.’s service station, now the location of Tubby’s Pizza near Marion’s downtown.

“The morning of that game my dad fell over one of the jacks and broke both his arms,” said Dick. “But somehow he had tickets, and no matter what, he was going.

“He went to the game chewing aspirin,” said Dick.

The casts for the two broken arms were put on after he returned, and Harold, who went on to sell insurance in Marion as an independent agent and also operated the former Olympic swimming pool just outside of town, always had a painful reminder.

After the arms healed and the casts came off, “his left arm never straightened all the way again,” said Dick.

Other fans faced some tough obstacles in the aftermath as well.

“After the game they had the emergency squad at the stadium.” Hietikko said. “People brought liquor to try to keep warm with it, and some of them passed out. Coming out of the locker room, lights were flashing and they were carrying people out of there.”

Cars were stranded for days. Logan said it took his parents three days to get back to Mansfield.

OSU players not only had to deal with the cold but with losing the Big Ten championship.

“The first thing we did was get into a hot shower and stay there,” Hietikko said. Our hands were frozen. Our feet were frozen.”

How did the team react to losing?

“It wasn’t pretty,” Logan said. “You can’t print what we did. It was devastating.”

The terrible field conditions hurt Ohio State more than Michigan, Logan said.

“It just neutralized everything,” he said. The fact is that we felt it was our opportunity to win the ball game. We felt we were better than Michigan.”

Homan had his own problems in the press box on top of the stadium.

“I probably had more clothes on that day than any day I did the play-by-play,” Homan said. The windows in our booth frosted up. We absolutely could not see out, so we had to open the darn things. We were about at the height of the stadium. We were up there and caught much of the wind. It was rugged,” he said with a laugh.