Nick Saban reminisces about Woody Hayes, memorable speech from his time at Ohio State

Nick Saban joined The Pat McAfee Show on Friday in Columbus, where the excitement is growing ahead of Ohio State’s Week 13 clash with the Indiana Hoosiers.

Before the fun gets underway on the field, Saban shared a story from his past with the Buckeyes. Specifically, he reminisced about Ohio State legend Woody Hayes, remembering a speech the coach gave his team that led to a monumental victory over Michigan at the time.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Saban said, regarding if he had any interactions with Hayes while in Columbus. “When I coached here, I had three different occasions where I heard Woody either speak, or sat down and talked to him, had lunch with him, or whatever, and I was always fascinated by the wisdom. You know, like I always tell the story when — Michigan was No. 1, when I was here in 1981, I think, and we had lost two games, and they were No. 1 in the country. We’re like, 17-point underdogs. We’re going up there to play. Woody comes to the senior tackle and gives a speech, the best speech I’ve ever heard. He said, ‘There can be no great victories without tremendous adversity,’ and he takes us going to Michigan to play with all these obstacles that we have to overcome, and compared to the war in the Pacific that’s the greatest military victory of all time, and the reason for that is because of Pearl Harbor.

“He says, ‘Well, you guys have all these obstacles, you’re 17-point underdogs. You’re playing on the road. There’s 110,000 people against you. The weather’s bad, it’s snowing, it’s cold. This is the greatest opportunity in the world for a great victory. We went from having a negative attitude to, ‘Oh, man, we’ve got a chance to have a great victory,’ and we won. We won 14-9. It was a great game, one of my best memories. Then I was jumping up and down in the locker room after the game saying, ‘We finally arrived. We’re a young team. We could beat anybody in the country now.’ Woody comes walking in, and he says, ‘I’m glad we don’t have a game next week.’ And I’m like, ‘What’s up with this guy?’ He said, ‘We played ass over teakettle today. Ain’t a team in the country we would beat next week.’ When I say wisdom, that’s what I mean by wisdom.”

Indiana might not exactly be Michigan to Ohio State, but a victory over the undefeated Hoosiers would be a nice feather in Ryan Day’s cap. Perhaps the Buckeyes leader should take a beat or two from Woody Hayes and Nick Saban ahead of Saturday’s game. We’ll see if he can get the job done.