1891 Otterbein/Ohio State Football Game Left Hard Feelings
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Otterbein University “foot ball” team played the team from Ohio State University several times. Otterbein was not big enough to play OSU on a regular basis, sticking to the teams from parochial schools like Wittenburg, Heidelberg, and Capitol, teams they play a century later.
Yet there was a giant (comparatively) public university just down the road from Westerville. The Ohio State University and their football team, nicknamed the “Buckeyes,” invited the nearest team to the north to play. 1891 was OSU’s second season playing football, and its first showdown with Otterbein. OSU played a comparatively short season of five games, during which they played Kenyon, Western Reserve, Denison, and Buchtel (Akron) besides Otterbein. [i] Otterbein, which had also started playing football in 1890, was perhaps equally experienced, or inexperienced, overall. Otterbein only played two games the year before. Thus their contest with the Buckeyes was a learning experience, and some of that experience showed itself on the field.
When the game was played October 17, 1891, OSU was in for a surprise:
In passing, guarding and tackling Otterbein showed superior skill. The O. S. U. boys showed, however, that they understood the game thoroughly and . . . made a number of brilliant plays.[ii]
But Otterbein ground OSU into hamburger. Their “line seemed invincible, while the O.S.U. line was easily broken.[iii]
Tiny Otterbein stomped the giant Buckeyes 42-6!
It may or may not have been true that Otterbein was playing with a chip on its shoulder. The Ohio State team was “severely guyed and jeered” by the spectators. Allegedly, the Buckeyes had come to Westerville with an air of superiority. The Dispatch reporter claimed:
It had been published in a daily paper [apparently not the Dispatch] that they were coming up to “practice on” the Otterbein team, and they had further made boasts that they would win the game by a score of 69 to 0. These things, probably thoughtless, spread among the students and citizen [of Westerville] like wildfire and caused a rather unpleasant feeling.
“Practicing on” Otterbein sounds suspiciously like “whaling on” them. OSU was a much bigger school, but did not have lengthy experience in football. But Otterbein taught the Buckeyes a bitter lesson on that October afternoon in 1891.
