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Beginnings
In the spring of 1890 the growing fever of the Walter Camp-style of football, formulated between 1880 and 1883 among colleges of the future Ivy League, reached Columbus, Ohio. George Cole, an undergraduate, is generally given credit for organizing the first intercollegiate team at Ohio State. He persuaded Alexander S. Lilley to coach the squad and brought in a reknowned Princeton fullback and soon-to-be coach of the Purdue Boilermakers, Knowlton Lyman "Snake" Ames, to familiarize the team with fundamentals. The Buckeyes first game, played on May 3, 1890, at Delaware, Ohio, against Ohio Wesleyan University, was a victory, but two other projected spring games could not be arranged.  Play resumed in November, with home games played at Recreation Park (near the current Schiller Park in south Columbus), but Ohio State lost all three. The next year representatives met with counterparts from Adelbert, Denison, Buchtel, and Kenyon Colleges to agree to various terms and laid the groundwork for the informal "Big Six" conference of Ohio colleges. Throughout its first decade nearly all of Ohio State's opponents were in-state teams.

School Colors
Scarlet and Gray have been Ohio State’s official school colors since 1878. Scarlet and Gray were chosen by a group of three students in a lecture room in University Hall because “it was a pleasing combination and had not been adopted by any other college,” noted selection committee member Alice Townshend Wing.  The school's original colors were black and orange. Those colors were not used however, because Princeton already used them.

What is a Buckeye?
The Buckeye (Aesculus glabra) is a tree, native to Ohio and particularly prevalent in the Ohio River Valley, whose small, shiny, dark brown nuts with a lighter tan patch resembles the eye of a deer.

Folk wisdom has it that carrying one in a pocket brings good luck. “Buckeyes” has been the official Ohio State school nickname since 1950, but it had been in common use for many years before as the Buckeye is the state tree.

Woody Hayes
A unanimous vote of the board of trustees endorsed the choice of the selection committee and on February 18, 1951, named as head coach Wayne Woodrow Hayes, who had achieved success as head coach of both his alma mater Denison University and Miami of Ohio. Hayes, ironically, had not been the committee's first choice. The head coach of Missouri, Don Faurot, had been offered and accepted the position a week earlier, but changed his mind two days later. Going into his first season, Hayes thus did not enjoy widespread support among Ohio State's following.

The Ten Year War
The 1969 loss to Michigan initiated what came to be known as "The Ten Year War," in which the rivalry between the programs rose to the uppermost level of all sports and the competition between Schembechler and Hayes became legendary.  Both teams used the game as motivation for entire seasons and after the initial win by Michigan, played dead even at four wins and a tie apiece. Hayes, aided immeasureably by the presence of two-time Heisman recipient Archie Griffin, had the upper hand during the first part of the war, in which Ohio State won the conference championship and went to the Rose Bowl four straight years, while Michigan won the final three. It was also an era in which through television Ohio State football again came to the forefront of national attention.

Buckeye Leaves
This tradition of placing Buckeye Leaves on the Ohio State helmets started in 1968 when Woody Hayes and longtime trainer Ernie Biggs changed the look of the Ohio State uniforms.

The new look included names on the back of the jerseys and a wide “Buckeye stripe” on the sleeves of the jersey believed to be the first of its kind in the sport of football.