Saint Woody

Saint Woody is a Bill Bryson–style look at Ohio State football and the spiritual fanaticism that surrounds it.

The Ohio State Buckeyes have been a powerhouse in college football for decades, with numerous national championships and NFL draftees to their credit. With such a successful history, it’s no wonder that the passion for Ohio State football has reached a level of devotion that has religious overtones. Saint Woody is a Bill Bryson–style look at Ohio State football and the spiritual fanaticism that surrounds it. Bob Hunter tracks the development of this powerhouse program from its earliest days to its heights under Woody Hayes, the de facto king of Ohio State football, and beyond. Hayes led the team to three national championships and a record of 205–61–10 over a twenty-eight-year period and was at the heart of the Ten-Year War, a particularly intense period in the infamous Ohio State–Michigan rivalry. Hunter also looks at the present state of Buckeye football and the team’s scarlet-and-gray-clad followers, as well as its legion of detractors, who voted Ohio State as the “most hated” college team in a nationwide survey. America loves—and hates—a winner. Irreverent, honest, insightful, and always entertaining, Saint Woody will appeal to anyone whose spirit has ever lifted when hearing that famous cry “Go Bucks!”

Although Joe Klein's Woody Guthrie and Ed Cray's Ramblin' Man capture Woody Guthrie's freewheeling personality and his empathy for the poor and downtrodden, Kaufman is the first to portray in detail Guthrie's commitment to political radicalism, especially communism. Drawing on previously unseen letters, song lyrics, essays, and interviews with family and friends, Kaufman traces Guthrie's involvement in the workers' movement and his development of protest songs. He portrays Guthrie as a committed and flawed human immersed in political complexity and harrowing personal struggle. Since most of the stories in Kaufman's appreciative portrait will be familiar to readers interested in Guthrie, it is best for those who know little about the singer to read first his autobiography, Bound for Glory, or as a next read after American Radical.

To enjoy using this book, learn its limitations, for to ignore them will lead to frustration. With perhaps a thousand kinds of flowering plants in the San Francisco Bay Region, there are here included as spring wildflowers only about 300 kinds. Obviously many limitations had to be set and, nature lacking sharp boundaries, choices often had to be arbitrary.