Chaump, now 82, on the front porch of his home in West Hanover Twp.

PennLive/David Jones

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George Chaump remembers his first few days as an Ohio State assistant coach in March of 1968 as being a rather strange time. He was freshly hired from his hugely successful tenure at John Harris, now Harrisburg High School, where his teams had won their last 34 games in a row.

He was joining his former star Jan White, who’d signed with OSU the year before and played on the freshman team. He’d originally been visited by his new boss Woody Hayes on a recruiting trip the Buckeye coach had planned to try to sign quarterback Jimmy Jones:

“I got to know Woody from him coming up to see us. We’d been undefeated for three years and had all sorts of scoring records.”

In fact, Chaump’s John Harris teams had won six straight Central Penn League championships and were 50-4 over those seasons.

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Woody had just weeks before called and asked Chaump to fly to Columbus and interview to join the staff. He offered Chaump the job on the spot.

So there was Chaump mixing with assistants on a moribund staff who all believed they were lame ducks. OSU had gone 10-8 combined the previous two seasons. A prop plane had been spotted flying over Ohio Stadium towing a sign that read GOODBYE WOODY.

Chaump’s greeting from the other assistants, then, was one of incredulity:

“I got there and the coaches all said, ‘What’re you doing coming here? We’re not gonna have a job next year. We’ve gotta win or Woody’s gonna get fired. And we have nothing but freshmen who’ve never played.’”

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Harrisburg coaching legend George Chaump is now 82 and struggles with the effects of kidney dialysis, but his mind remains sharp. And on Wednesday, he recalled the year of 1968, one that would change his career and that of many others including Woody Hayes, Lou Holtz and Earle Bruce -- when he punched through a plan to open up Ohio State's caveman offense.

PennLive/David Jones

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The firing of the anachronistic Hayes might have been executed the year before but he managed to beat archrival Michigan to save his hide for one more year.

This was the hornet’s nest into which Chaump flew for his first college job in 1968. But he didn’t doubt his decision. Not once he saw the talent of those freshmen:

"All I did was look at film of the freshman team. And what I saw was amazing. I thought there was more talent than I'd ever seen, including, ironically enough, a great quarterback."

That was Rex Kern, a freckle-faced kid who looked like Howdy Doody but played with the guile and deception of a street-savvy pick-pocket. He and Chaump together, running an overhauled offense that the new assistant scratched and clawed to implement, practically over Hayes’ dead body, turned around the fortunes of a program that really has never looked back in half a century.

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Knowing that Kern was likely ticketed for a big career at OSU, Jones ended up committing to John McKay at Southern California and would start at quarterback there beginning as a sophomore in 1969.

But Chaump led an offense whose sudden versatility forged a stunning national championship. Though the 2005 Penn State season and some others are similar, there’s never been a rising-phoenix college football story quite like it. And Harrisburg’s second most famous football coaching name – runner-up only to one of his former players, Dennis Green – was right in the middle of it.

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Chaump’s health has been better. He’s 82 now and his kidneys are failing. He’s been undergoing dialysis treatments lately. When I visited his West Hanover Twp. home on Wednesday, he was struggling to walk. The treatments had drained him of energy and he said he felt lousy.

But Chaump has never felt too bad to tell a good story. The man has more of them and tells them better, with more imagery and humor, than any football coach I know, even his former cohort on the Ohio State staff, Lou Holtz.

So, in honor of a the 50th anniversary of perhaps his most memorable year of a full and storied career, I asked him to retell one for print that I've heard before. Like any good story, it bears retelling, at least every quarter-century or so.

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Chaump (right) with rookie sophomore quarterback Rex Kern (left) would revolutionize the Ohio State offense, stretching the field horizontally as it never had been under Woody Hayes.

Ohio State Univ.

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It begins with the 32-year-old Chaump being left behind in the OSU football offices in the basketball house, St. John Arena, to watch film while the rest of the staff recruited during the late winter and early spring of 1968. Upon their return for the first meetings before spring practice, Hayes convened the staff. This was Chaump’s first taste of a coach whose mercurial mood swings were notorious:

“I was amazed at how he treated us all like grade-school coaches,” said Chaump. “He would stand up there and underline stuff. It was all monotonous, all ‘Dead-T’ sets, no imagination, no spreading out the field, no using receivers.”

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Over and over, Hayes delineated in minute detail how the linemen should split, the steps the backs should take, on simple blast plays from a Cro-Magnon tight-T set that Hayes called the Robust T – seven linemen, the quarterback, and three backs in a row behind him.

“I was in these meetings for about three days,” recalled Chaump. “Finally, I was at lunch with a bunch of the assistants and I said, ‘Is this the way Woody runs all of his meetings? Geez, we’re all treated like a bunch of elementary kids. Do we ever get a chance to ask questions?’”

The tackles/tight ends coach Hugh Hindman, with what Chaump remembers as something of a droll smirk, responded, “Sure, ask a couple of questions.”

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As the new guy on the staff, Chaump was not yet allowed on the recruiting trail in the spring of '68. So he stayed back at the OSU coaching offices in St. John Arena and studied video of a prodigious class of rising sophomores whose talent he realized must be used more effectively.

PennLive/David Jones

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Hindman would later become the athletic director and ended up firing Hayes 10 years later for slugging Clemson linebacker Charlie Bauman along the OSU sideline near the end of the 1978 Gator Bowl.

Upon the staff returning from lunch, Hayes resumed diagramming fullback dive plays. Chaump could no longer remain still. He raised his hand, Hayes acknowledged him and he began: “Coach, is this going to be our offense this year?” Responded Hayes, “Well, unless you know something better.”

Chaump replied, “Well, I don’t know if I’ll go that far. But I have some ideas and I’d like to talk about it if we could.”

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There began Chaump’s turn at the chalkboard. As Hayes commenced a slow boil, the young assistant drew up several concepts that seem elementary now: Forcing a double-team on the flank with hitch passes to the best athlete, White, to acquire a manpower advantage inside. Getting the dangerous sophomore athletes like quarterback Kern, receivers White and Bruce Jankowski and tailback Leo Hayden into space where they could stretch the defense sideline to sideline. (The sophomore class included 13 future 1971 NFL Draft choices.) But at the time, it was revolutionary stuff to someone like Hayes.

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The thing was, Hayes was fully aware of his tenuous position. He had not won a Big Ten title in seven years. His 1966 team had a losing record (4-5) and 1967 had not been much better (6-3).

Chaump, then, had a subtle lever with which to pry open the stodgy offense. Or so he thought.

As he diagrammed options off a base Slot-I offense, Hayes interrogated him with contentious questions. He called the scheme a “lighthouse,” meaning it was obvious, that it turned his beloved fullback into a glorified guard, that linemen couldn’t possibly hold their blocks long enough in it with the tailback so far behind scrimmage.

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The 1968 Ohio State coaching staff, photographed here in August 1968, included four future college head coaches in quarterback/receivers assistant Chaump (front row, second from left), defensive backfield coach Lou Holtz (front row, far left), defensive assistant Bill Mallory (front row, far right) and offensive line coach Earle Bruce (back row, third from right) as well as the developer of the Run-n-Shoot offense Glenn "Tiger" Ellison (back row, second from left).

Ohio State Univ

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Of course, USC had long been shredding defenses with it under John McKay with Heisman winners at tailback, first Mike Garrett, then O.J. Simpson. But that didn’t sway Hayes.

“I could see him getting upset,” remembered Chaump. “He started to breathe hard. I thought, Oh boy. Something’s set to explode here in a second.”

The young assistant was prescient. As he diagrammed a 5-yard hitch pass to the wideout, Hayes had seen enough. If you were gonna coach at Ohio State, you’d better damn be able to run the ball. He demanded: Did Chaump think a tailback was better at that than a fullback? Yes, Chaump responded. You have a lead blocker and an advantage in personnel at the point of attack.

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With that Hayes detonated:

“Nobody’s gonna come in here and tell us we’re not gonna run the fullback! If you think you’re gonna come in here and change that, you’re not gonna work here! You get the hell outa here now! Go ahead! You’re gone!”

Chaump went and gathered his pencil, paper and books from his seat at the large table, then pressed his hands on it to rise – dazed, not quite believing he’d been fired after mere weeks on the job. What would he tell his wife Connie?

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“He said I was fired. What in hell was I gonna do? I walked out the door and started walking down the hall.”

As he approached its end and the second-floor stairwell, Hayes opened the door and yelled, “Hey! George, get back in here! I’ve never fired a coach in my life and I’m not gonna break my record for the likes of you.”

Chaump returned and apologized for getting Hayes upset. But not for suggesting new methods. He sat back down.

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As Chaump attempts to outline a plan to shift from Hayes' tight "Robust T" formation to John McKay's more progressive Slot-I to better exploit the talented sophomores including Harrisburg's Jan White, the head coach explodes and fires the young coach on the spot.

PennLive/David Jones

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But, as Hayes resumed his lecture, veteran offensive assistant Hindman dared to speak up. Here, incredibly, he backed Chaump: “Coach, I played for you. I’ve coached under you. I understand you. I know how emotional you get. But let me tell you something: Quite frankly, I think we should talk about those ideas George had on the board. I think we should talk about it and see what we can do.”

Then, Earle Bruce joined in: “It’s about time we changed.”

And finally, Glenn “Tiger Ellison, an accomplished strategist credited for devising the Run-n-Shoot offense later made trendy by Mouse Davis, practically whooped: “Yeah! Let's do it!”

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If not an out-and-out mutiny, it was something approaching a mass insurrection. Woody was stunned.

“He was suddenly like a little boy up there,” remembered Chaump. “He said, ‘Well, well, well. If we’re gonna do this, we better learn more about it.”

Chaump sent away for films from USC's McKay and Oklahoma's Chuck Fairbanks. They were studied. The offense was installed in spring practice and honed in August camp. The Robust T was hardly mothballed; it made regular appearances in the red zone.

Still, Ohio State football had entered the 20th Century. Though, not without some hiccups. Even in the dog days of July, this time exactly 50 years ago, Hayes could be heard muttering in coaching meetings: "We're copying this from a goddamn high school coach. We're all gonna get fired."

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A few months later, the Buckeyes opened up against Southern Methodist in the Slot-I. And, as Chaump puts it: “Eighty thousand people in Ohio Stadium thought it was an illegal formation.”

Nine straight wins and a record scoring binge later, #1-ranked Ohio State faced Simpson and #2 USC in the Rose Bowl. The Buckeyes were using John McKay’s offense against him. And they beat him, too, 27-16, to win the national championship. George Chaump, the man who didn’t allow a little momentary firing to dissuade him, had turned around the barge.

Mere months after the Rose Bowl win, Woody had published a book detailing the stratagems that made the unbeaten season possible. Hotline to Victory was constructed like a coach's playbook with a plastic-ring-binder spine. It even had a section on the I-formation. Almost like Woody himself invented it.

“Hey, that was Woody in a nutshell,” said Chaump. “Suddenly, Woody was a genius.”

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After Hayes un-fires Chaump but tells him to sit down, shut up and listen, the rest of the staff rises up to support his offensive overhaul. Amid a shocking mass-insurrection, the old coach has no choice but to become the one doing the listening -- and Chaump's plan is adopted.

PennLive/David Jones

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Chaump would coach under the man another decade before joining McKay with the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1979, then taking over as head coach at Marshall and later at Navy. But no year was ever like his first in college, 1968:

“It was the season that saved Ohio State football, they called it.”

Thanks to George Chaump, a high school coach who had a better idea and wouldn’t let it rest.

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EMAIL/TWITTER DAVID JONES: djones@pennlive.com

Follow @djoneshoop

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