History of Ohio State Buckeyes football

The history of Ohio State Buckeyes football covers 125 years through the 2014 season. The team has represented the Ohio State University in the Western Conference, its successor the Big Ten, and in the NCAA Division I. Its history parallels the development of college football as a major sport in the United States and demonstrates the status of the Buckeyes as one of its major programs.

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 O. Lilley to coach the squad and brought in a renowned Princeton fullback and soon-to-be coach of the Purdue Boilermakers, Knowlton L. "Snake" Ames, to familiarize the team with fundamentals. The Buckeyes first game, played on Saturday, 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. In 1892 Jack Ryder became Ohio State's first paid coach, earning $15 a week during a ten-week season. After losing his first game, against Oberlin College and its new coach John Heisman, Ryder compiled a 22–22–2 record.

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