2017 is the 75th anniversary of Ohio State's first national championship season. To honor the achievement, this series will post articles from the Columbus Citizen Journal on the day they ran in 1942.

Ohio State is back in the Big Ten title race and faces a big tilt against the Illini in Cleveland.

The Ohio State football team starts preparation tonight for the game with Illinois in Cleveland next Saturday, the first of two games with teams that rank near the top of the Western Conference and it became more and more evident that Les Horvath, the "Mighty Mite" who holds down the right halfback position on the Buck starting team, will have a great share of responsibility for the winning or losing of theses games.

With injuries to Bob Frye and Tom Cleary that will probably keep these two men out of action for the remainder of the season, added to the previous injury to Bill Durtschl, Little Les stood alone in the wingback position today. Frye was rated the second-stringer. He has a broken leg. Durtschl was the third man at the position. He has a twisted knee and Trainer Ernie Biggs is "trying to get him ready" for the game with the Illini. Cleary was moved to the position after Durtschl's injury. He has a fractured wrist.

The injuries have piled up and it looks like's "Little Les" is going to be leaned on going forward.

Small But Fast

Coach Paul Brown and his aides are searching for an answer to the problem but the only answer in sight is Horvath. Les is a little fellow, weighs only 160 pounds, but he plays as though he weighed at least 20 pounds more. He is a good defensive man despite his lack of poundage and a hard man to stop on running plays. When he takes the field, he looks somewhat like a mascot. When he leaves he has the respect of spectators, teammates and opponents alike.

There was a possibility that some other backfield man on the Buck squad would be moved in behind Les, but there was considerable question as to whom the man would be. George Slusser and Tommy James, Brown's pupils from Massillon, are both getting plenty to do spelling Sarringhaus at left halfback. Loren Staker has played the position but he is built much like the small Horvath and has had little college experience.

Second-guessers, therefore, were looking to the other two backfield positions to transfer possibility and my of them stopped at the quarterback position. Captain George Lynn and Sophomore Paul Priday have held a steady hand at that position in all the important games so far with two solid men still farther back in Phil Drake and Paul Selby.

Both of these men are from Columbus---Drake from North High School and Selby from Upper Arlington. Both weigh in at over 190 pounds and would add the much-needed weight and ruggedness to the wingback post. The only trouble in that both are inexperienced sophs.

Most guessers were putting Selby out in front due to the fact that he was a battering ball-carrier in high school, because he is fast for his weight, having run the 100-yard dash in slightly over 10 seconds during his high school days, and because he is a versatile athlete who has played basketball as well as football.

Drake, however, rated as one of the more brilliant prospects on the freshman eleven of last year at Ohio State. He was on the All-Columbus team at quarterback in 1940 and is a better-than-average punter when called upon. He is six feet tall, two inches above Selby, and carries an even 190 pounds on a trim, muscular frame.

New-Style Illini

The Illini team is is playing a new, revitalized type of football this year under their youthful coach, Ray Eliot, who joined the staff of Robert Zuppke, head man at the Champaign school for the last 29 years, in 1937 and this year moved up to the head coaching position.

Illinois has rung five victories so far this year against two losses one against powerful Notre Dame, 21-14, the other to Michigan, 28-14. The prize trophies were the 20-13 win over Minnesota and the 12-7 victory over Iowa that followed a couple of warmup wins 46-0 over South Dakota and 67-0 over Butler. Then came the two defeats but last week the Illini hit their stride again with a 14-7 win over Northwestern.

Relegated to a second-division berth in the Western Conference pre-season predictions, the Illini have three conference victories against a single loss and now share the Big Ten lead with the Bucks and Iowa.

The Illinois defense is giving up its share of points to every strong foe thus far but the offense has been equal to the occasion more often than not. Capt. Jimmy Smith is a driving runner while Dick Good is a top-notch passer and lends versatility as well as sudden-death potentialities to the attack.

Bob Frye, Ohio State halfback, didn't even find a broken leg too bad as he looked over the Citizen sport section describing how he and his mates defeated Pitt 59-19 in the game in which he got the broken leg. With him is his roommate at Baker Hall, Neil Berlekamp. Frye, who is from Crestline, is out for the season.

It's next to impossible to keep a college football squad at top form all the way through a tough 10-game schedule. 

That has been demonstrated time after time and this season's developments again illustrate it.

Saturday's happenings furnish a bit of emphasis. 

Remember the Ft. Knox team which was so impotent against Ohio State in losing the season opener here 59-0? Bernie Bierman's Iowa Seahawks were hard pressed to defeat Ft. Knox 13-7 Saturday.

Of course the Seahawks have illustrated the fact a couple of times this season. After they'd won from Northwestern 20-12, from Minnesota 7-6 and from Michigan 26-14 on consecutive Saturdays, they ran into a stunning 28-0 defeat at the hands of Notre Dame.

Byrer uses several other teams to illustrate the difficulty of completing the season with an unblemished record. Moving on and back to Ohio State.

There's little doubt among folks who watched Ohio State against Pitt in that 59-19 romp Saturday that the Bucks, playing as they did against the Panthers, would have upset Wisconsin a week ago.

What's the reason for the letups?

There are several. Some of them are physical. After a team has played three or four tough games in a row it's due for a letdown. And when a superior team is a bit off an inferior team which is inspired can win.

Another is the fact that college athletes are, after all, mere youths. They hear their coaches, week after week, warn them again this as they prepared for Ft. Knox, Indiana, Southern California, Purdue and Northwestern. It had come to be an old story.

As they prepared for Wisconsin they thought it was just some more of the same. It wasn't and they were defeated.

In short, the Bucks weren't physically or mentally at their peak against Wisconsin.

There isn't much danger that they won't be back up against Illinois, Michigan and Iowa's Seahawks in their three remaining games.

First they KNOW that all three will be tough, without needing to be told by their coaches. And they have a rich reward in sight. They can clinch at least a tie for the conference title by winning from Illinois Saturday in Cleveland and from Michigan the following Saturday in their home-coming game here.

Rounding Up Sport

Right name of Ray Eliot, coach of the Illinios football team which meets Ohio State in Cleveland Saturday, is Ray Nusspickel.

He played under his right name while playing tackle at Illinois but changed it shortly after finishing his playing days. And who can blame him?

Today's Old School Ad

Coke makes its way for the first time during this series:

That Extra Something!
...You can spot it every time

SPECIALIZING in any job is important. And, it takes only one taste of ice-cold Coca-Cola to tell you that its makers have specialized in refreshment for years. They created this utterly different drink 57 years ago. Today it's still individual---and delightfully so.

Note the difference in taste. You can sense the special blend of flavors. Sip again. Your thirst is gone before you know i, but something else arrives. This is refreshment. And it's refreshment that goes into energy---quickly---pleasantly.

When you've finished, you know you've enjoyed a drink made to a standard of quality, not to a standard of price. Folks the country over feel the same way about it. They appreciate the genuine...the real thing...Coke...Coca-Cola.

 

It's natural for popular names to acquire friendly abbreviations. That's why you hear Coca-Cola called Coke. Coca-Cola and Coke mean the same thing...the real thing..."coming from a single source, and well known to the community".

Certain jobs call for high morale. They have a friend in the pause that refreshes with ice-cold Coca-Cola. It puts a lot of refreshment into a small space of time.

HOT DOGS
Now what would you do if you were hungry and thirsty and wanted a little touch of home-like atmosphere? Wouldn't you feel that you get in in a hot dog...maybe a hamburger...and certainly in ice-cold Coke?

Boy and girl, recreation and refreshment. There's two for company and two more for happiness and satisfaction. You know refreshment's first name, of course. Everybody knows Coke.