Finding answers to Harley’s statue problem in a Rose Bowl press release

As chance would have it, a copy of the Rose Bowl press release that announced the erection of Archie Griffin’s statue in Pasadena and a duplicate outside Ohio Stadium in Columbus has come into my possession.

I needed to write about that for a couple of reasons. First, it may erase a misconception I created in the blog that I wrote about Ohio State officials’ lack of support for a statue of OSU great Chic Harley outside the stadium for over 20 years. As I wrote in that blog, the stadium was built because of explosion in interest in OSU football created by Harley and his OSU teams in 1916, 1917 and 1919, so much so that it became known as the House that Harley Built.

My misconception was that the policy of not erecting statues to players changed with the arrival of new OSU athletic director Ross Bjork from Texas A&M this year. While it’s true that previous AD Gene Smith (and predecessor Andy Geiger) had often said that the number of OSU greats made choosing one for a statue problematic even for a player with Harley’s special status, Smith is quoted in the Rose Bowl’s press release, which was dated May 9, 2024. He retired in July, so I was wrong to blame this on Bjork. This was obviously in the works before Smith retired.

I won’t offer my conclusion as to why Smith and the university changed their position on this so abruptly, but it obviously had nothing to do with the amazing contributions that Griffin, Harley and any number of other qualified players and coaches made to the sport and the university during their careers. The ink on their resumes has been dry for a long time.

But I am reprinting pertinent parts of that press release so readers can see how a “duplicate” statue of Archie landed in the once-forbidden grounds outside of Ohio Stadium:


PASADENA, Calif. (May 9, 2024) A dedication of the statue celebrating college football’s only two-time Heisman Trophy winner, Archie Griffin, will take place at the Rose Bowl Stadium on Saturday, August 17 at 11am. The event will be open to the public. Griffin, a member of the Rose Bowl Game® (1990) and College Football Hall of Fames (1986), is one of just two players ever to have started in four consecutive Rose Bowl Games® and won the Heisman Trophy in 1974 and 1975. The 2024 college football season is the 50th anniversary of Griffin’s first Heisman Trophy award.

As previously announced by America’s Stadium, a Legends Walk will also be created adjacent to the Griffin statue in the Stadium’s Court of Champions, to highlight and educate visitors on the 19 Heisman Trophy winners that have played in the Rose Bowl Game® up to the current day. Led by Griffin’s four appearances in Pasadena, student-athletes from schools such as UCLA, Wisconsin, Oregon, Oklahoma, USC, Michigan and more will be represented in the neighboring Legends Walk.

The statue and Legends Walk was supported by several donors from across the country, many from the Columbus, Ohio area. Donations were provided to the Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation, the non-profit that supports the preservation, protection, and enhancement of the Stadium’s future. Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein, prominent philanthropists to Ohio State University and the Central Ohio community symbolically provided the project’s closing gift to finish the effort. Jay is the Executive Chairman of the board and Chief Executive Officer of American Eagle Outfitters.

“Our family has known Archie Griffin for many years,” said Jay Schottenstein. “Not only is he one of the greatest college football players of all time, he is a great person who throughout his life has made significant and long-lasting contributions to his community and to the Ohio State University. The Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation has made a wise choice in selecting Archie to be honored with a statue at the Rose Bowl Stadium.”

Griffin’s statue is the fifth on the Rose Bowl Stadium’s property to represent key moments and people in the venue’s history, joining Jackie Robinson (dedicated in 2017), the 1999 Team USA FIFA Women’s World Cup Champions (dedicated in 2019), iconic broadcaster Keith Jackson (dedicated in 2019) and legendary UCLA head coach and all-time wins leader Terry Donahue (dedicated in 2023). The commemorative statue will celebrate Griffin’s contributions to college football and the Rose Bowl Game® but also highlight the Heisman Trophy lineage that has competed in Pasadena over the century-plus of iconic moments.

The statue will be the first statue of Griffin to be established anywhere in America. A full-size replica of the statue will also be gifted to the Athletics Department at Ohio State University, which plays its home games in Ohio Stadium (“The Horseshoe”) – another iconic, historic venue with over a century of history.

“On behalf of The Ohio State University and the Department of Athletics, I wish to extend our most sincere thanks and gratitude to the Rose Bowl Legacy Foundation for this wonderful honor of memorializing our all-time great, Archie Griffin, with a statue at the Rose Bowl Stadium,” Gene Smith, Ohio State senior vice president and Wolfe Foundation-Eugene Smith Endowed Athletics Director, said. “Knowing Archie, he would want a statue for all the Heisman Trophy winners along the ‘Legacy Walk.’ His accomplishments on and off the playing field are truly legendary and still one-of-a-kind 50 years later, and we are so proud and grateful that he is a Buckeye.”

Let me reiterate what I wrote in the previous blog: You’d have to be out of your mind to oppose a statue for Griffin, one of the great players in school history, the only two-time winner of the Heisman Trophy, a terrific role model and one of the world’s nicest guys. This isn’t about him, but Chic Harley.

For more than twenty years, Geiger and Smith rejected suggestions from historians, old-timers and many devoted fans that a statue of Harley be erected outside the stadium, even though he was the guy most responsible for its construction. Their unsatisfactory answer was always that it wouldn’t be right to single out a player or a coach, even one who might have had the stadium named for him if he hadn’t lived so long, because it would invite a flood of complaints from those who thought another player should have a statue.

So, what changed?