Ex-Ohio State Buckeye Kenny Peterson remembers 'little brother' Mike Doss hitting like a hurricane

Everyone in town knew Mike Doss was a ferocious player.

As Doss enters the College Football Hall of Fame on Tuesday, his hometown pal Kenny Peterson regards Doss as a friend for life.

"Mike is the little brother I never had," Peterson said. "We talk back and forth like brothers, even though sometimes I want to beat him up."

They fought to national championships together, first at McKinley, where the 1997 Bulldogs were voted No. 1 in the land by USA Today, then at Ohio State.

Jan. 3, 2003 perhaps was the most glorious day in Buckeye history. Ohio State stunned Miami in the Fiesta Bowl to secure the Buckeyes' first national title in 34 years.

Miami fans still carp over a late pass interference call that shaped Ohio State's 31-24 double-overtime victory. Ohio State people cite earlier calls that benefitted Miami, but mostly recall the Buckeyes smacking the Hurricanes in the mouth.

Doss recalls the supposed hopelessness going in, saying, "We were 17-point underdogs who didn't have a snowball's chance in hell against 'the greatest team ever.'"

To that, Doss adds a "ha ha ha ha ha ha ha," with humorous inflection.

The old friends made huge plays.

Miami led 7-0 late in the first half. Doss, playing safety and using the moves that helped him rush for almost 1,500 yards at McKinley in 1998, returned an interception 35 yards before Willis McGahee tackled him.

Ohio State QB Craig Krenzel soon scored on a sneak to make it a 7-7 game. The touchdown came with 2:29 left in the first half. Maurice Clarett ran for a TD with 1:10 left in the half to give Ohio State a 14-7 lead.

The offense was back the field because Peterson, playing defensive tackle, smashed through a double team in which left tackle Carlos Joseph and left guard Sherko Haji-Rasouli barely slowed him. The ball came out as Peterson leveled Miami quarterback Ken Dorsey.

Peterson had an earlier sack and could have been defensive MVP for the game. The award went to Doss, probably swayed by his reputation. Every voter in the house knew the man wearing jersey No. 2 was a three-time All-American.

As analyst Dan Fouts put it to a massive ABC audience after the Doss interception, "The leader of the Buckeye defense has set up the offense."

Peterson was − and is −happy for Doss's success.

"Mike probably doesn't realize how much he helped me," Peterson says now. "There was a time I was actually going to quit at Ohio State. I wasn't getting the playing time I wanted.

"Mike's faith is very strong, and at the time mine was being tested. Mike kind of guided me back into the good book. He played an intricate role in me staying at Ohio State and grinding it out."

Peterson arrived as a fifth-year senior in 2002, which led to getting drafted in the third round by Green Bay and playing seven years in the NFL. From there, he became an entrepreneur, best known locally for owning a Nothing Bundt Cakes franchise in Belden Village.

Peterson, 44, regards Doss, 41, as every bit a Hall of Famer, saying, "It always amazed me how Mike could find the ball."

"Mike was persistent in football, like one of those little gnats that keeps flying around and won't stop until he gets what he wants," Peterson said. "That's indicative of how he is now as a business person working for the Robert Weiler company.

"He's been a champion on all levels, and it's so fitting for him to be a champion in life, with his beautiful wife Jasmine, and his three baby girls, and his young brother AJ, who is attending Michigan State."

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The brother, AJ Kirk, played on Akron Hoban's 2020 state championship team before joining head coach Mel Tucker at Michigan State. Doss's and Kirk's mother died in 2008 after a bout with breast cancer, at which point Mike became more deeply involved in AJ's life.

That extended into the AJ's recruitment. Tucker was Doss's position coach on Ohio State's national title team.

Doss and Peterson weren't the only Stark County-area guys who hurt Miami in the Fiesta Bowl. Dustin Fox, from GlenOak, made an early interception. Cie Grant's fourth-down blitz into Dorsey's face forced a wild throw on what became the last play of the game.

"We sort of adopted Cie as a Stark Countian, since he played for New Philadelphia when New Philadelphia was in the Federal League," Fox said.

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Fox was a GlenOak sophomore and Doss was a McKinley senior when their high school teams collided.

"Mike ran back the opening kick for a touchdown, which was the kind of thing Mike could do," Fox said. "There was a play where they lined up Mike up as a receiver. He caught a pass down the seam. After he spun away from a tackle, I kind of caught him perfectly, and I was able to get a good tackle on him.

"I got up over top of him and he tapped me on the helmet, and I tapped his. That was so cool."

Fox spent two years as Doss's Ohio State teammate.

"Mike wasn't a burner, but he could run, and his football speed was off the charts," Fox said. "His instincts made him special."

Thom McDaniels was in his 16th and final season as McKinley's head coach when Doss was a junior. McDaniels gave up the coaching job to be McKinley's athletic director in 1998, but his son, Ben McDaniels, stayed on at quarterback, in an offense that featured Doss at tailback.

In 2000, McDaniels resurfaced as a head coach at Warren Harding. He followed Doss's college career from there.

"Mike Doss was one among many Hartford (middle school) players that were 'celebrated' long before they wore the red and black," McDaniels said. "He was a youth league and middle school phenom in both football and basketball, a la Che’ Bryant or Maurice Clarett or Mario Manningham.

"I saw it first-hand as he competed with and against Ben starting in grade-school hoops. He was a superior athlete and more physically mature than most his age in middle school.

"Our challenge as high school coaches blessed with young superstars was to acclimate them to hard coaching and structure and an appreciation of 'we not me' … no fault of their own. All those mentioned transitioned through that growth as players.

"Mike was uniquely instinctive, naturally physical and tough, and always primed and ready for the game-changing play. His highlight tape as a high school and collegiate player could be a feature film.

"His play and accompanying smile could light up any stadium or room that he occupied."

McKinley's 1997 team featured three stars − Doss, Peterson and Jamar Martin − who wound up at Ohio State and then in the NFL.

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"Mike was a team guy and a big playmaker," said Martin, now a teacher and coach in the Columbus area. "Any time a play needed to be made, he made it. That was his M.O. in high school and in college.

"He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame."

Andy Logan, who led NCAA Division I with eight interceptions while at Kent State in 1988, was coaching at North Canton Hoover when the Vikings lost to Doss and McKinley in the 1997 playoffs.

"We threw the ball out to our tailback, who was one of the county's top players, on the first play of the game," Logan recalls. "Mike came up from his safety spot, hit him, and knocked him out of the game.

"Mike looked over at us and shook his head. I golf with Mike a lot now. We joke about it.

"Mike was like Troy Polamalu. He was everywhere."

Doss isn't far behind Polamalu in entering the College Football Hall of Fame. Polamalu made it in 2019. Doss is part of the Class of 2022, which will be ushered in officially on Tuesday in Las Vegas.

Doss was a ringleader in ending a dismal Buckeye run against Michigan. The Wolverines were on a 14-3-1 hot streak in the series before the 2001 game, in which Doss returned two interceptions for 70 yards in a 26-20 Ohio State win. That triggered a hot streak in which the Buckeyes won 17 of 19 games.

In 2002, the defense held Michigan without a touchdown in a 14-9 win that set up the showdown against Miami.

The Buckeyes lacked overall team success in Doss's first three years. He was still at McKinley in 1998 when Ohio State lost only to Michigan State.

"Coming from a two-time state championship team, and seeing that loss to Michigan State, you thought you were the missing link," Doss said. "You thought, we're going right back to prominence, right? We're going to start as a freshman, and we're going to win the national championship.

"And you come in and our team goes 6-6 and we don't even make a bowl game."

As a sophomore in 2000, Doss made All-America teams picked by The Sporting News and Football News. However, a home loss to Michigan and a 24-7 bowl blowout at the hands of South Carolina left the Buckeyes at 8-4 and got head coach John Cooper fired.

"Jim Tressel came in and we went 7-4 my junior year," Doss said. "That whole season I bumped heads with Coach (Mark) Dantonio (the new defensive coordinator), who was sending the message, if I can bump heads with Mike Doss, I can bump heads with anybody.

"I'm like … do I want to stay here for this? In my mind, I really wanted to leave and turn pro and help the people who were most important in my life.

"My mom, God rest her soul, wanted me to graduate with a college degree. I wanted to honor my mom's wishes.

"I also wanted to win a national championship, and we had something great because Coach Tressel changed the landscape. No one was bigger than the team. That was what mattered the most.

"So, I stayed. We started out No. 13 in the country in 2002. It felt awesome when we made that run."

Doss still speaks of the Miami game with great relish. The same goes for his McKinley days.

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He was a junior when the Bulldogs fell prohibitively behind Cleveland St. Ignatius in the state semifinals, but won.

"That was the best comeback I was ever a part of," he said.

The most dramatic play of his life came a year later, again against Ignatius in the state semis.

With seconds left, Ignatius quarterback Tom Arth uncorked a pass 60 yards in the air to Pete Koch, who caught it at the 5 and seemed to have room to score. Ignatius could have pulled to within 31-30 and gone for a two-point conversion, and a win.

After Koch broke from a cluster of three Bulldogs, Doss appeared as if by magic from his safety spot, driving Koch out of bounds a foot short of the right pylon. It became the last play in McKinley's 31-24 win.

Twenty-four years later, Ignatius head coach Chuck Kyle says, "It figures it would have been Mike Doss. What a competitor."

Doss is the second Ohio State defensive back, with Jack Tatum, to go into the College Football Hall of Fame. He also is the second McKinley Bulldog to be inducted, joining 1980s star Percy Snow (Class of 2013).

Reach Steve at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com

On Twitter: @sdoerschukREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: College Football Hall of Fame welcomes Ohio State safety Mike Doss