The Hall of Fame coach who could talk to people; even Woody Hayes had to love Dick Vermeil

This is the big one, of course, the one where Dick Vermeil comes to Ohio and stands there looking at himself on a giant stage after his bronze bust is revealed.

Understand, though, coach Vermeil goes into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he has attended recognition events longer than Ohio State coach Ryan Day has been alive. One such occasion reminds him of the day he beat coach Woody Hayes.

On Jan. 1, 1976, in a mind-boggling upset, Vermeil's UCLA Bruins took down No. 1-ranked Ohio State.

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The Rose Bowl Hall of Fame got around to putting in the UCLA quarterback, John Sciarra, in 1991, when, in introducing Sciarra, Vermeil called him "my favorite player ever."

Ohio State-UCLA was Woody World vs. Whippersnapper. Hayes was in his 25th season at Ohio State. Vermeil took over at UCLA the previous year, with head coaching experience at a California high school and Napa Junior College.

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A run as a Stanford assistant led to a few years on the Los Angeles Rams' staff. UCLA's interest in Vermeil stemmed from him helping the 1973 Rams go 12-3.

It wasn't as if UCLA was a primo job. The day coach Pepper Rodgers' 1973 Bruins improved to 9-1, they attracted just 18,540 to the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Rodgers left for Georgia Tech. Vermeil replaced him and went a lukewarm 6-3-2. One loss was to Iowa, which wound up 3-8 under new skipper Bob Commings, who had been a high school coach in Massillon the previous five years.

In Vermeil's second year, Ohio State replaced Iowa as UCLA's token early opponent from the Big Ten. Hayes' stacked Buckeyes ripped the Bruins 41-20 in the Coliseum. Vermeil's trouble with the Buckeye State soon continued with a loss to Washington, whose coach was former Massillon player and Kent State coach Don James.

The Bruins otherwise fared well in a weak Pac-8, winning the title and gaining a rematch against Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. The Buckeyes' 11-0 record included a 49-0 rout of Iowa.

Any optimism about an upset vanished when UCLA players staged a mini-revolt after a Rose Bowl practice, complaining that Vermeil worked them too hard.

An unapologetic Vermeil's told reporters, "Yep, we worked their living butts off."

On game day, two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin kicked butt during a first half in which Ohio State led 155-9 in rushing yards. Yet, the Buckeyes led just 3-0.

Vermeil adjusted. His veer-option plays sprang Wendell Tyler for 150 second-half rushing yards. Sciarra found mismatches against man coverage and threw two touchdown passes to Wally Henry. UCLA's defense unhinged Buckeye QB Cornelius Greene.

The result was a 23-10 UCLA victory.

Tim Fox, a former Canton Glenwood player who went on to a long NFL career, was like a lot of Ohio State players. The loss was hard to live with.

"I think about that game often," Fox told Scarlet and Gray Report in 2013, "When I give talks to kids, I tell them you learn more from losses than from wins. We all could have played better, and we could have won the national championship. Dealing with that helped me persevere in life."

It helped Vermeil get a head coaching job with the Eagles. He got hired two weeks after the Rose Bowl. Within five years, he had Philadelphia in its first Super Bowl.

In a recent interview with The Canton Repository, Vermeil laughed about Hayes' reputation as a human volcano.

"As the game ended, Woody came across the field, grabbed me around the neck, and said, 'Great job of coaching, young man,'" Vermeil said. "I have fond memories of Woody.

"When we went to the Super Bowl in the 1980 season, we brought Woody to New Orleans as a guest. It was unbelievable for my dad, who had the greatest respect for him. Dad's biggest thrill was meeting Woody Hayes."

Vermeil got to work with a downtrodden Eagles franchise and gave Philadelphia its first Super Bowl trip in his fifth season.

In Super Bowl XV, the Eagles fell 27-10 to the Raiders, who had knocked off Cleveland's "Kardiac Kids" earlier in the playoffs.

Vermeil left coaching in 1983 and spent 14 years in broadcasting. His Super Bowl win came in the 1999 season, his third as head coach of the St. Louis Rams.

Vermeil's dad and Woody Hayes both died in 1987. Vermeil still enjoys talking about both of them.

Louis Vermeil became a Hall of Famer a long time ago. It was the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame. Louis was a semi-pro football player who opened a car-garage business that branched into collecting cars.

Home was Calistoga, in California's Napa County — wine country.

"My family was passionate about three things," Dick Vermeil says. "Sprint Cars, wine and football."

His great grandfather Garibaldi Iaccheri, who emigrated from Italy in the late 1800s, founded the Calistoga Wine Company. Dick Vermeil launched his own operation, Vermeil Wines, in 1999.

Vermeil's family life made him a hard worker and a people person. His NFL mantra became, "I don't coach football. I coach people who play football. ... Work the crap out of them on the field. Make them happy off the field."

Early on in his NFL head coaching career, his fire-faced exuberance gained notice in a league full of personalities. Late in his Eagles run, rival head coaches included Chuck Noll, Mike Ditka, Marv Levy, Tom Landry, Bud Grant, Bill Walsh, Don Coryell, Forrest Gregg, Bart Starr, Don Shula, Bill Walsh, Mike McCormack, Tom Flores and Joe Gibbs. All are in the Hall of Fame as coaches or players except for Coryell, a finalist as a coach six times.

Vermeil told the Eagles they would work harder than everyone else. He overworked himself. A league-wide strike in 1982 did him in. He left the team after seven years, citing "burnout."

He was an instant star in broadcasting, where he found it amusing to be paid twice as much as he was as a head coach.

He was 60 years old when he returned to the sidelines in 1997. The Rams wanted a face after moving from Los Angeles to St. Louis. Vermeil brought name recognition and, in the 1999 season, a 23-16 win over the Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV.

His abrupt resignation was a bend of Gateway Arch proportions.

The Rams protested during his process of taking a year off and then resurfacing as head coach in Kansas City. His desire to work for Chiefs GM Carl Peterson was understandable.

Peterson was on Vermeil's staff at UCLA. They were together in Philadelphia for six years. Peterson is Vermeil's Hall of Fame presenter.

Peterson capsulized Vermeil's Canton credentials in an interview with Hall of Fame voter Clark Judge:

"His first two years with a team are not exceptional. From the third year on, it's tremendously exceptional.

"He's done something that only one other coach in the NFL has done, and that's take not one, not two, but three struggling teams and turn the culture around. The only other coach to do that is Bill Parcells."

Here's how the math of Vermeil's molding worked out:

Vermeil went 9-19 in his first two years with the Eagles and 42-22 in the next four. His Rams were 9-23 through two seasons, then went 15-4, including a Super Bowl win, in Year 3. His Chiefs were 14-18 through two years, then 30-18 in the next three.

He wore himself out again.

"I'm physically and emotionally burned out," he said when he resigned after the 2005 season, at 69.

Vermeil helped shape a number of Hall of Famer players, including Harold Carmichael with the Eagles, Marshall Faulk and Orlando Pace with the Rams, and Tony Gonzalez with the Chiefs. In the main, he was an everyman's coach.

"After they played for me, they weren't my players, they were my friends," he said recently. "I was just pheasant hunting with (former Eagles tight end) Keith Krepfle and (former Eagles linebacker) Frank LeMaster. We stayed at Keith's house in the Poconos. We hunted all day, shot some birds, had some dinner, drank some wine."

At 85, Vermeil is robust, conversant and still up for taking a spin in something from his Sprint Car collection.

As a young coach, as an old coach, and now, he has worn his emotions on his sleeve.

He cried in February when Kurt Warner showed up at his home in Chester County, Pennsylvania to break the news about Canton. They bear-hugged after Warner said, "It is with unbelievable joy that I welcome you to the greatest fraternity in sports."

Warner, elected to the Hall of Fame in 2017, tends to be the quarterback associated with Vermeil. Fair enough. They were together in the coach's lone Super Bowl win.

Quarterbacks Ron Jaworski (Eagles) and Trent Green (Chiefs) were with Vermeil much longer than Warner.

John Sciarra is the QB time forgot, but Vermeil never did.

After UCLA, Sciarra spent five years in Philadelphia with Vermeil. He learned the safety position and mostly he played special teams.

In a 1979 game against the Browns, Sciarra returned three kicks for 50 yards. He returned two punts in the Super Bowl in January of 1981. Later that year, Mick Jagger spent part of a Rolling Stones concert wearing a Sciarra jersey, No. 21.

The concert was in the fall at the stadium next to the Eagles' practice grounds. Vermeil complained that the work crews setting up the concert kept getting in the way.

He isn't a Stones fan. To him, John Sciarra is a rock star.

Reach Steve at steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com

On Twitter: @sdoerschukREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Dick Vermeil recalls Ohio State's Woody Hayes as he hits Hall of Fame