COLUMBUS, Ohio — How do you compare a 5-foot-8 player from the leather helmet era who inspired the building of Ohio Stadium to a modern quarterback with eye-popping statistics and NFL success?
This impossible question sits at the heart of the latest Buckeye Talk podcast as hosts Stephen Means, Stefan Krajisnik, and Andrew Gillis tackle their bracket to determine the greatest Ohio State player of all time
The hosts find themselves constantly wrestling with factors that make cross-era comparisons nearly impossible: physical evolution, rule changes, positional value, and even the role of coaching versus playing contributions.
No matchup better illustrates this challenge than their debate over Chic Harley versus Justin Fields, where a player from 1916-19 goes head to head with one of the most statistically impressive quarterbacks in recent memory.
“I understand it’s a different era and this was why it was so hard,” Gillis explains, “Because Chic Harley, 1916, 17 and 19, he was a consensus All-American. Justin Fields was the second-team All-American in 2019. The game literally was a hundred years apart. So it was one of those things where it’s like, ‘Oh, man. How do you do that?’”
The physical differences alone make the comparison startling. As Gillis points out: “If you’re 5-foot-8, 165 pounds and you say, ‘Hey, Ryan Day, I would like to play football at Ohio State,’ he’s gonna laugh at you and say, ‘Well, we have a position open as a team manager because you’re not gonna play football here.’ It’s just not gonna happen. And Chic Harley is one of the greatest Buckeyes of all time.”
