College football: Ohio State legend Griffin discusses Woody, Tebow and the BCS during Naples visit

Mention Archie Griffin the Cincinnati Bengal and it would probably be met today with a shoulder shrug. Mention Archie Griffin the Ohio State Buckeye and we’re talking one of the iconic names in college football.

Still, more than 30 years after the all-time leading Buckeye rusher’s playing days, no one has matched Griffin’s two Heisman trophies, garnered in 1974 and 1975.

Griffin was in town on Tuesday to address the annual meeting of the Naples Buckeyes, OSU’s local alumni chapter, at the The Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club. After his respectable seven-year NFL career with the Bengals, Griffin served as OSU’s assistant athletic director before becoming the president of the school’s alumni association in 2004.

These days, Griffin spends much of his time traveling the country visiting many of OSU’s 225 alumni clubs and chapters. And everywhere he goes, he’s asked about the possibility of another player winning a second Heisman and the state of college football’s postseason.

But what he talks about most is his relationship with another college football icon, legendary Ohio State coach Woody Hayes.

“I feel like I was in the right time at the right place, meaning my coaches, like Woody Hayes,” said Griffin, 54. “I loved the way that he led our team. Not only did he have great leadership qualities but he was a man that cared a great deal for people. I think of him every day of my life.

“As long as I’m living, I will always talk about him. There are only so many people you come into contact with that really do a wonderful job of inspiring people. I can count him among that small group that really left a lasting impression on me.”

In his first game as a freshman in 1972, Griffin carried the ball once. It was a fumble. In the Buckeyes’ second game that year, undaunted, Hayes fed the ball to Griffin, who proceeded to rush for a school-record 239 yards, a mark that stood for 27 years.

Griffin‘s admiration for Hayes was mutual.

“He’s a better young man than he is a football player, and he’s the best football player I’ve ever seen,” Hayes once said about Griffin.

Griffin said that his status as the only two-time Heisman winner doesn’t carry any more weight today than it did in 1975.

“Quite frankly, it’s always been meaningful to me,” he said. “But I do feel that even in the near future someone will win it a second time. There might be a person that wins it a third time.”

The name that always comes up in Heisman talk with Griffin is Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, who won the award in 2007 and will have another chance at the trophy in his senior year in 2009.

“He’s a phenomenon,” Griffin said. “I would welcome him. I think he is a truly outstanding young man. He has fabulous leadership qualities and guys seem to rally around his type of play.

“I’ve said all along someone else will do it. I get asked that question all the time. Sometimes it seems people want me to say it’s not going to happen, but I know it’s going to happen. All records are made to be broken. When it happens, I’m hoping I’m there to welcome them.”

When Griffin played, anointing a single national champion was also a point of controversy. The were two polls, the Associated Press and one voted on by the coaches, that determined a national champion, often with divergent results.

Griffin said he doesn’t have an issue with the current BCS format.

“You’re always going to have disagreement on who should be there,” he said. “What is good from a BCS standpoint is that people are always talking about it. And when people are talking about it, that’s a positive.

“I’m one who really feels that there is nothing wrong with having more than one winner at the end of the season. It will be very difficult to get rid of the bowl situation because the bowls have been very good for Division I-A college football over the years.

“People plan their holidays around those bowl games. It’s a big part of the community. I just don’t think college football is interested in messing that up.”