Rudy Hubbard and Ohio State's tie to HBCU football history

The Buckeyes host Grambling State on Saturday. Let's reflect on OSU's connection to Black college football history.

Former Ohio State running back and assistant coach Rudy Hubbard won the Division I-AA national title at Florida A&M in 1978. (Photo courtesy of Florida A&M athletics)

I was supposed to write this story four years ago. I reached out to Rudy Hubbard in February of 2021. He had recently been announced as a member of the new College Football Hall of Fame class. The Athletic, where I was working at the time, was doing a series of stories for Black History Month. It seemed like a good time to talk to Hubbard about his story, given his recent honor.

We talked for two hours. Hubbard was gracious with his time, connecting with me over multiple phone calls in one day around trips to take his wife to a doctor’s appointment. I was excited to write the story, but I never got around to any of the other interviews I hoped to conduct for it. So I never wrote it. I still haven’t conducted those interviews, but I do have those conversations with Hubbard still sitting in my files all these years later.

Ohio State will host Grambling State on Saturday. It’s going to be a blowout. Everyone, including Grambling head coach Mickey Joseph, knows it. It will be the Buckeyes’ second-ever game against a Historically Black College or University. The other came in 2013 against Florida A&M. That would’ve been a better time to write about Hubbard. After playing and coaching at Ohio State, he coached the Rattlers to a Division I-AA national title in 1978, an accomplishment that earned Hubbard induction into the Hall of Fame. It’s still the only NCAA football title for an HBCU program.

“And it appears like it will never happen again,” Hubbard said back in 2021.

If he’s right, then what Hubbard’s FAMU team did in 1978 will become even more noteworthy.