Historian Jack Park makes a lifelong career out of his love for OSU football

Anyone who sets foot on the front step of Jack Park’s house immediately knows he’s a fan of The Ohio State University football team. Hanging on Park’s front door is a scarlet OSU football banner.

A native of New Lexington, Ohio, Park developed his passion for the Buckeyes when he was a boy.

“I was very fortunate as a kid,” says Park, whose father was a member of the OSU marching band. “(My parents and I) started going to the games when I was actually in grade school. That’s kind of where my love for Ohio State football started.”

Park attended OSU as an undergraduate and received his bachelor’s degree in accounting. He then enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh, where he received his master’s in business administration. Once he graduated from Pittsburgh, Park began working at Westinghouse, a company that offers nuclear products and services to international utilities.

Westinghouse eventually transferred Park here, to Columbus. It was upon his return to Ohio’s capital city that his fandom for OSU football evolved into a profession.

Representing Westinghouse, Park attended an annual Boy Scouts banquet, of which the company was one of the sponsors. While at the banquet, Park met John Gordon, the guest speaker for the event who also was the sports director for Columbus’ WBNS radio at the time. Gordon asked Park if he had interest in being a guest on a sports talk show the station would be starting that fall. Park, who admitted he had never been on the radio before, accepted the offer.

Thanks to Mother Nature, his first appearance on the show didn’t go as planned.

“That night, I was to go in and be on a sports talk show from about 7:05 to maybe 7:40 p.m.,” Park says. “Then they were going to go to a (Columbus) Clippers game because the Clippers were in the playoffs. The Clippers were significantly rained out that night. When I got to the station, they didn’t have anything planned; everybody was home. It was really a rainy night. People started calling in and asking questions about OSU football history, and I was able to answer a lot of those.”

Park decided to stay on the show for another hour, and since then, his role with WBNS radio has expanded. He had a daily feature called Buckeye Flashbacks that covered a wide array of topics regarding OSU football. He is also a part of WBNS’ live radio coverage for every OSU football Saturday. This year will be Park’s 39th consecutive season on WBNS, which is now 97.1 The Fan.

Though Park’s knowledge of OSU football started when he was a child, it flourished when he began writing his first book, Ohio State Football: The Great Tradition.

“I spent hours and hours in the Downtown library in the microfilm section looking at the old sports pages,” says Park, who has since written three more books and is working on No. 5. “That’s where you find out what happened; guys that wrote the stories for the games. I found that the most accurate way to get information on games, the teams and so forth is the stories that were written when the game was over on Saturday, that get into the newspapers on Sunday.”

With the public learning about Park’s OSU gridiron knowledge, he began receiving requests to speak about the scarlet and gray. Park ultimately chose to start his own public speaking business, though it didn’t pertain to just Buckeye football. 

“About 20 years ago, I decided that there’s a unique way to teach leadership to management teams in corporations and associations,” Park says. “What made some of the greatest coaches of all time so successful, and what can we learn from them? Take those same leadership traits, skills, abilities and strategies, and put those into organizations.”

Park points to legendary Green Bay Packers Head Coach Vince Lombardi as his example. Lombardi took over a franchise that had not had a winning season in 13 years. Green Bay’s losing ways, however, came to a screeching halt with Lombardi at the helm.

“The first year, they had a winning season,” says Park. “The second year, they went to the (1960) NFL title game and lost to the Philadelphia Eagles. When that game was over, he told those guys … how proud he was for what they had accomplished in two years. …He said, ‘As long as I’m head coach of the Green Bay Packers, I don’t think we’re ever going to lose another postseason game.’ They never did. They won five of the next seven NFL titles, including the first two Super Bowls.”

While Park has had the privilege of doing what he enjoys for a career, he notes that he would not be where he is today without the longstanding success OSU football has maintained.

“It’s not the carrier of the message as much as it is the subject itself,” he says.

As for when Park’s career will come to an end, he won’t be the one to make that decision.

“As long as they still want me to do it,” Park says. “As long as the station still wants me to work with them. As long as corporations want to hire me to come out to teach leadership and entertain.”

Ryan McGlade is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.

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