You’re skipping over a fair bit of history there. Remember that period of time between Brown and Hayes when OSU was referred to as the “Graveyard of Coaches?” From Widdoes to Fesler, it wasn’t a exactly a who’s who of coaching acumen. Fesler’s bumbling of the Snow Bowl opened the door for Woody.
Earle Bruce was a better coach than John Cooper. Cooper was just a better recruiter. Cooper once said, “You gotta recruit players who can play better than you can coach.”(10/11/21 - If that date fell on a Monday then it was on the Buckeye Roundtable radio show). You might counter by saying recruiting is part of coaching and that’s true, it’s one of the most important parts. But Earle was a mentor to both Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer and all three of them have winning records against Michigan. Earle’s impact has arguably been a more crucial part of the ongoing success of the Buckeyes than Cooper’s. John Cooper’s biggest contribution to the program was to modernize the recruiting strategy. As an X’s and O’s coach he mostly delegated and he was questionable as a motivator, unquestionably a disaster when it came to the most important game of the regular season going 2-10-1 in The Game.