This past weekend, Delaware native and Hayes High School alum Rick Middleton took his place among the greatest athletes to ever attend The Ohio State University when he was inducted into the Ohio State Athletics Hall of Fame as part of the 2023 class.

Middleton, who played football at OSU from 1971-73, was inducted on Friday during a banquet honoring the 14-member class at the Covelli Center on the Ohio State campus. On Saturday, he participated in an on-field ceremony during halftime of Ohio State’s win over Maryland in Ohio Stadium.

While he was deeply appreciative to be included in the class, Middleton said he never anticipated receiving such an honor.

“It never even crossed my mind, to be honest with you,” he told The Gazette. “You have all these All-Americans, and I was never awarded an All-American spot anywhere. And I was moving back and forth, playing all these positions, and never really got locked into one until I was a junior, so I’m not in the top 10 of tackles or anything like that. I thought I did well and handled everything well in the locker room as a teammate. But it never occurred to me that I was going to be nominated.”

Middleton said that as meaningful as the induction, itself, was the manner in which his name was brought into the conversation. During the banquet, Middleton learned that former teammate Archie Griffin’s testimony on Middleton’s career factored significantly into his inclusion in the class during the nomination process.

The induction festivities coincided with the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Ohio State team, Middleton’s senior season, which included a reunion of many former teammates. Being able to reconnect with old friends only added to the specialness of the occasion.

“It was a blast,” he said of the weekend. “We had a lot of guys back from the 1973 team for our reunion, and I saw guys I hadn’t seen in 20 years. It was really, really enjoyable. … We had the largest turnout in the meeting group that we’ve had in a long, long time. In fact, we had twice as many people as we had at the 45th reunion. I think that’s a good indication of the kind of guys we had. We were very close.”

Middleton said the closeness of the 1973 team remains the lasting memory of his time playing at Ohio State.

“I think it’s the camaraderie we had as a team,” he said. “We had some issues during my junior year that kind of brought us together. We had a couple of things happen within the team, itself, that made us want to be more of a group than we were in the past. And I think that carried over to my senior year. We really were a team. We were just a bunch of guys in a strange time period in history.”

A 1970 graduate of Hayes, Middleton said many universities recruited him to play football, but there was only one school he ever truly considered attending.

“My dad went to Ohio State, my mom went to Ohio State,” Middleton said. “I was just an Ohio State fan and got to go to some of the games when I was younger. I just never envisioned going anywhere else.”

Middleton was recruited by legendary Ohio State head coach Woody Hayes, a process he said always left him in awe as well as with a full stomach given his choice of location to talk with Hayes.

“The best part about the recruitment was (Woody Hayes) would come up during basketball season, and we had a place we used to go to in Delaware after each game called Pizza Villa,” Middleton recalled. “He was kind enough to ask me where I wanted to go and if I wanted to get something to eat. Of course, I’d say, ‘Well, yeah. Pizza Villa, let’s go.’ So I’d get to eat some food. My dad was a teacher, so it’s not like we had money rolling in all over the place. Free pizza was always really appreciated.”

After arriving at Ohio State ahead of the 1971 season, Middleton found the transition from high school football to the highest level of college football to be “huge” given the amount of premier talent all across the Ohio State roster.

“At Delaware, I was kind of the leader of the group and everything,” he said. “Then you get to Ohio State and everybody is good. You have 25 or however many freshman recruits on scholarship who all were stars of their team, and in my freshman year, we’re going against guys like Rex Kern, John Brockington and John Hicks. Now we’re at the bottom of the barrel and just struggling to survive most of the days.”

At the time, freshmen were ineligible to play varsity football, so Middleton served on the scout team preparing the Ohio State offense for that week’s opponent. In his sophomore year, Middleton began to carve out a role on the team as a tight end and tied for the team lead with one touchdown reception in a Hayes-led offense that seldomly threw the ball.

Middleton finally settled at linebacker, the position at which he was primarily recruited, during fall camp in preparation for his junior season. He proved to be a natural at the position, which he credited to the instincts and anticipation with which he played.

“I felt more comfortable at linebacker, and I did a pretty good job reacting to the keys and figuring out where the ball was going,” he said.

From there, his career took off as he led the team in tackles in 1972, a season that ended in a Rose Bowl loss to USC. His 112 tackles earned honorable mention All-Big Ten honors and set the tone for a big senior season in 1973 that began with Middleton being elected by his teammates as one of two team captains along with quarterback Greg Hare.

During his induction speech on Friday, Middleton said, “If there’s anything that could make me prouder than getting this honor, it is to have been elected as captain in 1973. I say elected because the players voted for me. That was one of the greatest honors I’ve ever had, that these guys wanted me to be in charge of the team.”

Ohio State went on to finish the regular season 9-0-1 in 1973, earning a share of the Big Ten championship with Michigan after a 10-10 tie with the Wolverines in their annual showdown. The tie led to an infamous vote from the conference’s athletic directors to decide which team would represent the Big Ten in the Rose Bowl.

As a result of the vote, which was shrouded in secrecy and still garners much debate from members of the two teams today, Ohio State received the nod to go to Pasadena and try to avenge its loss to USC the prior season.

Middleton and Ohio State ultimately did just that, delivering an emphatic 42-21 beatdown of the Trojans to finish the season at 10-0-1 and end Middleton’s college career on a high note. Following the season, he was named first-team All-Big Ten and was drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft by the New Orleans Saints.

He went on to play five seasons in the NFL, including a stint with the San Diego Chargers, before injuries slowed him down and ultimately led to retirement. Once his playing career came to a close, Middleton set his sights on becoming a teacher, something he always envisioned doing whenever football finally passed him by.

“I was always going to be a teacher,” he said. “I planned on that when I went to school. My dad was a coach and a teacher. The NFL was just a nice little interlude in between.”

After serving as a substitute teacher all around Delaware County initially, Middleton was offered a full-time job at Olentangy High School in 1982 and spent the entirety of his 34-year teaching career there before retiring in 2017.

“I just liked the idea of getting information and passing it on to someone else,” Middleton said of his love for teaching. “I’ve always thought education was a tremendous thing, and if I could be part of it in a positive way, that would be great.”

Today, Middleton enjoys spending his retirement days traveling with his wife but primarily spending time with his two grandchildren.

“We get the opportunity to babysit those guys occasionally, and I just love playing around with them,” he said.

Reach Dillon Davis at 740-413-0904. Follow him on Twitter @DillonDavis56.