John Hicks wasn’t just among the greats ever to play football at Ohio State, he was “a giant,” two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin said. “In all that he did, he was a giant on and off the field.”
Hicks passed away overnight due to complications from diabetes, his family acknowledged. He was 65.
“I knew this was coming, but it just hurts to know that he’s gone,” Griffin told The Dispatch.
A two-time All-American in 1972 and ’73, Hicks won both the Outland Trophy and the Lombardi Award in ’73 as the nation’s outstanding lineman.