A tad lengthy but a very good read.
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Jobs keep getting bigger, but OSU Coach Jim Tressel isn't going to change
Sunday, March 23, 2008
BY Todd Porter
REPOSITORY SPORTS WRITER
All Jim Tressel wants to do is make it to Mars.
The Ohio State head football coach is using a rare spare 30 minutes on an unusual mission: Find his home in Green bought 30 years ago.
There it is. A humble-looking blue house on the corner of Mars and East Caston, just past Venus, in front of Jupiter in the Solar Estates.
Tressel smiles at the memory.
One of the most successful college football coaches in the country has come a long way since. Still, he seems to be the man he was in 1978.
"I used to tell people, 'I live on Mars,' " Tressel said, laughing at the kind of cool, middle-aged-man joke his four college-aged kids poke fun at him about.
The man who has won one national title and played for two others in his first seven seasons at OSU pulls into the driveway.
"Those trees," Tressel said, pointing, "weren't that big back then. ... When I lived here, they might've been up to my waist."
He was a full-time assistant at the University of Akron, earning $12,000 a year.
He thought that was living well.
The home on Mars was a step up from the apartment he had in Cuyahoga Falls, which was a castle compared to living in Buchtel Field House. He took home about $100 a month as a graduate assistant.
Today, Tressel and his wife, Ellen, live in a 7,000-square foot white brick home in Upper Arlington valued at nearly $1.4 million. His real estate taxes are twice what his salary was at Akron.
But money doesn't seem to drive Tressel. He made about $2.6 million in 2007. He has no expensive hobbies, no business interests outside of football. He seems more likely to take stock in his own life than to buy it.
"I'm not a big stock guy. I don't collect expensive art," Tressel said. "I guess I like going out for a nice dinner every now and again.
"I don't want to be the top paid guy in the country.
"I never wanted money to become what we're about."
WOULD'VE COACHED FOR $1.50
When Ohio State hired Tressel, he made good on a promise with longtime friend John Geletka to be his agent. Geletka represented Bernie Kosar but makes his living as a dentist. In all honesty, Tressel doesn't need an agent.
"He represents, I don't know, five to eight guys," Tressel said. "If (former OSU Athletics Director) Andy Geiger offered me a buck and a half, I'd have gone."
Tressel got his current deal last season when his contract was renegotiated. Since then, he's had NFL overtures. The coach won't even entertain the thought. He has said OSU is his dream job, the only job he ever wants.
"Quite honestly, the only good thing about making money is you can give it away. Where am I going to spend money anyway?" Tressel said. "I'm not a deep-sea fisherman or a golfer, but I always tell my wife, 'When they fire me, give me two years (at golf), and I'll beat your butt.' "
Most couldn't fathom the idea of Tressel getting fired. Certainly not the two packed Stark County sites when Tressel spoke here March 12.
"I decided a very long time ago that I would not assign my self-worth based on how many wins we have," Tressel said. "As players and coaches, we sacrifice a lot. ... But I can't lose sight of what's important. Football is what I do, not who I am. Now I understand that if we wins less games, there'll be like 90 at (speeches), and I'll have to find another job. My employment is based on wins and losses, but not my self-worth."
CEREBRAL APPROACH
Two quotes hang in the Ohio State football coaching office. One is from Albert Einstein: "Concern for man and his fate must form the chief interest of every technical endeavor. ... Never forget that in the midst of your diagrams and equations."
Tressel first saw that when taking his son to visit Ohio State. A professor showed it on a projector. It caught Tressel's attention because, to him, it means never forget his players' concerns and their future in the midst of X's and O's.
The second quote is attributed to his late father, Lee Tressel: "They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."
That approach is used every time Ohio State leaves the locker room before a game. In unison, the team recites a poem by Edward Everett Hale.
"I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. The something I ought to do, I can do. And by the grace of God, I will."
PAYING IT FORWARD
The Tressels give a lot of money away. Recently, the Tressels and Ellen's parents — Frank and Norma Watson — pledged $1 million toward an indoor practice facility at Youngstown State. The building will be called the WATTS center (Watson and Tressel Training Site).
It isn't uncommon for Tressel to give back to someone in Youngstown who's fallen on hard times, much as his father did. Legend has it that when Lee Tressel came back through Massillon, he made sure a handful of former players had money in their pocket.
Tressel's daylong visit to Stark County was about fundraising. A lunch at Raintree Country Club raised money for area Boys and Girls Clubs. A $125-a-plate dinner six hours later at the Lake YMCA preceded an evening talk.
Tressel raised an estimated $50,000 in one day. That doesn't count at least one contact he made with a prospective donor for another project at Youngstown State.
During a Florida vacation last week, he scheduled two appointments with potential donors.
WORK STARTS THIS WEEK
The 2008 season starts this week with spring practice. Ohio State likely will be a preseason top five pick.
"My experience has been the years that are most difficult are the years when everyone is telling you how great you should be," he said. "But we have a chance because our guys have a perspective."
Tressel enjoys reading, including Bible passages. He writes daily in a journal.
There are times, though, when he feels the position gets the best of him and allows him to lose perspective.
"The barometer I use is if I go more than missing one day of spending quiet time," Tressel said. "If I look back and haven't journaled for two days ... 'You know, I'm letting this slip.' That's the way I try to remind myself.
"The world moves so fast, you work so hard, and you get so tired that things can slip. Then you get home and not be in any mood to be human."
WORK IS HIS FUN
During the season, Mondays are family nights. The coaches' families eat dinner at the Woody Hayes Center. Tressel smiles when he talks about assistants playing catch with their sons. It is during those times when Tressel realizes he is having the time of his life. He doesn't spend money, because his work is his play.
"I don't know what I'd rather be doing," he said. "It's almost like I have to say, 'I gotta get out of here because I could stay for another 10 hours.' You have to force yourself to leave."
At Big Ten Conference meetings, Tressel enjoys listening to coaches tell stories. He starts laughing even before telling a Tubby Smith story.
"Tubby was talking about how he went out for football," Tressel said. "They took him to the gym, and they had cots set up. They were in line to get equipment, and he's petrified. He got fitted for a helmet, and they put it on him and strapped it up tight. The coach starts barking at him, 'You never take that helmet off!' So Tubby went to his cot and laid down. He slept the whole night with his helmet on."
A year after OSU hired him, Tressel asked two coaching icons, Joe Paterno and Lou Holtz, how they managed their high-profile jobs. The advice still rings in Tressel's ear: Minimize distractions. He tries to set a speaking calendar in June, and he tries to schedule two events in the same area, as he did in Stark County.
PRIVACY IN THE MEN'S ROOM
Tressel's mannerisms seem to match his words.
Walking about the distance from Ohio State's locker room to the field on Saturday afternoons, six event organizers surrounded Tressel.
Sorry. Nature calls. Tressel asks to use the men's room. No one in the group follows him in, the first moment of privacy Tressel has had all day.
The group believes it is following Tressel, a celebrity. The man that walked into the restroom believes otherwise. They're following the Ohio State football coach.
And therein lies the fine line between how others view Tressel and how he thinks of himself. He doesn't grasp what the fascination with his autograph is, but he recognizes that responsibility. He signed for about 200 people in 30 minutes before dinner at Lake.
"I'm not dumb enough or naive enough to believe there are 400 people here to listen to what I have to say," he said. "They come to hear what Ohio State's football coach has to say."
On his way out of the men's room, Tressel spots a paper towel on the floor. A half dozen people saw it before he did. No one picked it up.
Tressel did.
Shelly Poe, OSU's football sports information liaison, has gotten to know Tressel as well as anyone. None of the head coach's humility surprises her.
"He is how he is," Poe said. "He's a guy who's comfortable with himself. It's refreshing. Not that other people are not, but sometimes fans expect there to be a lot more hoopla. It's nothing he turns on and off. Some people are surprised he's not more a showman.
"When he says people are not coming to hear him talk, they're coming to hear the Ohio State football coach, that's sincere."
RARE ADMONISHMENT
Tressel doesn't yell or scream at practice. But last season, Poe overheard Tressel reading his players the riot act. She wondered what caused a man who seems to have no dander get so worked up.
This did: Six players left without putting their cafeteria trays away when they were finished with dinner that day.
Tressel yelled, "You think you're better than the people working in the cafeteria?"
The message was clear. Blessed? Yes. Better? No.
That mantra is evident in how Tressel carries himself. Very little hangs in his home that would give away his job.
Anytime he speaks in Stark County, he can count on leaving with a few pictures fans bring him of his father or of Tressel as a kid. He was just a toddler the two years Lee Tressel coached Massillon.
His brother, "Doc" Dick Tressel got into a little trouble near the end of Lee's tenure in Massillon. Doc and other kids accidentally set fire to an old caboose.
"I still kid him that he has a juvenile record in Massillon," Tressel said.
A fan brings Tressel a picture of the coach on a tricycle. He reminds him of Doc's brief stint as a juvenile delinquent.
"It was big news back then when the Massillon head coach's son got in trouble," Tressel said.
He's told the caboose was burned on Mothers Day.
"I can tell you that wasn't a happy Mothers Day for my mom," Tressel said.
About two hours later, Ellen Tressel calls her husband to make sure he is safely heading back to Columbus. The coach is almost giddy with anticipation. He's been waiting to retell the "Doc" Tressel story to someone. Ellen hears it. Tressel laughs and asks if he can call her back in a few minutes to have conversation that will help keep him alert for a long drive back to Columbus.
DEVOTED DAD, HUSBAND
About the only thing Tressel will drop everything for during the season is a call from Ellen or one of their four kids.
"Everything stops if they call," Poe said. "He is devoted to Ellen and their kids."
Tressel sees himself as a 55-year-old man with grown children and a strong marriage who happens to be the football coach in a college football Mecca. He carries himself the same way off the field.
Tressel mows his own lawn. When 20 inches of snow fell on Columbus a few weeks ago, he cleared his own driveway. Any one of a thousand fans would've done it for free.
Instead, Tressel hooked up the blade on his John Deere tractor and spent three hours plowing his driveway.
"He might happen to be in a position where he's well-known and makes money," Poe said. "But if he had spent the rest of his life coaching in Youngstown, he'd have been fine with that."
She said Tressel's brother would have been just as happy staying at Hamlin University.
"They thought their dad was the coolest thing possible because he coached so long at (Division III) Baldwin-Wallace," Poe said. "They'd have been happy there and not felt like life short-changed them."
Reach Repository sports writer Todd Porter at (330) 580-8340 or e-mail:
todd.porter@cantonrep.com
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