COMMENTARY | Jim Tressel and the Indianapolis Colts have agreed to delay the former Ohio State Buckeyes coach’s employment until the seventh week of the regular season. This six-game suspension-by-any-other name, as Doug Farrar pointed out, runs one game longer than the suspension agreed to by former Buckeye quarterback Terrelle Pryor as a condition for entry into the supplemental draft.
That Colts president Bill Polan described the delay as Tressel’s idea should come as no surprise. It’s vintage Jim Tressel.
Tressel’s tenure at Ohio State is perhaps most memorable for the fact that despite multiple scandals involving stars Maurice Clarett, Troy Smith, and Pryor, Tressel always appeared blameless.
Many Buckeye fans, primed for buy-in, got snared by early morsels of Tressel lore and began regarding the coach as more myth than man.
Tressel’s 2001 OSU basketball halftime speech, coming days after his announcement as coach, installed Tressel as what we’d all been waiting for: a guy who understood what it meant to beat Michigan.
We’d be proud of our Buckeyes, “in 310 days in Ann Arbor, Michigan,” Tressel promised.
And we were.
Tressel, the curious hire who had seemed to steal the job away from Glenn Mason, sealed his legendary status among fans with what they saw as a promise delivered. Blurbs tracing Tressel’s genius peppered local media.
He’d guided I-AA Youngstown State to multiple national championships. The son of an Ohio college coach, Tressel appeared to be just what fans had waited for since Woody Hayes’ ignominious departure in 1978.
No one should blame Tressel for the myth fans made him into. We Buckeye fans did it to ourselves.
Columbus had waited so long for a true national championship, since 1968, that fans began greeting John Cooper’s ’90s successes with cynicism. Cooper’s exasperating losses to Michigan cemented the “it’ll never be us” mentality Tressel inherited.
Tressel’s first victory over Michigan, the 26-20 win at Ann Arbor in 2001, marked the Buckeyes’ first defeat of the Wolverines since 1998. Buckeye Nation went wild for it. Joyous fans began celebrating Tressel’s idiosyncrasies, nicknaming him “the vest” after his ever-present sweater vests. Tressel’s vests and scowl seemed as iconic as Woody’s thick-rimmed glasses and block-O cap.
So the next season, when Tressel and the Buckeyes pulled off their miracle national championship victory, Tressel-hysteria transcended reality.
You have to understand the mentality of the typical pre-Tressel Buckeye fan. My then-father-in-law is a good example.
I drove him home following the victory celebration. He’d been drinking, and he was so joy-filled that he just didn’t know what to do. When I pulled into the driveway, he tried to convince me to help him drag his family’s living room couch outside so we could set it on fire. He’d done the same thing in ’68.
I refused. He persisted, and as I pulled away he offered one last plea, “Come on. Do it for Tressel.”
We fans allowed ourselves to become so caught up in the appearance of Jim Tressel that we lost sight of the sad realities of college athletics. After all, tattoo-gate was hardly Tressel’s first brush with trouble.
At Youngstown State, Tressel faced questions over cash received by star quarterback Ray Issac.
Then there was the Maurice Clarett debacle. But Tressel’s level-headed responses, professorial demeanor, and victories on the field kept OSU fans focused on the appearance that all was well with their legend-in-the-making. Even quarterback Troy Smith’s suspension soon after didn’t dent our view of Tressel.
So it should have come as no surprise to any of us in Columbus when, after months of careful denials, Tressel finally admitted failing to report knowledge of player misconduct. Even then, we spent a few weeks trying to convince ourselves that Coach was just in a bad spot that would eventually resolve itself.
When it finally became clear that OSU could no longer risk sustaining his tenure, Tressel accepted blame (along with a handsome severance package) and stepped down.
It was the right thing to do. And we fans were willing to accept that, like Woody, our legend had run his course.
Tressel’s signed photo still hangs framed behind the counter at the legendary Tremont Goodie Shop. His sweater-vest and determined grimace still haunt the walls of nearly every restaurant in Columbus. Buckeye fans will never disown Jim Tressel.
But there’s still the bitterness from the realization that Tressel wasn’t – and maybe couldn’t be – everything fans made him out to be.
So Tressel’s voluntary employment delay, though it’s the right thing to do, still feels slimy to me. Once again, Tressel appears the gentleman, the call-your-own fouls nice-guy who somehow continues to deflect blame for OSU’s forfeited wins and public embarrassment.
I guess that’s OK, as long as we still beat Michigan.