The full transcript from yesterday's press conference at the Big Ten Media Days.
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OHIO STATE HEAD COACH
JIM TRESSEL: It's good to be back with
all of you, and this always is kind of our time that
we know it's time to go to work. Our coaches just
came back from vacation, and hopefully they
enjoyed some well-deserved time. I know our
young people just finished a summer term and
have a little bit of time off, and then they come
back at it here in a week. We're ready to head into
preseason. It's an exciting time for us because
it's probably the youngest group that I can
remember that we've had. Twenty-eight seniors
graduated and three juniors graduated. So spring
practice was a lot of fun. It was one of those types
of springs that you could really notice improvement
because of how young we were and guys getting
opportunities. So it's really an exciting time for us.
I'm sure our guys have worked
hard this summer. I know they worked extremely
hard in the spring, and I know they're anxious to
get back at it on the 9th of August as we report.
We most certainly have to mature
quickly because our September is an extraordinary
one. We're going to have to be ready on
September 5th to face Navy coming in. It's an
exciting thing for us because we haven't had an
academy in Ohio Stadium since about 1930. And
it's really going to have some extra excitement and
energy as the Naval Academy comes in with their
unique style of play where they've led the nation in
rushing the past four years, and they give you
some problems that you probably haven't
rehearsed against for many, many years.
And then Southern Cal comes in,
and enough said there. A great football team.
Then we go up to Cleveland
Stadium to play in the Browns' stadium, which will
be exciting for our young people, to play in an NFL
stadium and play against the University of Toledo
there.
And then we open the Big Ten
with the University of Illinois. In my opinion, they
may have as much or more talent than anyone in
this league. I know they're going to be a very
veteran team, very mature team. So that's going
to be quite a September for us.
So we're going to need to have a
heck of a preseason. We're going to need to grow
very, very quickly. Unfortunately sometimes the
only time you grow is through real experiences, so
we're going to have to train and get ready for those
real experiences, and then handle those bumps
and ups and downs and so forth and see if we can
become a good football team.
I think we have excellent
leadership. We have 19 seniors that I think about
10 or 11 of them are fifth-year guys and may be
taking on both some playing and leadership
responsibilities that they haven't had, and they're
excited to do that. We're looking forward to see
where they can take us.
Q. Terrelle Pryor was the first
quarterback to start as a true freshman in over
30 years. How is he handling, I guess, the
leadership role for playing nine games last year
and then coming into this year?
JIM TRESSEL: Yeah, I think the
experiences Terrelle got this past fall were very,
very valuable. I think they were tough. When you
step in and you take over for a guy like Todd
Boeckman who was our captain and who had done
a lot of good things. I think that's a difficult
assignment, and I thought he handled them well.
He has a real passion to do well.
He wants to make sure he can do all that the team
needs, and I thought for a freshman he was pretty
careful with the football and grew to learn from
every experience he had. There were some tough
experiences along the way.
I thought his bowl preparation was
very, very good, and then of course we're playing
against a very good team in Texas. That was
another lesson that he had a chance to be a part
of, and then I thought his preparation this spring
was excellent. He's a guy that's passionate about
being good. He's very serious about the game,
studies the game extremely hard, loves to study
film, loves to just be on his own with his DVDs and
grow as a quarterback.
But not unlike our team, the
maturity in September is going to be a great
challenge. I think that will be a real plus for him to
face the challenges that we have. But we feel real
good about him.
Q. Coach Zook and Illinois are going to
play a schedule that are almost nontraditional
by Big Ten standards because it goes later into
the fall. Would you like to see more coaches in
the league have the moxy to go out and play
the Texases and USCs and during
nonconference which could help down the
road?
JIM TRESSEL: I think any time
you challenge yourself -- I'll answer the second
one first. I think any time you challenge yourself
it's a positive thing. But as I look at our
conference's schedules, there are a heck of a lot of
challenges on those schedules we all take very
seriously representing one another and
representing the conference.
But there's no doubt about it, when
you're taken to your limit and then some, it can
make you better.
As far as playing later and those
kinds of things, you know, part of me is an old
traditionalist that I always enjoyed Thanksgiving
weekend because my dad was a football coach,
and typically his season had just ended. We got to
see him for the first time since the massive Ohio
Conference media day that he would head out to,
so that was a special time.
I also have an affinity for the fact
that our players who really train all year-round in
our conference setup, they have a chance to be
home for an extended Thanksgiving weekend,
which really there's nothing more important in any
of our lives than our family and having the chance
to be with them.
On the other side of things,
certainly the arguments about the exposure later in
the year with the Conference Championship
games and all those kinds of things, I'm sure
there's validity from that standpoint. As far as how
many days you have in between games, you know,
the difference between 46 and 38 or something
like that, I'm not sure it's that significant.
We've not felt in any of our Bowl
situations that because we happen to have a lot of
days in between -- I think when we played Miami
back in '02 we might have had 43 days in between
the end of the season and the championship
game, and it worked out. Other times we've had
46 or 45 and maybe it didn't work out as well.
The whole picture is bigger than
just football, whether it's the discussion of a 12th
team or a Conference Championship or the
calendars and all that. You know, we're on board
with whatever is best for the conference, whatever
is best for the institution, all the while keeping in
mind what's best for the student-athlete and trying
to make it as great an experience for everyone as
we can.
Like any complicated matter it will
continue to be discussed, and we'll come up with
good solutions.
Q. Could you talk about the state of the
running back position and replacing Beanie
Wells, what needs to happen there, and the role
of Dan Herron and how he's developed?
JIM TRESSEL: Well, it's difficult to
replace a Beanie Wells. Beanie was an
outstanding player, and he was the kind of guy that
as the season went on or as the game went on, he
got stronger and stronger. We used to talk about
there was a cumulative effect when he carried the
ball through the course of a game or through a
season. So you can't replace exactly what he
does or what he did.
We feel real good about Boom
Herron. Danny Herron is a tough kid, a good ball
carrier, excellent pass protector, is solid in the
passing game. We'd like to think that Brandon
Saine, another young man that had a real solid
freshman year and then had some injuries this past
year that kept him from being in the plan as much
as we had anticipated, Brandon had a very good
spring, as well, as did Danny.
He's the kind of guy that not only is
he an excellent running back, but he's a real fine
receiver and has tremendous speed. He owns the
state 100-yard dash -- or I guess it's not 100 yards,
it's 100 meters there in the state of Ohio at 220
pounds. Brandon, we would like to believe, will be
a heck of a runner there.
We've got some other guys that can maybe run the ball in different type scenarios
than a traditional running back with some of our
wide guys and our quarterback and those types of
things.
But Danny Herron and Brandon
Saine, it's their time to step up.
Q. Often successful teams are copied,
or you start seeing some of the schemes that
maybe your team is using on other teams. In
the case of Ohio State, have you seen that?
Have you seen maybe some of your scheme or
maybe a formation or some of the things that
you guys have done successfully starting to
pop up on other teams around the league?
JIM TRESSEL: You know, I think
one thing about us coaches is we all copy off each
other. There's no doubt about it, that as we study
all that film and we watch what someone does, you
say, boy, that's a heck of an idea. And then you
have to sort out is it a good idea because they
happen to have the people that have those skills,
or is it a good idea because it can cross over to
some of the talents that our guys have.
You know, there are only so many
ways you can line up 11 guys, and defenses
around the country, I think, are doing them all, just
about anything that you can possibly do.
Offensively you have to have five of them. They're
at No. 50 through 79. So there's only so many
ways you can line up the other six.
I think we all do a good bit of all of
them, and I think the secret to all the good teams is
that they find out the things that their guys can do
the best. Sometimes it's simply by their design
and their experimenting and so forth, and
sometimes it's by, ooh, look what this group is
doing. I can see Terrelle Pryor doing that or I can
see Boom Herron doing that or whomever.
There's a little bit of it all.
The one thing that college football
is great about is in the off-season you see teams
getting together all the time and sharing ideas and
sharing thoughts, and it's a little bit unusual that
that's the way it is with all the sharing of
information. But that's how we all get better.
Q. A couple of the coaches basically
indicated that you guys have actually talked
about a little bit of the perception situation out
there about the Big Ten right now from maybe
a little bit of an inferior complex situation or
something like that. What is your feeling about
that, and do you feel the worm is turning?
JIM TRESSEL: Well, we spend
time in meetings, whether it was our meeting at the
national coaches' convention that we met as a
conference or the meetings in May, and we always
talk about how we can get better. I mean, that's --
even after the years where we might be 5 and 2 in
bowls, you're sitting there talking about, How can
we get better? This year we were 1 and 6, and
maybe that discussion gets even more impactful or
whatever.
But that's an ongoing thing that we
talk about. I don't know that anyone in this
conference has an inferiority complex. If you
watch ball games, our guys will play toe to toe with
anyone. If you watch the NFL draft, they'll get
selected at the regularity of almost every
conference.
But it is something that, as I
mentioned earlier, we take very, very serious, that
every time we line up outside our conference,
obviously we're representing ourselves and our
institution, but we're representing this league.
That's important to us.
When those bowl games are going
on, we're rooting like crazy. That's something
that's very, very important.
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