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Jim Tressel (National Champion, ex-President, Youngstown State University, CFB HOF)

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On Tressel's trip to the Middle East, May 26 to June 4, to visit American military installations:

"That was a special one _ in fact, I'm still kind of trying to figure it all out. It's just mind-boggling to me, all the places we were and all the faces we saw and all that we learned about our brave young men and women. It was extraordinary."

"Everyone loves college football, everyone loves a little piece of home brought to them, which was our goal. And there were lots and lots of Buckeyes, I can promise you that. It was great to see their faces. The tasks they have every day without any break are extraordinary, and it was very special."
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Tressel: Berry's immediate future unclear (Blogging the Buckeyes)
 
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JT got a ride in Graham Rahal's Indy car today.

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FB: Coach Tressel Arrives in Style for Buckeye Boosters Golf Outing
Football: 06.15.09
Lifelong Buckeye fan and IndyCar Series driver Graham Rahal gave Coach Tressel a "quick trip" from the Woody Hayes Athletic Complex to the OSU Golf Course Monday
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Taking Tressel for a spin
Rahal, a Buckeyes fan, provides coach's wheels
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
By Tim May
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

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COURTNEY HERGESHEIMER | DISPATCH
Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel gets out of an IRL demo car after what he called a "tremendous adventure."

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COURTNEY HERGESHEIMER | DISPATCH
Jim Tressel tries to talk while wearing a helmet given to him by Graham Rahal.

Jim Tressel is used to driving himself places, but yesterday morning he opted to let a chauffeur zip him from his office to the Ohio State golf course. He even gained a police motorcycle escort, not that regular traffic was held up for long.

The OSU coach was riding in the back seat of the Indy Racing League's two-seater demo car, courtesy of New Albany's Graham Rahal, 20, a second-year IndyCar driver and lifelong Buckeyes fan.

"You know, Graham called after the last couple of bowl games and said we needed more speed. So we said, 'OK, we'll get together and try to work on our speed,' " Tressel said, tongue in cheek. "It's just an honor to meet Graham, and it was a tremendous adventure to get in one of those cars. I wouldn't do it at 230, though, nor could I imagine doing it for 3 1/2 hours."

Tressel didn't go anywhere close to 230 yesterday as Steve Barry took him up Kenny Road. The 6-foot-2 Rahal couldn't do the driving. He's too tall to fit in the front seat of that car.

But in helping promote the August IRL race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Rahal showed up at the golf course to exchange gifts. Rahal got various autographed items. Tressel received a black racing helmet with OSU decals.

"I've been a huge Buckeye fan for a long, long time," Rahal said. "And to get to meet coach Tressel and have him take a ride in the two-seater, that's fantastic. Even though it's obviously not one of the cars we race, it still gives you an idea of what it would feel like."
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BuckeyeXtra - The Columbus Dispatch : Taking Tressel for a spin
 
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Tressel's journey was no vacation
Sunday, June 28, 2009
By Tim May
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Take it from Jim Tressel, now an experienced world traveler. There are few places like Djibouti in early June.

"Djibouti was warm -- probably 130 or something when we left," the Ohio State coach said last week of the African nation. "We were taking our malaria pills. I'm still taking 'em."

Tressel was part of a group of coaches -- including Mack Brown of Texas, Houston Nutt of Mississippi, Rick Neuheisel of UCLA, Jim Grobe of Wake Forest, Troy Calhoun of Air Force and former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville -- that toured various military installations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa this month.

"I'd never really been anywhere, and all of a sudden I was on four continents and seven countries, and flying in military planes," Tressel said. "Just seeing those young people and what they do and what they sacrifice ... was impressive."
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BuckeyeXtra - The Columbus Dispatch : Tressel's journey was no vacation
 
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Tressel Visits U.S. Troops
By Denise Yost
Managing Editor, nbc4i.com
Published: July 2, 2009

COLUMBUS, Ohio?It?s been six years since the war in Iraq was launched and since then, hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops have served time in the Middle East. A few weeks ago, many of them welcomed special visitors.

A few years ago, NBC 4?s Jerod Smalley talked with Jimmy Crum about his making of Buckeye Football Highlight reels for Woody Hayes so he could take them to show soldiers fighting in Vietnam.

One month ago, Ohio State Head Coach Jim Tressel returned from his first ever trip overseas, visiting troops in seven countries including Iraq. What he brought home was a lifetime of memories.
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video interview with JT..


Tressel Visits U.S. Troops | NBC4i.com
 
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Tressels impact felt in new book
Sun, July 12, 2009
By Joe Scalzo

YOUNGSTOWN When David Lee Morgan Jr. was a student-athlete at Youngstown State in the mid-1980s, he never played a down for Jim Tressel. But as someone whose friends and roommates were football players, Morgan felt Tressel?s impact.

?If you were around them, you couldn?t help but take in some of the stuff Coach Tressel was teaching his players,? said Morgan, who played one year of baseball at YSU. ?He teaches you to be a better person before he teaches you to be a football player.

?He wants you to be the best person you can be before you get on the field.?

A few years ago, Morgan approached Tressel about writing a book about the coach?s ?Winner?s Manual,? a 300-page ?playbook? Tressel gives his players before the season. The book contains football-specific instruction, but it also has a section in the back called ?The Fundamentals for Winners.?

Tressel co-authored a book called ?The Winner?s Manual,? which was released last year. But Morgan wanted to interview Tressel?s former players to see how the coach?s philosophy on football and life impacted their lives. Tressel blessed the project and the result is ?More Than A Coach: What it means to play for coach, mentor and friend Jim Tressel,? which will be released nationwide Friday.

Morgan interviewed more than 50 players from Ohio State and YSU, as well as coaches and administrators who have worked with Tressel.

The book contains interviews with well-known players such as A.J. Hawk (a former OSU linebacker now with the Green Bay Packers), Craig Krenzel (the quarterback of OSU?s 2002 national championship team) and Brian Hartline (a former OSU wide receiver who was selected in the April draft).

But it also contains interviews from players like Tyson Gentry (an OSU punter who broke his neck in a practice and is now in a wheelchair) and Louis Irizarry (a former OSU tight end from Ursuline High who was kicked out of school and spent time in jail before resurrecting his football career at YSU).

?Everyone I called wanted to be in the book,? said Morgan, a sportswriter for the Akron Beacon Journal who recently co-authored a book on Kelly Pavlik. ?You really don?t have to be an Ohio State fan or a huge sports fan to understand some of these stories because they?re all fundamentals of what we experience.

?Whether you can score touchdowns or score 50 points a game or whatever, you can use things like attitude, class, caring, discipline, respect, hope, humility ? all of those things.?
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Tressel’s impact felt in new book - Sports, Local Sports - Vindy.com, The Vindicator
 
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Sports Talk: Tressel book a must read for football fans
POSTED: July 17, 2009

Would you like to meet Jim Tressel?

Better yet, would you like to get The Ohio State University head football coach's autograph?

Well, you can do both if you just hop in the car and go to Borders at 4545 Kenny Road in Columbus this afternoon. The session is scheduled to get underway at noon.

A brand new book on Tressel is out by author David Lee Morgan, Jr., entitled "More Than a Coach: What It Means to Play for Coach, Mentor, and Friend Jim Tressel."

Morgan, of course, will be at Borders for the signing, too.

Natalie King, the publicity manager of Triumph Books, has asked me to do a review of the book. So, here goes.

First of all, even if you're not a Buckeyes football fan, it's a must-read. Tressel, the coolest-looking collegiate head football coach on the sideline in America (just love those vest sweaters), has influenced and inspired numerous people, on and off the field.

Several individuals, including former players and coaches, have been interviewed for the book. Some, like A.J. Hawk, Anthony Gonzalez, Chris "Beanie" Wells, and Troy Smith, have gone on to compete in the National Football League. But many are now teachers, coaches, athletic directors, and professional people, who have achieved success way beyond the gridiron.

If you didn't know anything at all about a Tressel beforehand, know that he considers it a privilege to coach at Ohio State. That, in a nutshell, says a lot about the man himself.

Mind you, long before Tressel became the head coach at OSU, he was a very, very successful head football coach at Youngstown State University.

If you've read Tressel's bio on the Buckeyes football website, he was once the quarterbacks coach under Earle Bruce at Ohio State.

Interestingly, when the YSU job opened up, Tressel was recommended by Bruce, but the 33-year-old Buckeye assistant was not the-then Penquins athletic director Joe Malmisur's first choice. Jim Gruden, the offensive coach at Notre Dame, was.
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Sports Talk: Tressel book a must read for football fans - MariettaTimes.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Ohio, Community Information - The Marietta Times
 
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Tressel clearly among the best
Sunday, July 26, 2009

Hey, Doug: Can you assure us OSU fans that Jim Tressel is every bit as good a coach as Florida's Urban Meyer, Alabama's Nick Saban, Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, USC's Pete Carroll and Notre Dame's Charlie Weis? - Tom O'Malley, Cleveland

Aey, Tom: Let me try. Since Tressel was hired, Ohio State is 83-19, which is the fifth-best record in that time frame behind USC, Texas, Boise State and Oklahoma.

Since Tressel was hired, Ohio State has won at least a share of five Big Ten titles. No other conference school in those eight years has won more than two.

Since Tressel was hired, the Buckeyes have played in three BCS championships, tied with Oklahoma for the most in those eight years, while four other teams have played in two.

So if you were hiring a coach to sustain a program, inspire loyalty among fans and alumni, control in-state recruiting, build solid relationships with state high school coaches and almost never say anything that's going to make anybody angry or uncomfortable, it's hard to do better than Tressel. And he's probably staying. Which coach do you think is most likely to still be at his school in five years - Saban, Meyer, Carroll or Tressel? That's part of the equation, too. It's hard to love your great coach if he's gone.

That said, the right fit matters a lot, and while I think Tressel would have done well had he accepted the job at Miami before he came to Ohio State, maybe he wouldn't have proven quite this successful. Carroll is better at USC than Tressel would be.

So if every coach in college football was made a free agent right now, and Ohio State had the first pick in the coaching draft, who would you pick ahead of Tressel? Especially considering Meyer and Stoops are from Ohio and Saban and Carroll were OSU assistants. Lots of options.

I'd probably take Meyer first. But I wouldn't be sure Saban would stay or Carroll would fit the lifestyle. So Tressel's in my top two. Mack Brown at Texas would be good, too.

Now, if we were picking a coach for one game, coaching teams with equal talent, Tressel would fall lower on my list. I think recent outcomes have proven that logic. I'm not sure for one game that Tressel gives you the tactical or motivational edge that other coaches do, from Meyer to Carroll to Boise State's Chris Petersen.

But nobody hires for one game.
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Tressel clearly among the best - Cleveland.com
 
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Overseas tour touches Tressel
Coach overwhelmed by adoration shown to him by military personnel
Sunday, July 26, 2009
By Tim May
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

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Tech. Sgt. Jason Schaap | U.S. Air Force
Coach Jim Tressel gets into the middle of practice to offer instruction to servicemen working out in Iraq.

Navy corpsman Dina Iacobucci grabbed her breakfast tray and turned to look for a seat in the crowded mess hall at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti one morning last month. Suddenly, a man's voice bellowed: "Iacobucci! I've got a seat right here for you!"

The shout came from Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel. On the tail end of Coaches Tour 2009 -- a fast-moving sweep that had taken him and six other college football coaches to U.S. military installations in Germany, Turkey, Iraq and Djibouti in five days -- Tressel's eye caught a familiar name.

" 'Iacobucci -- that's got to be Youngstown,' " he recalled as he looked down the list of names that had been pulled in a drawing for a chance to sit at his table. When Tressel beckoned, Iacobucci, 22, an avid Ohio State fan from Boardman, near Youngstown, felt as if she'd won the lottery.

"I never imagined I would have an opportunity to meet him anywhere," Iacobucci said by phone the other day. "It was absolutely amazing. He was so friendly, so down to earth, very open with everything."

The feeling was mutual, Tressel said.

"I'm sitting there thinking, 'She's from Boardman, graduated from high school in 2005, never met her, and we're sitting in Djibouti, Africa, having breakfast.' "
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BuckeyeXtra - The Columbus Dispatch : Overseas tour touches Tressel

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Thank you Andy Geiger. I can't imagine how Ohio State could have chosen a better coach for its football team. He imparts lessons about how to live one's life that have relevance far beyond the football field.

I think that Jim Tressel is an awesome representative for Ohio State, on and off the field. Geez, I am going to be sorry the day this has to come to an end.
 
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