<H1 class=red>Bucks flowing toward Tressel
</H1>
New 7-year deal totals $17 million
Friday, May 19, 2006
Doug Lesmerises
Plain Dealer Reporter
When Jim Tressel was given a new contract by Ohio State in 2003 after winning the national championship, he wasn't the highest-paid football coach in the Big Ten.
In a new deal an nounced Thursday, Tressel caught the wave of escalating salaries. Receiving an average of $2.45 million over each of the next seven years, Tressel should be one of the five highest-paid coaches in college football.
Ohio State announced the $17.1 million deal 11 weeks after Tressel and athletic director Gene Smith agreed to extend a March 1 renegotiation window in the previous contract, which ran through 2009 and would have paid Tressel about $1.6 million this season.
The new contract will pay Tressel $2,378,900 this season, including a $500,000 signing bonus. He will make $2,300,900 in 2007; $2,325,900 in 2008; $2,400,900 in 2009; $2,500,900 in 2010; $2,575,900 in 2011 and $2,675,900 in 2012.
Both Smith and Tressel were attending conference meetings in Chicago and were unavailable for comment, but Tressel's agent John Geletka described an amiable negotiation in light of the deals that pay USC's Pete Carroll, Notre Dame's Charlie Weis and Texas' Mack Brown well over $2 million per season.
"That's why we had an opening in the contract to be able to do this," said Geletka, who said he brought the salaries of the nation's top coaches to the table for comparison. "And Gene understood the reality of what's happened at the college level."
Smith, in his second year at AD, said several months ago that he would have redone Tressel's deal, which would have maxed out at about $1.8 million in the 2008 season, even if the window wasn't in place.
In a statement released by OSU, Smith called Tressel "one of the finest football coaches in the country, and we felt it was important to get him near the top nationally in terms of compensation. This contract accomplishes that goal."
The contracts of OSU assistant coaches are believed to have been renegotiated several weeks ago.
Tressel is 50-13 in five seasons with the Buckeyes with two Big Ten titles, and is 4-1 in bowl games and 4-1 against Michigan. Ohio State was 10-2 last season and finished in the top five in the final polls for the third time in four years. In the statement, Tressel thanked Smith and OSU president Karen Holbrook.
"In my opinion, no school has more to offer in terms of academics and athletics," Tressel said. "I am certainly proud to be the football coach here and will continue to do everything I can to help prepare our student-athletes for the next step in their lives once their football careers have ended.
"[My wife] Ellen and I feel very fortunate and we understand to whom much is given, much is expected."
With more than $17 million heading Tressel's way over the next seven years, that's a lot of expectations.
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