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

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Sporting News

The best of college football's defense and special teams
August 15, 2006
Best of the offense and coaching
Curt Thiel in Detroit asks how I can pick Jim Tressel as the guy to coach my team for one game?
"He has been around for five years," Curt says. "Let's let him get some wear and tear on those tires before we offer him up to sainthood."
Just a hunch, but I'm guessing Curt is a Michigan fan. It helped that his email signature says Go Big Blue! Ah, those Michy fans. So ahead of the curve (see: my friend Tommy's blog), so utterly flummoxed about 1-4.
Now, on with the Bests list. This time: defense and special teams.
Best defensive coordinator: Gene Chizik, Texas
Best scheme for certain packages: Jon Tenuta, Georgia Tech
Best rush end: Gaines Adams, Clemson
Best combo end: Quentin Moses, Georgia
Best end you've never heard of: Mkristo Bruce, Washington State
Best run-stuffing tackle: Brandon Mebane, California
Best combo tackle: Andre Fluellen, Florida State
Best tackle you've never heard of: Kevin Brown, UCLA
Best rush linebacker: Vince Hall, Virginia Tech
Best combo linebacker: Rufus Alexander, Oklahoma
Best linebacker you've never heard of: Jason Phillips, TCU
Best cover corner: John Talley, Duke
Best combo corner: Darrelle Revis, Pittsburgh
Best corner you've never heard of: Joe Burnett, Central Florida
Best safety in run support: Brandon Merriweather, Miami
Best safety against the pass: LaRon Landry, LSU
Best combo safety: Michael Griffin, Texas
Best safety you've never heard of: J.D. Nelson, Oregon
Best leg for a kicker: Mason Crosby, Colorado
Best kicker in the clutch: Alexis Serna, Oregon State
Best punter: Daniel Sepulveda, Baylor
Best placement punter: Gordon Ely-Kelso, Georgia
Best kick returner: Steve Breaston, Michigan
Best punt returner: Ted Ginn Jr., Ohio State
Best return man you've never heard of: Rafael Little, Kentucky
 
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Updated: Aug. 17, 2006, 12:11 PM ET
Tressel expects offense, defense to work 'in concert'By Ivan Maisel
ESPN.com

The formula that Jim Tressel has used to win at Ohio State is Midwestern simple. The Buckeyes depend on defense and special teams to pin the opponent in its own territory until it makes a mistake. If the offense contributes, as it did last season, great. If it didn't contribute much, as was the case in the previous three years, that was OK, too.

It is known as Tresselball, and you would have to say it has worked pretty well. In five seasons, Tressel has won one national championship and two Big Ten titles. He has won 50 games and lost 13, which makes his .794 winning percentage third in Buckeyes history behind John B. Eckstorm, who went 22-4-3 (.810) during 1899-1901, and Carroll C. Widdoes, who went 16-2 (.889) during 1944-45.


As Ohio State prepares for its Sept. 2 opener against Northern Illinois, however, up is down and down is up. The Buckeyes' offense returns eight starters, including smooth quarterback Troy Smith and quicksilver wide receiver Ted Ginn Jr. The defense returns only two starters: tackles Quinn Pitcock and David Patterson. There is no one on the roster who has ever attempted a collegiate extra point or field goal.

All of which is to say: Has Tressel gone all Mike Leach on us? Whatever happened to the game plans as conservative as the head coach's sweater-vest-and-tie look?

The answer, Tressel said, is nothing. There has been no change in outlook, only one in experience.

"There may be an awareness shift externally," Tressel said, referring to the unknown names on the Buckeyes' starting defense. "Internally, we won't change a thing as to what we deem important. That's the only way we know how to do it."

No change? No clock-milking by the offense in September to keep a young defense off the field? No patient grinding out of first downs to shorten the game?

Tressel listened to the question with the patience of a first-grade teacher, which just may have been his assessment of the level of the inquiry.

"Defense and special teams still have got to be at the root of our excellence," Tressel said. "I don't think you can win a championship without excellent special teams. Again, I haven't experienced everything, but I've experienced a lot, and I just don't think you can. I've seen teams win it a little more offensively, a little more defensively. We're not going to change any emphasis.

"Will we go into the game thinking we have to outscore people? No. That's not what we do."

You can say that again. These Buckeyes are 180 degrees different from the 2002-03 Buckeyes, who went 25-2 with an offense whose every first down was cause for a school holiday. Take the 16-13 overtime victory over Purdue in 2003. Ohio State failed to score an offensive touchdown, and in the second half never got within 23 yards of the Boilermakers end zone.

"We've never de-emphasized offense," Tressel said. "We've always tried to play both sides of the ball to make sure we're in harmony. We need to be in concert with what we do. Sometimes, I've seen teams make mistakes in who they're trying to be doesn't relate. You try to work on these things in concert."

After that Purdue game, the Buckeyes defensive players bristled at the notion that they might ever tire of carrying the offense. Three years later, that's pretty much the same reaction that came from Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith.

"It's a team effort in every sense of the game," Smith said. "Whether it's special teams, offense or defense, we all rely on one another to get to the next level, to get that victory."

Not only that, Smith said, but after a summer of seven-on-seven drills, he doesn't see much cause for concern.

"I think they're going to do more than enough to keep us in every football game," Smith said. "I think one thing I've seen thus far is a fast bunch. Year after year we produce a good defense. I think this is going to be another year where we got a group of guys who are going to fly around the ball and make plays."

You can make the case that Ohio State isn't as in need of defense as two returning starters might suggest. Senior linebacker Mike D'Andrea, for example, is a medical redshirt who played extensively in 2002-03 before a knee injury knocked him out of most of the last two seasons. Fellow senior linebacker John Kerr started 12 games as a freshman in 2002 at Indiana, before transferring. Fifth-year senior end Jay Richardson started six games as a sophomore and came into most games last season on the second series. Sophomore corner Malcolm Jenkins started three games last season.

"I think it's the recognition factor," Tressel said. "People recognize Troy's name and Teddy's name and [tailback] Antonio Pittman's name and
Doug Datish's name. They just do. There'll be some names they recognize a little bit on our defensive side. But right now the experience is those guys like Quinn Pitcock, who's not going to have gigantic numbers. But turn on the film in our last two games. If he doesn't make a few plays, who knows what the difference is? And you can't even read it in the stats."

OK, maybe there's no need to panic. But there's no question that, for the first time in Tressel's time at Ohio State, the offense is the most experienced and most accomplished unit on the field. The 2006 edition of Tresselball is new. The onus is on the Buckeyes to see whether it's improved.

Ivan Maisel is a senior writer at ESPN.com. He can be reached at [email protected].​
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msnbc.com

8/19/06

Tressel top reason for OSU's return to glory

Credit coach for having program at strongest point since Woody Hayes era


COMMENTARY
By Keith Langlois
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 9:04 p.m. ET Aug 18, 2006

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</TD></TR><TR vAlign=top><TD class=boxBI_3027626>Keith Langlois
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</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Pick a college. Call it State U. And let’s say State U. had a terrific season in 2005, winning 10 games and routing Notre Dame in a BCS bowl. State U’s only losses were to the eventual national champion by a field goal and to the Big Ten champion by a touchdown on the road.

But then the NFL draft happened and State U. got wiped out. Obliterated. Nine players drafted, an astounding five in the first round. Nine defensive starters gone.

A bleak season ahead for State U., right?

Well, maybe for State U. But not for Ohio State U. Ahem — The Ohio State University.

It says many things that Ohio State was voted No. 1 in both the Associated Press and the coaches preseason polls, but mostly what it says is this: Jim Tressel has mined Ohio State’s enormous potential like no one since Woody Hayes.

The evidence of the aura Tressel has spun from whole cloth doesn’t get much more graphic than his peers’ and the media's validation of his program after incurring the cataclysmic losses Ohio State experienced in the wake of their 10-2 season that ended with the Fiesta Bowl rout of a very hot Notre Dame team.

Coaches know better than anyone the improbability of replacing nine starters from any unit and not experiencing a dramatic dropoff in performance, let alone a unit as star-strewn as the one that’s now missing the likes of A.J. Hawk, Bobby Carpenter and Donte Whitner, all taken within the NFL draft’s top 18 picks.

But what they’re saying by making the Buckeyes a solid No. 1 over Texas, Southern California and the usual suspects is that Tressel has a stable of bristling athletes waiting to fill the many voids and that he knows how to coach them a little, too.

And that’s pretty much all it takes to manufacture football success in Columbus, Ohio.

In fact, the upset bigger than Ohio State earning preseason No. 1 status despite its losses is that the Buckeyes were dormant so long, given the breadth of their resources.

Start with the premise that football is God in Columbus, because it is. Ohio State football success is more integral to the quality of life throughout Ohio than Penn State football success matters to Pennsylvanians and far bigger than Michigan football success to Michiganders.

In the facilities arms race, Ohio State is No. 1 the way Castro is No. 1 in Cuba. The Buckeyes are No. 1 in a manner so as to render meaningless No. 2.

They’ve spent or committed a half-billion dollars to their athletic facilities in Columbus over the past decade or so and have an NBA-worthy arena, an expanded and updated Ohio Stadium, a football practice facility the size of a 747 hangar and state-of-the-art playing fields for non-revenue sports to show for it.

Spend that kind of cash and there’s one inevitable conclusion: Everybody is committed to ensuring athletic success. Because the cost of failure becomes prohibitive.

You can argue that such largesse for athletics is a shameful case of the tail wagging the dog, but if you’re Michigan or Penn State or Iowa, what do you do about it? Pony up or lag behind. And there’s a lot of lagging behind going on in the Big Ten these days.

Beyond dollars, nobody in the conference has Tressel’s recruiting advantage. Only Pennsylvania among Big Ten states can consistently match Ohio for pumping out Divisiion I-caliber football talent, but Ohio State is an overwhelming presence in its state like no other school can claim to be in its own.

Michigan typically recruits a third or less of its players from within its own borders, and has to fight Michigan State for those. A rejuvenated Pitt will always hold its own in the exceptionally fertile western Pennsylvania market.

Illinois pumps out a fair number of players, but the University of Illinois has rarely been a regional factor, let alone a national one. Champaign-Urbana is no easy place to recruit to, as a graveyard filled with coaches’ carcasses would attest.

Everywhere else in the Big Ten, they must import heavily. And they’re usually taking others’ leftovers.

It should never have been as hard as Earle Bruce and John Cooper made it look to win consistently at Ohio State. But it probably shouldn’t be as easy as Tressel makes it look, either.

Bruce projected zero magnetism. Cooper arrived from Arizona State as a charismatic figure but too often looked awed by the magnitude of the big moments that regularly descend upon Columbus. Ultimately, he had two fatal flaws: He failed to either recruit or develop decent quarterbacks, and, notoriously, he got the yips every time he saw a winged helmet or heard the first strains of “The Victors” wafting on the Midwest’s November gales.

Tressel has managed those defining moments with the utmost aplomb. Just as Lloyd Carr crawled inside Cooper’s head and haunted his every waking moment, so Tressel appears to have taken a commanding psychological upper hand on Carr.

It traces, of course, to Tressel’s first day on the job, when they handed him the microphone at halftime of a nationally televised basketball game and he promised the rabid faithful that they would be proud of their beloved Buckeyes 310 days hence when they traveled to That School Up North, as Woody dismissively refered to their historic rivals.

As bold strokes go, that one should be granted permanent status in the all-time top 10.

Now, given the sordid Maurice Clarett affair and a laundry list of controversies that includes NCAA probes, arrests, scandals and suspensions, you could argue that what makes one proud is a relative matter.

You could argue that — if you wanted to suggest to anyone that you’d never set foot inside Ohio and prove to all that you’ve never spent a meaningful moment at Ohio Stadium.

What makes Ohioans most proud is a dominant Ohio State football team, one that regularly beats Michigan, puts double digits in the win column and chases national championships relentlessly.

By that measure — one anyone employed by The Ohio State University would admit under truth serum was the only one that mattered — Jim Tressel has, indeed, been everything they hoped he would be when they handed him that microphone on Jan. 18, 2001.

Keith Langlois writes regularly for MSNBC.com and is a columnist for the Oakland (Mich.) News.
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Ohio State football success is more integral to the quality of life throughout Ohio than Penn State football success matters to Pennsylvanians and far bigger than Michigan football success to Michiganders.
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I really liked that line from the article.
 
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Great read...

CPD

How Tressel does it



Thursday, August 24, 2006

It's no surprise that Ohio State lands the state's top talent. This season, 22 of the 28 players OSU lists as "starters" hail from the home state. The Plain Dealer's Doug Lesmerises lists four keys to Ohio State's in-state recruiting success under Jim Tressel:
1. Building bridges
In every recruiting discussion - every single solitary one - Tressel starts by talking about the home state. Ohio high school coaches feel that love.

"A number of coaches complained to me that the only time John Cooper had a conversation with you was when he wanted something," said Duane Long, Ohio recruiting analyst for scout.com. "Jim Tressel and his staff stop by for a cup of coffee."
When coaches consider the home state coach a friend, the recruiting often takes care of itself.
2. Playing big
At 50-13, Tressel's winning percentage in his five years is the eighth-best in college football. But it's what the Buckeyes do when the most eyes are on them that sticks in the minds of recruits. Going 4-1 against Michigan and 4-1 in bowls builds that foundation of kids just "liking" Ohio State.
3. 'The next level'
"Everyone's goal here is to one day play in the NFL," cornerback Jamario O'Neal said, and Ohio State does that as well as anyone. The lure of Southern schools can be strong, and plenty of the best kids in Ohio have chances to head for warm weather. But Ohio State has proven to be a sound business decision for good players, as much as Miami, Florida State or even Southern Cal.
Ohio State's 14 players drafted in 2004 was a record for a seven-round NFL draft.
And with the way the Buckeyes run their spread offense now, skill players know they'll get the showcase they need for NFL scouts.
4. Mr. Clean
After his assistants lay the groundwork, Tressel can be a killer with the parents when it comes to closing the deal.
The team GPA is on the rise, and Tressel's measured style can make moms swoon. Browns assistant coach Terry Robiskie remembers the recruitment of his son Brian, now a receiver for the Buckeyes, and his wife watching Tressel walk up their driveway.
"She saw him with his gray suit and his red tie and his little American flag pin, and she said, 'That's it,' " Robiskie said.
And Brian was off to Columbus. Mothers, prepare yourselves.
 
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1. Building bridges
In every recruiting discussion - every single solitary one - Tressel starts by talking about the home state. Ohio high school coaches feel that love.

"A number of coaches complained to me that the only time John Cooper had a conversation with you was when he wanted something," said Duane Long, Ohio recruiting analyst for scout.com. "Jim Tressel and his staff stop by for a cup of coffee."
When coaches consider the home state coach a friend, the recruiting often takes care of itself.
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Not saying anything new here, but damn it's good having Jim Tressel in Columbus

Tressel's measured style can make moms swoon.
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Ladykiller.:biggrin:
 
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