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<!-- date -->December 30. 2005 7:08AM
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How Smith reached top
Ex-coach pushed, prodded OSU QB
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By ERIC HANSEN
Tribune Staff Writer
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The ones that got away still haunt Ted Ginn Sr.
Not the games, mind you, but the lives -- lives the head football coach and track coach at Cleveland's Glenville High School touched but couldn't transform.
Instead they disappeared into the abyss of shuddering statistics -- a nation's worst 61 percent high school dropout rate (actually an 11 percent improvement from just a few years ago), active participants in climbing poverty and crime waves, victims not survivors of horrific family situations.
Like Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith almost was.
For as remarkable as his on-field evolution from raw, athletic backup quarterback to the more-polished field general who will lead fourth-ranked Ohio State (9-2) into its Fiesta Bowl matchup with fifth-ranked Notre Dame (9-2) Monday in Tempe, Ariz., has been, the fact that he even made it to Ohio State in the first place is where the real magic happened.
"When he got to Glenville, he was a very bitter kid," said Ginn Sr., who has four other former stars on the current OSU roster, including son Ted Ginn Jr. "Personally, Troy was a kid who I thought had been lied to, used for his talent. He had some things he had to overcome in his family, but he had to be
taught how to deal with that. I tried to work with him on that when he was here, and I still work with him on that every day.
"To me coaching is a very simple business. It's not about X's and O's. It's about having the love, passion and understanding for children and wanting what's best for them, wanting them to do great things. I had someone do that for me when I was growing up, but it's needed now more than ever. It's 2005, not the '70s or the '80s. It's needed in sports. It's totally needed in education. This is the only opportunity you have to change someone's life and give them opportunity."
***
Smith is staring straight ahead into space, refusing to take off his winter coat and gloves in the well-heated interview room, even more adamantly refusing to have reporters put words in his mouth.
One particular sequence gets replayed over and over for him verbally. How did he evolve into the quarterback of today? A taking to Buckeye head coach Jim Tressel's coaching, perhaps? Something he saw in game film? A newly-found belief in the offensive system?
"I guess it's called talent," he said.
And your impressions of Notre Dame's defense?
"I don't want to give that away."
And are these the kind of statistical goals you set for yourself at the start of the season?
"No. I don't set those kinds of goals. My goals were to lead this team to the national championship and be the best quarterback I could be at the end of the season."
And how does it feel to be in this situation after what happened last year?
"I don't think about what happened last year. That's in the past."
Every once in a while, though, the past burps itself up and Smith has to deal with it anyway.
He was charged in 2003, for instance, for his part in a fight, suspended for last year's Alamo Bowl game and this year's season opener against Miami (Ohio) for taking $500 from a booster. He has persistently tested Tressel's patience by what he considered little things, like leaving practice early without permission to attend a camp or -- for the better part of his career -- going through the motions when it came to film study.
"A lot of times you have to break kids of their Pop Warner mentality in high school," Ginn Sr. said. "Sometimes when they go to college, you have to break them of it all over again. I think sometimes he didn't understand the total picture. That's why kids need adults, need mentors -- lots of them. It's not all about talent, it's about everything else. It's about how you carry yourself and see things from a mature standpoint. I think Troy is making strides that way."
Ginn Sr., also helped Smith make strides with his talent. It started in the film room after Ohio State's 17-10 loss at Penn State on Oct. 8 dropped the Buckeyes to 3-2. Up until that point, Smith only took cursory looks at OSU opponents -- if that.
Ginn Sr., affected the change by telling Smith he should transfer to a school that ran the wishbone, that he could be a great running quarterback there, a great college quarterback -- but with no chance of ever playing in the NFL.
"That got him thinking," Ginn Sr., said. "I told him you have to use your feet and your arm and your brain. You have to learn your craft if you want people to see you as a quarterback and not as an athlete. Things happen in a split second. You have to be able to make decisions. I know Tress had been talking to him about this for a long time. I had too. But it finally got through to him. That's the thing, you never give up on young people."
***
Ted Ginn Sr., was never afraid to think out of the box, or speak out of it, or live out of it.
He not only refuses to separate church and state, he acts as if there isn't even a line there.
One Sunday in late November, for example, during Glenville's most recent state football playoff run, he took nine players to be baptized at a local church.
"There's one man in charge," Ginn Sr., said, "and that's the Lord, Jesus Christ. You have to have faith."
The Fellowship of Christian Athletes has been the cornerstone of his movement that together with some initiatives from Cleveland mayor Jane Campbell and a $2 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have poked large holes in the hopelessness that once ruled a Cleveland public school system in which janitors' salaries dwarfed teachers' and where superintendents and board members had the longevity of moths.
Ginn Sr., does it more by posturing than by preaching. He does it by providing a consistent role model rather than spewing scripture. He does it by showing the places God has made a difference in his life, not just talking about how it might affect theirs.
"You have to get kids to trust you," Ginn Sr., said. "You have to get them to believe in you and have a vision and build a foundation, because the average kid, they don't have a great foundation. They don't have a vision. They don't have a purpose. So you give them a purpose. Kids are looking for that structure. They're looking for that love and passion. I just wish I had more help. But I know the Lord isn't going to give me any more than I can handle."
*** Ginn Sr. laughed when people told him Smith was silly for signing with Ohio State almost four years ago in a recruiting class that included Justin Zwick.
With the exception of Tom Lemming, most recruiting analysts projected Zwick as the golden boy in a QB crop that included Texas' Vince Young, Virginia Tech's Marcus Vick, UCLA's Drew Olson and Texas A&M's Reggie McNeal.
He was Art Schlichter without the veiled addiction. He was from one of the most storied programs in all of high school football, Massillon (Ohio) Washington. He was the kind of quarterback that could win big games, not just make few enough mistakes not to lose them.
His recruiting hype was so strong it opened the mind of a suburban Columbus standout in the next class of quarterbacks, Brady Quinn, to consider landing at Notre Dame or Michigan instead of a few miles down U.S. Route 33. And it was also so potent Smith was deemed an afterthought, becoming the last player and perhaps least celebrated to sign in the winter of 2002, with the thought he might be switched to another position eventually.
"I probably believed in him more than he did," Ginn Sr., said of Smith. "And I was never going to quit on him."
Ginn Sr., had seen others give up on his own son when Ted Jr., was in elementary and middle school. The younger Ginn failed the first grade, in fact, and was told by his fifth-grade teacher he was destined to be nothing more than a "burger-flipper."
In middle school, he struggled every semester to be academically eligible for sports until Ginn Sr., demanded he be tested. As it turned out, he had some special needs and all that was required was some tutoring and restructuring.
He ended up graduating in the top 10 percent of his class and earned a perfect 4.0 in the final grading period of high school.
That's why Ginn Sr., invests so much in Smith and others like him. He knows what is possible.
Smith's possibilities began to take a tangible form at Ohio State last season, when the Buckeyes were 3-3 with Zwick as a starter and the prodigy suffered a shoulder injury. Smith came on to finish the regular season 4-1, including a 37-21 waxing of Michigan.
In that game he accounted for 386 total yards -- the most ever by a Buckeye in its border war with OSU's arch-rival and the third-highest total overall. He came back with 337 yards in this year's Michigan game, including a career-high 300 passing yards in the 25-21 Buckeye victory.
"There was never a doubt in my mind that someday I'd get my opportunity at quarterback," Smith said. "Until then, I just tried to go with the flow and help out any way I could. But this (being the starting quarterback) is the role they've chosen for me now. I'm trying to perfect it as much as I can."
With a little help from his past.
"Troy had a lot to overcome in his life," Ginn Sr., said. "The ones you lose, and there's not a lot of them, are the ones where the structure of their life or the structure at home or there's some kind of shortcoming somewhere that they can't get past, and that's what puts them at risk.
"Even kids in private schools, even kids with 3.5 GPAs, even kids with money become at risk, because they get in situations where nobody's willing to push them. It starts with our education system. Education isn't a part of life. It
is life. People say someday we're going to have to do things different, because this is coming, that's coming. Well guess what? It's here. Now is the time to give our kids what they need. Every last one of them."
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Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith looks downfield during the fourth quarter against Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich., Saturday, Nov. 19. <HR height="1">AP file photo/TONY DING
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