Friday, January 09, 2015YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- When Jim Tressel took the phone call earlier this week telling him that he had been named to the 2015 class of the College Football Hall of Fame, his thoughts immediately turned to his father.
“[Throughout my career,] I'm sure there were fleeting moments when you have quiet reflective times that don't last long and don't come often. You think, 'Wouldn't it be cool if [this] happened?' ” Tressel said. “That was one of the first things I thought about when the call came. I don't know how many fathers and sons are in the Hall of Fame, but it can't be many.”
Lee Tressel won 155 games, including a national title, in his in 22 years as the head coach of Division III Baldwin-Wallace University in Berea. It was 15 years after his death in 1981 that he was inducted into the hall while his sons Jim was coaching at Youngstown State University.
“The fact that my dad is in the Hall of Fame has always been special to me and to join him is special,” Tressel said at a press conference Friday. “I think back to all of the extraordinary people who have entered the Hall [of Fame] and the thought of being in with this class is humbling to say the least.”
While it is certainly an honor to be enshrined in a national hall of fame, Tressel said he doesn't rank his accomplishments, that each honor accorded him falls into a different category.
“Any recognition that elicits reflection has its own special things. Your high school hall of fame has a different cast of characters than your college or YSU or Summit County or any other hall,” he said. “I don't spend time ranking accomplishments. When you run into a student that no one's heard of and you think you've helped change their life, that's as exhilarating as something that's public.”
Among the other inductees in this year's 17-member class are players Tressel said he remembers watching or coaching against, such as Cleveland native Clinton Jones, who played at Michigan State University, Thom Gatewood, a split end at the University of Notre Dame, and Rob Lytle, a Fremont, Ohio, native who played at University of Michigan.
“The one thing I guess I had lost sight of was that Rob Lytle, an Ohio boy who played at Michigan, is deceased. That slipped by me,” Tressel said solemnly.
The only other coach in this year's class is Kansas State University’s Bill Snyder. Tressel and Snyder faced each other in the 2004 Fiesta Bowl, which Ohio State won, 35-28.
“I'm not sure that anyone in coaching has ever done as good of a job turning a program around in the history of college football,” Tressel said. “It'll be neat to reconnect with him.”
Snyder has a 66.5% winning percentage in 21 years as the head coach of Kansas State, turned that program around from a laughingstock to a perennial contender in the Big 12.
With Ohio State playing for national title Monday night, Tressel pointed out the run of successes the Mahoning Valley has seen over the past 2 1/2 decades.
“In a 24-year span, 10 of our teams [at YSU or Ohio State] have played for a national championship. I don't know what state or region could ever talk about anything like that,” he said. “There's two good teams [playing Monday] and I couldn't be more excited for the Buckeyes.”
When pressed predict its outcome, he declined to answer but said with a wry smile that he'd be cheering for “Ohio State, of course.”
This being the first year of a playoff system to determine the champion at the highest level of college football, it’s different from when Tressel won the national championship in 2002 and what's happening to this Ohio State team.
“It's a little more like what we had at YSU where you have a short time to prepare for the next game, unlike what we had at Ohio State where we had 40 days,” Tressel said. “You wake up, find out who you're playing and then you get to work because all of the sudden, the game's there.”
Tressel also commented on the hiring on Bo Pelini as YSU's new head football coach, saying that he's excited to see what Pelini will do with the program.
“There are two teams from our league playing for the [Football Championship Subdivision] national championship tomorrow and we're not one of them. That tells you our league is good. I'm sure he's anxious for that challenge,” Tressel stated.
The next challenge is bringing a national championship to Youngstown State, something Tressel did four times in his 14 years at YSU. But, Tressel made sure to note, success is “easy to talk about after the fact.
“Our league is extremely strong and the competition nationally is extremely strong. I'm sure [the coaching staff] has no other intentions other than bringing to Youngstown State what has been here before.”
Tressel will be officially inducted in to hall of fame Dec. 8 in New York City.
Pictured: Jim Tressel answers questions Friday during at press conference in the YSU trustees meeting room.
Copyright 2015 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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