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Tressel plays numbers game during OSU-Lima visit
By JIM NAVEAU
419-993-2087
05/26/2006
jnaveau@limanews.com

LIMA — The NFL turned down Reggie Bush’s request to wear No. 5, but Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel is willing to listen if a player wants to ask for a special number.
“We have guys campaign all the time and they campaign for the single digits. I haven’t had too many guys campaign for No. 62 or something like that,” Tressel said, with a smile, before he spoke at The Ohio State University at Lima’s Spring for Scholarships dinner Thursday night.
“The single digits, guys kind of wait in line for those,” he said. “We’ve got some guys battling over some single digits. All the things are a part of that — how they did in the spring, what their spring grades are.
“It’s an incentive. Any carrot you can use to help, we do,” he said.
Two other numbers have been prominently attached to Ohio State football lately. The first is, No. 1, as in the Buckeyes being rated the leader in ESPN’s “post-spring” Top 25.
The other is $17 million, which is what Tressel will be paid the next seven seasons after reaching an agreement to sweeten his contract. That is believed to have made him the third-highest paid college football coach after Southern California’s Pete Carroll and Texas’ Mack Brown.
Tressel was quick to point to another number, the nine Buckeyes who were selected in the NFL draft, when the ESPN rankings came up.
“We all know better than that. We saw all those guys who were drafted. There is nobody in our building that has any preconceived notions that we don’t have a lot of work to do,” he said.
Ohio State has seven returning starters on offense from last season’s 10-2 team, but only two starters back on defense.
“We’re young but I think we’re talented. We need some experience fast,” Tressel said.
Tressel addressed several other topics, including the prospects for some area players in 2006, hiring a new strength coach to replace Allan Johnson and his salary.
He said Van Wert’s Joel Penton “needs to be a leader for us because he’s a fifth-year player” and that Penton and his defensive line mates will have to lead OSU’s defense. “Those are the guys who have been in the game,” he said.
One of the defensive players who made a big impression in spring practice was linebacker Ross Homan, who enrolled at Ohio State in January after helping Coldwater win the Division IV state title last fall.
“I know what Ross Homan’s goal is; he wants to be in there starting that first game,” Tressel said.
The departure of Johnson, who had been OSU’s strength coach since 2001, came as somewhat of a surprise.
Johnson is under contract until August, but a new strength coach could be on board before that. “I think somewhere around the middle of next week they’ll bring a couple of candidates in and I’m hoping by the end of next week we’ll have a good feel for what we’re going to do,” Tressel said.
About the attention his salary increase has received, he said, “That’s just the way it is. When you’re a public employee, it’s public knowledge. I think back to why I went into this profession and it wasn’t for salary needs. It was because I love to teach and coach. I think my dad, who was a better coach than I am, was a coach for 20 years before he made $20,000 a year.”