[OSUBasketballJunkie]

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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<TABLE style="PADDING-RIGHT: 15px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 5px" cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SCRIPT>getCSS("3027626")</SCRIPT><LINK href="/default.ashx/id/3027626/" type=text/css rel=stylesheet><SCRIPT></SCRIPT><TABLE class=boxH_3027626 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=102><TBODY><TR><TD class=boxHI_3027626 width="1%"></TD><TD class=boxHC_3027626 noWrap width=*>
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><TABLE class=boxB_3027626 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=102><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD></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.