Like a typical Tressel, Dick knows he loves to coach
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Tim May
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
ERIC ALBRECHT | DISPATCH
Dick Tressel, recently named OSU running backs coach, says the running game "is essential to good football."
Dick Tressel would never be confused with comedian/actor Will Ferrell, but the last month or so of Tressel’s life has played out like a sequel to Old School.
Like the three days he spent with the Boston College football staff a couple of weeks ago, going over rudiments of play-action passing and taking in ideas on how to enhance special-teams play.
"The opportunity to spend hours talking about the joy of your life, football, it takes you to the top of your feelings," Tressel said. "It is where you want to be and what you want to be doing. It is exciting. And to think of somebody hiring you to do it, that is just awesome."
Ohio State has hired him to do it again. Tressel, 56, was chosen in February as running backs coach, moving from the associate director of football operations post he held the last three years. That means he’ll be working for his younger brother Jim, 51, the fourthyear head coach.
Athletics director Andy Geiger said that in order to avoid any conflict with state ethics laws, he will be in charge of Dick Tressel’s job review and salary considerations, and offensive coordinator Jim Bollman will be Tressel’s immediate supervisor. But no matter how it is couched, Tressel will be working under his brother, and he has no problem with that.
"Especially when you know your younger brother is absolutely outstanding at what he does, it makes it even easier to do this and to be a support factor for everything he wants to do," Dick said.
The feelings are mutual, his brother said.
"I am really excited about the opportunity to work with Dick," Jim said. "First of all, he is an excellent football coach and teacher who understands the game and relates well with the players.
"Secondly, from a personal standpoint, as my older brother he is someone I have always looked up to and admired. It is kind of neat to have him on our staff. It doesn’t hurt either that he was a very successful head coach."
Having grown up in a coach’s family — that of the late Lee Tressel, a Division III national championship winner at Baldwin-Wallace — the brothers share a passion.
"There is an inbred respect there, if you will, coming up under the same guidance, the same values," Dick said. "You know where the other person is coming from and how they are absolutely interested in what is best for everyone. There is no hidden agenda."
The truth is, when OSU running backs coach Tim Spencer moved on to the Chicago Bears in February, Dick Tressel would have applied for the job no matter who was in charge. After 22 years as coach at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., where he ran up a 124-102-2 record, he retired from coaching in 2000 and moved full time into athletic administration.
He missed football right away.
Soon after his brother gained the OSU coaching job in 2001, Dick Tressel applied for associate director of operations, a post created as a liaison between the players and the academic side of OSU, along with developing a community outreach program.
"He has done a truly outstanding job and made that a vital role for our football program," Geiger said.
Tressel could have stayed there in perpetuity, but he missed the interaction with players and the immediate feedback of being a coach.
"The goals you set in working with the kids off the field, you feel excited about them when they are reached, but those goals are always down the road a ways," he said. "In those years away from coaching, I realized how the competition helps you maintain your focus. And that game on Saturday afternoon, that brings great closure to a week’s work."
As for coaching running backs, that was Tressel’s first job in 1971 as an assistant at Gibsonburg High School, where he tutored fullback Ted Smith, who later played on the OSU offensive line in front of two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin.
"The attitude I bring with me from way back is the running game is essential to good football," Tressel said. "It is the physical confrontation of the game, and the effort of the whole offense working hard for the running back not to be tackled."
Some might say that’s old school, but rudiments always apply.
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