tedginn05
Legend
Helmeted heads slumping over maize and blue uniforms. A scowl burning into the wrinkled face of the defeated coach. Frenzied Ohio State fans celebrating another win over their rival.
Beating Michigan, or any other team, is no longer the last image Jim Tressel wants to see in Ohio Stadium at the end of the regular football season.
The Buckeyes coach covets for Columbus what Canton and Massillon already own — the six Ohio high-school football championship games.
With up to $5 million in annual visitor spending at stake, Columbus, Cincinnati and other cities already are plotting to take the games away from northeastern Ohio, three years before the contract can be reopened for bidding.
Tressel and OSU Athletics Director Gene Smith have ended speculation about whether they would like the games in Ohio Stadium, where they were held during most of the 1980s.
"Without question, we want those games here in our stadium," Tressel said.
"There is no stadium in this state, or maybe the country, like Ohio Stadium. It would be such a special experience in a special environment for the kids."
The quest to play in one of the championship games began on the steamy practice fields of August. It will end in early December for a dozen of more than 700 Ohio schools eligible for the tournament.
It might be easier for Tressel to win another national title than to help bring the highschool championship games back to Columbus.
Cincinnati officials want the games and are using power brokers such as Bengals owner Mike Brown to push their bid. Toledo would like the games. Cleveland officials say they will explore a potential bid.
The front-runner for future contracts remains Stark County, home to Massillon and Canton, which have hosted some or all of the championship games for the past 16 years.
That streak will continue through at least 2009. This spring, the Ohio High School Athletic Association, which sponsors and selects the site of the event, again awarded the contract to Canton and Massillon, where footballs still are placed in hospital cribs of newborn boys.
"In Columbus, the Buckeyes are the main attraction; in Cleveland and Cincinnati, the professional football teams take center stage; but in Massillon and Canton, Friday nights in the fall are what people live for," said Chris Spielman, a legendary football player at Massillon Washington High School and Ohio State. "I say leave the games there. It’s best to have the games where high-school football is the main priority."
The decision to keep the games in northeastern Ohio wasn’t popular with those across the state who think the event should have a central location, rotate among cities each year or be played in their own backyard.
"There is no way you can put those games in a corner of the state and say there isn’t an advantage for the teams up north," said Kerry Coombs, head coach of Cincinnati Colerain. "It’s a competitive advantage for teams on the field and an inconvenience for fans and schools in the southern part of Ohio."
Complaints about the long drive to Massillon or Canton have echoed for years at the opposite end of the state.
"We could be in North Carolina before we could play in Canton," said Terry Parker, a coach at Ironton. It’s about 260 miles from Ironton to Canton or Husk, N.C. "That travel just wears on you."
The high-school football playoffs typically begin around the state on the first weekend in November and conclude with the championship games the first weekend in December. A total of 192 teams qualify for the playoffs. After five rounds of games, a champion is crowned in each of six divisions.
Combined attendance for the six games typically is about 60,000.
The football playoffs, including the championship games, generated nearly $5 million last year for the OHSAA, nearly a third of its $16 million gross revenue.
"Not many states are blessed enough to have this many cities that have so much interest and ability to host these games," OHSAA commissioner Dan Ross said. "This says so much about the passion for high-school football in Ohio."
Return to the Horseshoe ?
Since Ohio Stadium switched from artificial turf to natural grass in 1990, OSU officials have shown little interest or given mixed signals to the Greater Columbus Sports Commission, which submits the city’s bid.
Now there is no more guessing.
"We want the games here, period," OSU’s Smith said. "We are going to work hard to bring those games here."
Smith and Tressel say holding high-school championships for any sport in Columbus helps attract potential students and Ohio’s top high-school athletic talent to their university.
"It certainly wouldn’t hurt our program’s recruiting," Tressel said. "Any time you give those young student-athletes the chance to experience what we have at Ohio State is going to help."
Tressel’s wish would be to hold all six championship games on campus, with three games each being played in Ohio Stadium and Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium, which normally hosts track and field, soccer and lacrosse.
It would be a tight fit, but a football field could be lined within the Jesse Owens stadium to seat up to 14,000.
Two potential hurdles stand in Ohio Stadium’s way — its natural grass and cavernous size.
"All it would take is one badweather game on that grass field and the state championships would be ruined for everyone," said Tom Stacy, football coach of Massillon Washington. "Everyone loves the Buckeyes, but we shouldn’t play on grass, and the games would just get lost in a stadium that size."
Ohio Stadium has hosted 37 championship games, the last in 1989.
Bill Franks, the football coach at Newark Catholic, played in three of those games in the mid-1980s. He said about 5,000 fans occupied a stadium that held about 90,000 at the time, but crowd size didn’t detract from the atmosphere.
"It was electric in there, and it felt like the fans were right there," Franks said. "Massillon and Canton have great stadiums, but no other stadium has the same special feel as Ohio Stadium."
To help offset the stadium’s size, Smith thinks attendance for the games could be increased with aggressive marketing.
As for the grass, the field’s keepers say it would remain a safe playing surface for three high-school games even under brutal winter conditions.
"Even under the worst-case scenario with snow and rain, and the Michigan game being played at home, the field would hold up fine," said Brian Gimbel, grounds superintendent for Ohio State athletics. "It might look a little beat-up, but it would be stable for the players."
Ohio State revamped its playing surface in 2003 by installing an artificial-turf mat just below the rye-grass field. That grass now grows through the field’s sand underbelly and snarls into the artificial mat for more stability.
Tressel’s desire to bring the games back to the state capital is so high that he asked Gimbel about potentially changing Ohio Stadium’s surface to artificial turf. Ohio Stadium had artificial turf from 1971 to 1989.
"I told the coach we didn’t need to do that to get the highschool games and he said, ‘OK,’ " Gimbel said.
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