The New York Times has an interesting, if not entirely sympathetic, article about Ohio State Coach Jim Tressel on the eve of the BCS Championship Game next week.
COLUMBUS, Ohio ? Jim Tressel?s six years of coaching Ohio State have presented a jarring contrast of Ozzie and Harriet virtue and Ozzy Osbourne excess.
If the top-ranked Buckeyes defeat Florida in the Bowl Championship Series title game Jan. 8, Tressel will win his second national championship in five seasons. In the view of many, he will join Pete Carroll of Southern California as the greatest college football coaches of their generation.
Woody Hayes was brilliant in winning three national titles at Ohio State, but he was also volatile and, ultimately, self-destructive. Tressel, by contrast, projects a groomed blandness ? the gray man with the gray hair in the gray sweater vest who represents integrity, loyalty, humility, self-control, academic probity.
Among the Buckeye faithful, Tressel?s rectitude is punctuated as emphatically as the ?i? in the marching band?s famous script Ohio routine.
Adulation on campus has approached deification with signs like ?God Wears Sweater Vests? and ?In Tressel We Trust.? He talks of sharing a parent?s responsibility for his players and seems to symbolize, in his shirt-and-tie righteousness, a bygone era when football spoke to expectations of manhood. Fans and professors say that if Tressel, 54, chose to run for governor of Ohio, he would most likely win.
?They?d better hold the election before I lose a game,? he said, joking.
Yet Tressel also has detractors who dispute the authenticity of his image, mock him on message boards as CheatyPants SweaterVest and note that he has been touched by scandal both at Ohio State and Youngstown State, where he previously won four Division I-AA national championships.
At both colleges, his top quarterback took money from boosters in violation of N.C.A.A. rules. Maurice Clarett, the running back who played a vital role in Ohio State?s national championship in 2002, sits in prison after a sad descent. A number of other Ohio State players has encountered legal or disciplinary problems since Tressel became head coach in 2001, and his academic record, while improving, remains mixed.
Well, let’s look at some evidence here. First of all, Maurice Clarett was an idiot who listened to his “advisors” rather than his coach, made some truly crappy decisions, and got himself in trouble. There has never been any evidence that Tressel had any idea what was going on with his supposed-star running back. And, the disaster that Clarett’s life post-football has turned into argues in favor of the fact that he’s just incapable of making the right choices. Second, yes Troy Smith made a mistake. He was disciplined for it and, by all accounts, turned himself around and has had two spectacular seasons. Blaming Tressel for the bad decisions of his players is rather unfair, I think.
