A little over a decade ago, when Jim Tressel, who was an administrator at the University of Akron, was one of the candidates for the president’s job at the school, a co-worker of mine at the time would go on a daily rant as to why he wasn’t the right person for the job.
I would listen patiently and then, when he was finished, I would say I wholeheartedly disagreed and that he would be a good president.
Tressel was passed over and the candidate my co-worker wanted got the job. The school almost immediately headed south, and still hasn’t completely recovered. I’m not talking about heading south in a physical sense to say, perhaps, the site of the former Goodrich plant in Akron, but south as in slipping away and becoming less of what it was. Meanwhile, Tressel, who had also thrown his hat into the ring for the president’s job at Youngstown State University, was hired there. At the same pace that Akron headed south, YSU started headed north, not toward Warren but to a better place.
I was right in how I saw the situation, as were a lot of other people who viewed it likewise. I wish we had all been wrong. I am a UA grad. That hurt and made me angry that the powers to be there could so badly mishandle the search.
The problem, obviously, was pride. The professors and the other education people were indignant at the thought of being under the presidency of a non-education guy such as Tressel.
How silly!
Those people put no stock into Tressel’s strong leadership skills, his ability to communicate and build bridges and his full dedication to work very hard to learn all the things he didn’t know, but needed to know, to be a good president.
The Youngstown State people, in knowing Tressel so well from his having been there already as director of athletics and the head coach that turned the Penguins into a Division II national power, were thrilled to gobble him up as president after he got turned away at Akron.
Yes, sometimes sports people, as with those in other fields, fail when they get out of their element. When Barberton native Bo Schembechler retired as the head football coach at Michigan, the Detroit Tigers hired him as the team president. One of his first orders of business was to fire Hall of Fame radio play-by-play announcer Ernie Harwell.
Ugh.
The only thing worse in Detroit than firing Harwell would have been firing God. Just ask the Pittsburgh Pirates, who, a little over 50 years, fired legendary radio play-by-play announcer Bob Prince. There are people in that town who, from that moment, have refused to follow the Pirates because of that firing.
But Tressel, Ohio’s newly-sworn-in lieutenant governor, wouldn’t do something crazy — and incredibly stupid — like that if he decided to run for governor and won. He’s too smart and too savvy and knows the state too well.
Plus, he is a winner through and through. He has never failed in any of his professional stops.
But will Tressel run? I have no doubt that he will. The job intrigues him and would be an incredible final chapter in a new arena in what has been a tremendous professional career, all of which has been spent in Ohio.
Can he win? No one can say for sure, but don’t be foolish enough to count him out.
Indeed, it’s been said, half-facetiously, to be sure, but also half-seriously, that the coach of the biggest brand in Ohio, sports and otherwise, the enormously popular football Buckeyes, when they are winning games and championships and regularly beating The Team Up North, such as occurred in the decade under Jim Tressel, could run for governor and win. We may just find out if that’s really true.
And Browns fans, having a lifelong fan in the state’s highest office just might give the team enough power and impetus to finally find a franchise quarterback.
It can’t hurt, right?
Steve King
