The really smart people are the ones who see things long before anyone else does.
Jim Dennison, then, is a really smart guy.
He proved it years ago, although it took a while for his words to ring true.
Dennison, before he was a soothsayer, was an outstanding longtime head football coach at the University of Akron.
It was just over 46 years ago, in 1978, Dennison’s sixth season on the job, and the Zips, tired and wet but very jubilant, were in the tiny, rundown (even then) home locker room at the Rubber Bowl celebrating a rain-soaked, three-point win over Eastern Illinois, achieved on a last-play field goal.
In my role of covering the Zips for the student newspaper, The Buchtelite, I was standing next to Dennison after having interviewed him.
It was hard to tell all the young assistant coaches the Zips had from the players. There wasn’t much of a difference in their ages.
“Hey, Coach, I know all of these assistants want to be head coaches someday. Do any of them have a chance to do anything?” I asked him.
Dennison, who is not a tall man, stood on his tiptoes as he looked past all the hulking linemen to the opposite corner of the locker room where the assistants had gathered.
“Yes . . . that guy . . . with the blue coat who is talking to two other coaches. That’s Jim Tressel,” he said. “Mark my words, he is going to do great things on a grand scale.”
I knew of Tressel only because of his father, Lee Tressel, the iconic, longtime head coach at then Baldwin-Wallace College. Jim
was a graduate assistant for the Zips.
“Uh, OK, whatever,” I thought to myself. “It’s probably just a case of a coach being overly exuberant about one of his guys, which I can totally understand. That kind of stuff happens all the time in the coaching profession.
It was 23 years later that Tressel came out of nowhere to be named the new head coach at Ohio State. It was a year after that, in 2002 in his season, that Tressel’s Buckeyes, after hearing a tremendous pre-game speech from Dennison, who by then was well-established as Tressel’s coaching mentor, held on at the end to edge Michigan 14-9 at Ohio Stadium in the regular-season finale to win the Big Ten title and advance to the BCS National Championship Game at the Fiesta Bowl, where they stunned the heavily-favored Miami Hurricanes 31-24 in double-overtime to win the school’s first national title in 34 years.
A day later, on Jan. 5, 2003, at Heinz Field, the Browns, the team Tressel has rooted for his entire life, blew a 24-7 third-quarter lead and fell 36-33 to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the wild-card round of the AFC playoffs.
Now, 22 years after that, Jim Tressel is Ohio’s Lieutenant Governor and might end up running for governor.
Wonder if Jim Dennison saw that coming, too?
Steve King
