You can tell a lot about a person from how they do the small things, and the ones in which few people, if any, will be watching,

And so it is, too, with Jim Tressel, the Berea High School and Baldwin-Wallace product, national championship-winning former Ohio State head football coach, lifelong Browns fan, former president of Youngstown State University, former administrator at the University of Akron and, as of just recently, the 67th Ohio Lieutenant Governor.

When Tressel was coaching the Buckeyes, a job that requires about 25 hours a day of attention, he would take the time to hand-write greeting cards for birthdays, anniversaries, encouragement, sympathy and such for family members, friends and associates. It would have been quite easy — and totally understandable — for him to ask his administrative assistant to do it, but that would have lacked a personal touch. Hardly anyone sends cards anymore, especially those in jobs like his. It takes someone, and special — someone special.

That’s the Jim Tressel that few people know.

One time when he was at a speaking engagement in Green, located halfway between Akron and Canton, he came out of a restroom only to find a discarded piece of paper on the floor. Instead of just walking over it or past it, as likely many people had done, he took the time to stop, pick it up and place it into a trash receptacle.

Those things are symbolic of a person from another time — a simpler, more polite and more principled time. Tressel, now 72, is a product of all that. He was born on Dec. 5, 1952, two days before the Browns defeated the host Chicago Cardinals 10-0 in the next-to-last regular-season game to improve to 8-3 on their way to winning their third straight Eastern Conference title and making their seventh straight appearance in a league championship game.

The Browns were made up of iconic players — and iconic men — such as Otto Graham, Lou Groza, Len Ford, Dante Lavelli, Bill Willis, Frank Gatski, Marion Motley and Mac Speedie, and a safety who would become a coach someday in Don Shula. They set a good example for young people.

Does who Jim Tressel is, and what he has done, automatically qualify him to be governor of Ohio, should he decide to run for that office?

No.

But it certainly doesn’t automatically disqualify him, either.

Steve King