Jim Tressel got his first big coaching break in 1981 when he was hired by new Syracuse head coach Dick MacPherson to be quarterbacks coach.
What made it even better was that MacPherson had spent the previous three seasons being on head coach Sam Rutigliano’s staff as linebackers coach for the Cleveland Browns, Tressel’s favorite team. You can rest assured that the young Tressel, at one time or another during his two seasons on the staff before he moved on to Ohio State for his first stint there, picked MacPherson’s brain about the Kardiac Kids, who had won the AFC Central title in 1980.
Perhaps Tressel even asked MacPherson why Coach Sam didn’t have Don Cockroft kick the field goal at the end of that playoff game against the Oakland Raiders.
Ugh. Sigh. But that’s another story for another time.
Anyway, Tressel got to call offensive plays while at Syracuse. He would sit upstairs in the coaches booth and send plays through his headset down to MacPherson on the sideline.
One memorable time occurred early on in that process. The Orangemen, as they were nicknamed then, got the opening kickoff of the game and returned it to their 32.
“Let’s start with 26 Power,” Tressel said for the first play.
It went for five yards.
“We’re going to try 26 Power again,” he said.
A gain of seven.
Again.
Six yards.
Again.
Nine yards.
And again, and again and again.
The chunk running plays kept coming, and so did the first downs as the Syracuse line opened up gaping holes through the backs raced through like Jim Brown, Ernie Davis and Floyd Little used to do back in the day when the school produced great runners over and over again.
Finally, MacPherson, a native of Old Town, Maine, said into headset in his thick New England accent, “Hey, Jimmy, are ya gonna call somethin’ other than 26 Power?”
“Yes, Coach, as soon as they stop if,” Tressel shot back.
MacPherson didn’t say another word.
All the time in football, from the youth levels to middle school, high school, college and right up to the pros, you see teams running the same play, or the same type of play, over and over and over again with great success, only to, for whatever silly reason, suddenly go away from it and try something different. The play gets stopped cold, the flow of the series is disrupted and the team ends up having to punt.
What a lack of common sense, trying to change something just because you want to show everyone how smart you are.
Usually when you do that, you reveal that just the opposite is true.
As an old coach said once, “I love vanilla ice cream. I could eat it all the time. Just for the sake of variety, I’m not going to try chocolate, butter pecan, strawberry, Neapolitan, pistachio or something else. I’m going to keep eating vanilla, which really pleases my taste buds, until they take the carton away from me.”
It sounds perfectly logical, and a great idea, to me.
But then again, I’m not a seasoned offensive play-caller, or even an unseasoned one.
Jim Tressel, who hasn’t stood on the sideline, or up in the coaches booth, and worn a headset in years, was recently sworn in as Ohio’s 67th lieutenant governor. Would he be a good governor if he ran for the office and won?
I don’t know.
But I betcha if he enacted a policy that kept working without fail, he wouldn’t waste the taxpayers’ money by abandoning it and trying something different just to please those who complain about anything and everything, no matter what it is and its success rate.
Steve King
