Jim Tressel runs a tight ship

The Buckeyes' success story seems to start at the top, where the coach gets the most out of his players.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- Put in a lineup, Jim Tressel probably wouldn't be the guy you would pick as the coach of powerhouse Ohio State.
Short and slight, he favors sweater vests with a carefully knotted striped tie. His players say they've never heard him swear and have seldom seen him show any emotion. He wears a bracelet bearing the letters WWJD -- What Would Jesus Do?
But as his Buckeyes prepare to play Miami in the national championship game Jan. 3 in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, there is no question that Tressel is the man in charge.
Team's tendency
A 13-0 record -- with the team often coming from behind or winning by a few points -- is a tribute to how the Buckeyes have patterned themselves after the second-year coach.
"Coach Tressel has a large part in it, when you have such a calming influence on that sideline," tight end Ben Hartsock said. "We were in lots of tense situations this year. But no matter what, there was still focus and there was never a sense of despair of what we had gotten ourselves into.
"It was just a matter of figuring out how are we going to get ourselves out of this and what are we going to do to get it done. I think that started at the top and trickles down."
In Ohio State's meeting room inside the practice facility that bears the name of idolized coach Woody Hayes, large signs detail the program's national championships and Big Ten titles. Other signs border on being corny: an "Ohio State Football Family Statement" and a graph called "The Block O of Life."
They may be old school, but they are what Tressel believes.
Background
Tressel, who turned 50 two weeks ago, grew up in a household not unlike Beaver Cleaver's during the repressed 1950s. His father was a small-college coach at Baldwin-Wallace who was homespun enough to last 23 years and good enough to win a Division III national championship in 1978.
Jim hung around his dad at practices, fetching footballs and watching intently. After games, he and a brother would climb under the bleachers and collect the change that had fallen out of fans' pockets.
Back home, the Tressels frequently invited homesick players over for spaghetti dinners.
In many ways, Jim Tressel wants to recapture that feeling of family, home and small-town wholesomeness at Ohio State, one of the largest single-campus universities in the country.
"Jim is very, very much a throwback, a straightforward person," said the man who hired him, athletic director Andy Geiger. "It is an extremely values-oriented presentation and it is utterly and completely consistent. "The players have accepted this very -- you'd almost say -- '50s kind of value set."
Coaching stops
After high school, Tressel lettered four years as a quarterback for his father, then went off to become a coach on his own. While Lee Tressel had labored in small towns his whole life, Jim immediately gravitated to big-time football. He made stops at Akron, Miami (Ohio) and Syracuse and spent three years at Ohio State as a quarterbacks coach under Earle Bruce before becoming the coach at Youngstown State in 1986.
His first Penguins team was 2-9. But YSU went 8-4 the next season and made the Division I-AA playoffs, starting a remarkable run -- four national championships and six title game appearances over 15 seasons. Next came the challenge at Ohio State.
John Cooper was fired in January of 2001, largely because his program was seen as out of control and nothing more than a conduit to the NFL. There was no collegial feel. It was as if the players were mercenaries, coming to Columbus to build their reputation for the pros. If they won some games along the way, all the better to improve their draft position.
Tressel brought with him his father's work ethic.
"We work hard every day," Tressel said earlier this week about his master plan when he took the job. "We thought if we did certain things we could be successful. But again, we don't spend time being surprised or wondering when. We work."
Public image
In public, Tressel never makes a misstep. A simple question can elicit a 10-minute answer -- to a different question. No politician could do it better -- and Tressel's name has come up over the years as a possible candidate for a statewide office.
"He's said all the right things and he hasn't said any of the wrong things," Bruce said.
Tressel has initiated other old-school approaches that seem to work at Ohio State. He discourages facial hair on his players, and they must wear a dress shirt, tie and jacket on game days. After the game ends, they congregate in front of Ohio State's band and sing along to the school's alma mater, "Carmen Ohio."
Sappy? No question. Effective? No doubt. The players now look forward to their Saturday afternoon choir practice.
Also in the Ohio State meeting room are framed letters. When Tressel took over the job, he wrote to dozens of former Buckeyes players, asking them to send him what they remembered and what they learned from their football days.
"It's funny, there were guys who never played -- and they wrote some of the strongest letters," running backs coach Tim Spencer said. "It's clear their experience here meant something to a lot of guys.
"Now I have my players read them from time to time. They say something to what they're going through."
The past reaching forward to the present. It starts at the top and trickles down.