Tressel’s impact felt in new book

By Joe Scalzo

YOUNGSTOWN — When David Lee Morgan Jr. was a student-athlete at Youngstown State in the mid-1980s, he never played a down for Jim Tressel. But as someone whose friends and roommates were football players, Morgan felt Tressel’s impact.

“If you were around them, you couldn’t help but take in some of the stuff Coach Tressel was teaching his players,” said Morgan, who played one year of baseball at YSU. “He teaches you to be a better person before he teaches you to be a football player.

“He wants you to be the best person you can be before you get on the field.”

A few years ago, Morgan approached Tressel about writing a book about the coach’s “Winner’s Manual,” a 300-page “playbook” Tressel gives his players before the season. The book contains football-specific instruction, but it also has a section in the back called “The Fundamentals for Winners.”

Tressel co-authored a book called “The Winner’s Manual,” which was released last year. But Morgan wanted to interview Tressel’s former players to see how the coach’s philosophy on football and life impacted their lives. Tressel blessed the project and the result is “More Than A Coach: What it means to play for coach, mentor and friend Jim Tressel,” which will be released nationwide Friday.

Morgan interviewed more than 50 players from Ohio State and YSU, as well as coaches and administrators who have worked with Tressel.

The book contains interviews with well-known players such as A.J. Hawk (a former OSU linebacker now with the Green Bay Packers), Craig Krenzel (the quarterback of OSU’s 2002 national championship team) and Brian Hartline (a former OSU wide receiver who was selected in the April draft).

But it also contains interviews from players like Tyson Gentry (an OSU punter who broke his neck in a practice and is now in a wheelchair) and Louis Irizarry (a former OSU tight end from Ursuline High who was kicked out of school and spent time in jail before resurrecting his football career at YSU).

“Everyone I called wanted to be in the book,” said Morgan, a sportswriter for the Akron Beacon Journal who recently co-authored a book on Kelly Pavlik. “You really don’t have to be an Ohio State fan or a huge sports fan to understand some of these stories because they’re all fundamentals of what we experience.

“Whether you can score touchdowns or score 50 points a game or whatever, you can use things like attitude, class, caring, discipline, respect, hope, humility — all of those things.”

For more details, visit www.davidleemorganjr.com.

scalzo@vindy.com