Football
It's Not Measurable, but It's There
By John Porentas

We're not going to talk to any OSU football players, assistant coaches or the Head Coach between now and the opener with Youngstown State. Any impression we have of this team prior to the opener is now set.

Plenty has been written, some of it right here, about who is in the two-deep, who is bigger, who is faster, who is standing out in practice. Despite the veritable avalanche of information, until they take the field nobody can be sure just what this team really is about. That's a fact. What's also a fact is that you're just aching to know and wish somebody would tell you.

OK. Here goes.

We've covered the Buckeyes for eleven seasons now, and every preseason has been different. Some teams are brash and cocky in the preseason with high expectations. Others are quiet and maybe a bit reserved. Some are mature, others are something less-than mature.

The Buckeyes are light on seniors this year, and that usually does not bode well for a football team. It usually means a team that isn't quite grounded in the realities of college football. Yet after one month of talking to players, assistant coaches and the Head Coach, the one somewhat vague, nebulous but nearly palpable impression we have is that this is a football team with a great, great attitude, a team that has a very good chance of realizing its full potential, whatever that potential may be.

It's hard to explain, but it's almost as much what you don't see and hear as what you do. You don't hear braggadocio, but you hear confidence. You hear a few obligatory cliches in conversation, but more often than not, you get sincere conversation and an honest attempt to answer questions. That in itself may not seem important, but to me it means that this is a group that is basing its outlook, thinking and actions on reality, not hype and ego, and that bodes well for them.

The words that come to mind to describe the attitude of the Buckeyes is focused and hungry. This team seems like a team that knows what it wants and is very intent on doing all the things it takes to get it, including recognition of its own weaknesses and the need to improve on them. That is a formula for something that marks teams that achieve, because it is an attitude that fosters what OSU Head Coach Jim Tressel advocates at all times, constant and steady improvement.

"I've been really a poor judge going into any game whether we were ready, but I've been very pleased (with the attitude of this team)," said Tressel.

"You ask what would demonstrate that someone is hungry? I would say their attentiveness, their effort, their willingness, and I've seen all that. Not that I've ever really not seen it since I've been here, but it's just very noticeable (this season)," Tressel said.

Tressel says this team's willingness and desire to get better has the potential to put them in the class of a couple of other teams, one that he coached.and one that he didn't.

"It's hard to be at championship level on day one," Tressel said.

"You look at that 2002 team we had, we certainly weren't at championship level early in the year, but we survived then got to championship level.

"Probably early in the year this past year Florida wasn't at championship level, won a couple of tough ones which kept them in the hunt, then got to championship level, then they deserved to be champions."

Those two teams had something in common. They were hungry and they were willing to do what it took to get better. They recognized the need to get better and went about the business of doing just that. Tressel says that to a large degree, this team seems to possess that quality despite its lack of seniors.

"This group is very willing," said Tressel.

What this team lacks in actual age could very well be offset by what some people would term their "coachability". They are willing to admit their weaknesses and anxious to listen, to learn, to get better. In what at first seems like a total contradiction, Tressel says the crucial thing the OSU coaching staff must now do is make sure their willingness to follow instruction does not stifle their natural abilities to make plays.

"Sometime with a willing group like this you have to be very careful because they're going to do exactly what you say. They need to be creative too," said Tressel.

"There have been a million times in the middle of the play I've been saying 'Go to the tight end! Go to the tight end!' and he throws it to the flanker for a touchdown. I think you need to allow that creativity, but they seem very willing," Tressel said.

"You have to have them very disciplined, but on the other hand they need to feel the freedom to let it rip.

"We always tell them 'Let it happen. We've coached you, we've micro-managed you, but now let it rip, make it happen.' This group really wants to do well," Tressel added.

We won't pretend to know what this team's record will be when the season ends. A lot can happen; injuries, fluke plays, bad weather, all kinds of things including simply lining up against a team that proves itself better, but there is just something about this group and its approach to the season that gives you a feeling that they have a chance to be a very special team, that they will be the kind of team that will find a way to get things done when the going gets tough.

It's just a feeling, but it's there.

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