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Football
Time for Tressel to Take a Stand
By Brandon Castel

COMMENTARY — “How about Michigan? They put their pants on one leg at a time, the same as we do.”

With that famous response in 1934, Ohio State’s new football coach, Francis Albert Schmidt, forever changed the rivalry between the Buckeyes and Wolverines.

Now “The Game” is in danger of changing again, and it might be up to Jim Tressel to save it. 

With fans at both schools in a panic over rumors that college football’s most storied rivals may not continue to meet in the season-finale, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delaney has done very little to quell their fears.

The same goes for the schools’ athletic directors Gene Smith (OSU) and Dave Brandon (UM) along with Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee, who recently said he would be in favor of moving “The Game” to the middle of the season in order to avoid playing on back-to-back weekends.

Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez has also dropped the ball with his pronouncement on one of the most polarizing topics in recent Big Ten history.

“It’s most important that we’re still playing each other. The rivalry, the intensity of it, will be the same whether you’re playing first, middle or last,” Rodriguez said recently.

Now, no one is really surprised that Rodriguez has yet to understand the rivalry, let alone the importance of keeping “The Game” where it is. A graduate of West Virginia University, Rodriguez is entering just his third season in Ann Arbor and has yet to a win a game in the OSU-Michigan rivalry. 

He is a far cry from Bo Schembechler (an Ohio native, Ohio State grad, assistant coach at OSU under Woody Hayes, and played for Hayes at Miami of Ohio), Gary Moeller (an Ohio State grad and team captain under Woody Hayes) or even Lloyd Carr when it comes to recognizing the importance this one game can have on his program, his state and maybe most importantly, his job.

Jim Tressel
Photo by Jim Davidson

But Jim Tressel should know better.

He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. His father—hall of fame coach Lee Tressel—attended Ohio State and raised Jim and his brother Dick to root for the Buckeyes. He coached as an assistant at OSU under fiery Michigan-hater Earle Bruce, and on the same field as Bo in the mid-1980s.

He coaches in the shadow forever cast on Columbus by the late Woody Hayes, and most importantly, he has gone 8-1 against “that school up north,” proof that he understands the rivalry as well as it appeared in his introduction speech at halftime of the OSU-Michigan basketball game back in 2001.

So when Tressel says “it doesn’t matter” when the Ohio State-Michigan game is played, pardon me for thinking Ohio State fans deserve better from their coach.

Tressel has often been referred to as “The Senator,” but now is the time to stop playing politician. Ohio State fans need an advocate. They need a lobbyist, someone fighting for the people and for the integrity of “The Game.”

Tressel says he won’t be at the table when they make the decision on what do with Ohio State and Michigan, which is the very reason he needs to take a stand now. It’s comprehensible why Gordon Gee and Gene Smith, two people closely involved in the decision-making process, have to watch their words publicly.

But Tressel has no such obligation. Outside of Delaney, few if any people in the Big Ten carry more clout than Ohio State’s 10th-year coach, who has the conference’s only BCS National Title. The 57-year old has not typically been one to stray from the party line, but he had no problem taking a public stance against moving the OSU-Michigan game to the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

“I’m kind of an old-timer, you have to preface it with that,” Tressel said last November.

“I’ve always thought that the Big Ten had a great advantage in the fact that their kids could go home for an extended Thanksgiving weekend.”

Certainly Tressel was looking out for his players, but why speak out publically then and not now? His defense on his stance—or more accurately on his non-stance— is that while “The Game” has been played on the final week of the regular season recently, it hasn’t always been that way.

What he fails to identify, however, is that playing at the end of the season is a big part of what has made the rivalry great. The last time it wasn’t was 1934. Joe Paterno was eight years old and Tressel would not be born for another 18 years.

Playing the finale against Michigan is all Tressel has ever known. In fact, it’s all his dad ever really knew (Lee was nine years old in 1934). Before they began playing on the final week of the regular season in 1935 it wasn’t even a rivalry. Michigan had won or tied 24 of the previous 31 meetings and their average margin of victory was over 22 points, including an 86-0 annihilation in 1902.

It wasn't until Francis Schmidt showed up in 1934 with those pants and an idea that Michigan was not invincible that Ohio State even got off the mat. The two teams began playing each other in the season-finale the following year and in the 75 meetings since, the rivalry has been a deadlock with the Buckeyes taking a 36-35-4 advantage on last year’s 21-10 win in Ann Arbor.

It has had its swings and the two teams have not always been competitive, but the beauty of this rivalry is that one win can make or break an entire season. That’s why they play it at the end.

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