Jim Tressel’s reign of success as Ohio State football coach will be honored Saturday at the Horseshoe. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Jim Tressel and Maurice Clarett will be a big and welcomed part of the festivities for Ohio State’s season opener Saturday.
Say-so humility and forgiveness require no effort, benefit no one, and mean nothing.
But when those acts are genuine, effort is required, and both sides benefit. In the case of Ohio State, Jim Tressel and Maurice Clarett, humility and forgiveness have fully arrived and mean everything.
On Saturday in Ohio Stadium, humility and forgiveness will be on display for more than 100,000 witnesses. And that’s a great thing.
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Tressel resigned after the 2010 season for not reporting NCAA rules violations by some of his players. They called it tattoogate. No one will utter those words on Saturday.
After those difficult days, Tressel served as president of Youngstown State for almost nine years. Now, he is Ohio’s Lieutenant Governor.
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Saturday’s crowd will celebrate the university celebrating Tressel for his coaching accomplishments. You know them well: a national championship and a 9-1 record against Michigan. Tressel will be the third coach enshrined in the stadium’s football Ring of Honor.
The other player in this redemption story is Clarett. He helped Tressel win the national championship after the 2002 season with a 1,000-yard freshman season and the take-back of an Ohio State turnover when he ripped the football from the hands of Miami’s Sean Taylor.
Clarett later served almost four years in prison for aggravated robbery and carrying a concealed weapon. Then Clarett turned bad into good. He read business books in prison and searched his soul. Now he works as an entrepreneur, behavioral health advocate and motivational speaker. Ask Google what Clarett is doing now, and you will wonder how he has time for it all.
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Clarett, like many of Tressel’s former players, will be in the old Horseshoe on Saturday to celebrate his coach. But Clarett will be honored, too. Ohio State selected him as the first Victory Bell Ringer of the 2026 season and the first player to do it from the Tressel era. The Buckeyes play Ball State, so Clarett will definitely ring the bell.
An ancient Greek poet is attributed with the idea of “time heals all wounds.” Well, it does – and it does so rather quickly – when the offenders exhibit humility and the offended seek to forgive. Like the potter and the clay of Jeremiah 18, what once was misshapen is fit for use again.
Some day, a person far greater than Ross Bjork, Day, Tressel or Clarett will take all that is broken and make it new. But until that revelation comes to pass, it’s good to see people doing the best they can to turn losses into victories.
Jim Tressel and Dayton Dragons manager Julio Morillo enjoyed meeting each other at Tuesday’s game. Tressel was an honorary guest for the home plate meeting with the umpires.
My unexpected victory this week was a surprise meeting with Tressel on Tuesday night at a Dayton Dragons game I was already there to cover. Tressel appeared at the game to promote the Team Tressel Fitness Challenge, which has helped 650,000 Ohio school children get in better physical and mental shape. He is truly humbled by the Ring of Honor tribute.
When the sign of his on-field success is unveiled on Saturday, Tressel’s name will be on it, accompanied by 2002 national champion, 6 Big Ten championships, and College Football Hall of Fame. But Tressel said he won’t be reflecting on those numbers.
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“There’s going to be recognition up there, and it’s going to be recognizing 10 years, and that’s 10 years worth of players, coaches, fans, everyone that was involved,” he said Tuesday in the Day Air Ballpark press box. “And then you think about every time one of your players looks at that sign, they’re going to feel a piece of them up there, and so it’s going to be pretty neat celebrating that with everyone. We know we’re just representing a bunch of guys that did some pretty good things.”
The news blindsided Tressel. Athletic director Ross Bjork and Ryan Day invited him to the locker room under the pretense of being part of a video about Day’s induction into the University of New Hampshire hall of fame.
When Tressel walked in all attention was on him. Then Bjork and Day showed him why they and some of his former players were gathered.
“I was shocked, and they did a good job of keeping it secret,” Tressel said.
Donnie Evege played for Jim Tressel at Ohio State and works with the Team Tressel Fitness Challenge. He threw out a ceremonial first pitch before Tuesday’s Dayton Dragons game.
Donnie Evege, one of Tressel’s cornerbacks in his final seasons as coach, was in the room and was with Tressel in Dayton on Tuesday. He works with Team Tressel.
“Priceless,” Evege said of his coach’s reaction. “I was talking to his wife, Mrs. Ellen Tressel, prior, and I asked her, ‘How do you think he’s going to respond to this.’ She said, ‘I think he’s going to be at a loss for words.’
“It was just incredible the way Ohio State University laid that out. He’s a very, very smart man. He knows when something’s up. So they made it happen, and I can’t put it into words what it means and what he means to the state of Ohio, let alone Ohio State football.”
Tressel will be the third coach so honored. He joins Paul Brown and Woody Hayes.
“Woody Hayes, that was the coach we idolized, and we always idolized Paul Brown because he had recruited my father to Ohio State,” Tressel said. “He only got to play with him one spring, and then enlisted in World War II. But when he got back and Paul Brown got back, neither of them got to go back to Ohio State.”
But both ended up in Cleveland, Brown as coach of the Browns and Lee Tressel as coach at Baldwin-Wallace. They reconnected and remained close.
“I know what Paul Brown’s meant to the game, so between Paul Brown and Woody Hayes, I keep saying, we had to put me like way down at the other end,” Tressel said.
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And if they did, he truly wouldn’t care.
Day welcomes Tressel to practices when the coach can make it against the busy schedule he keeps for Gov. Mike DeWine. Day sees Tressel the same way those who played for him do.
“It’s the impact that he made on so many people,” Day said. “When you get to talk to his players, when you talk to his coaches, when you look at the impact he’s made on the state, I think that’s probably what’s most significant.”
Jim Tressel and Julio Morillo walk to home plate Tuesday night. Tressel thoroughly enjoyed his time at the game.
Evege said the link between Hayes and Tressel is obvious in the way they worked to develop their players’ character and habits off the field.
“You think about what Woody Hayes did, the whole mission was pay it forward off the field,” Evege said. “And Coach Tressel adopted that. He gave it to all his players, and we’re implementing that now, so it’s bigger than football. This is about life, and for him to be in the ring of honor, that’s going to last forever. He deserves it, and I’m so happy this time has come.”
And Tressel is happy this time has come for Clarett. He told Day he would enjoy having Clarett around the team. In the past two years, Tressel has seen the two become friends.
“They’ve both been through some things, and sometimes it’s lonely when you do,” Tressel said. “You need that someone, and so they’ve been great for one another.”
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At Tuesday’s news conference, Day talked about Clarett’s passion for Ohio State, his accomplishments and why he likes having Clarett around his players. And why he is very much in favor of Clarett being the bell ringer after his team wins on Saturday.
“To see all the challenges that he went through, but then come out the back end, and what he advocates for now, the success that he’s having in life with his family, he’s a guy that I like to have around the program,” Day said. “I love the messages that he gives to our players.”
Tressel is clearly appreciative of the way Ohio State continues to embrace him and his legacy. And because he gets that, it makes him even more appreciative of Clarett’s redemption story from football star, to prison inmate, to community leader.
“It’s a great story, really for everyone in Ohio,” Tressel said. “Tough things happened, and he handled it. And look at him now – extremely successful businessman, hugely impactful for people who are having substance abuse things, people aging out of foster care. He just does so many things for so many people, and it’s just a great reminder that you can get it turned around.”
And have a day like Saturday for both of them.
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