Gene Smith remembers the conversation quite fondly. How can he not? It happened with one of the best football coaches in Ohio State history.
Jim Tressel recalls it, too, because he was the one who brought it up to Ohio State's Vice President and Director of Athletics.
How exactly was Tressel's tenure supposed to end in Columbus?
"(Smith) would always say, 'Let's extend your contract.' I said, 'OK, but don't let me stay a day longer than our program is going like that,'" Tressel said Friday evening, shooting his hand upward to the ceiling of the Renaissance Columbus Downtown Hotel. "It's too competitive out there. The moment you start slipping, you don't even know you're slipping, but you've been slipping in inches."
Tressel didn't go into details on how exactly he, the now president at Youngstown State University, wanted to put a cap on his stretch at Ohio State. After all, he is in town this weekend as one of 14 people inducted into the Ohio State Athletics Hall of Fame.
“Everyone always talks about legacy. I always felt that part of your legacy inevitably will do after you left. What shape did you leave it in? That's why it's been fun to watch what's been going on over the past three or four years.”– Jim Tressel
That's what Friday was for — rehashing the good times in his 10 years at Ohio State, where he won over 100 games as head coach and the 2002 BCS National Championship. But Tressel spoke of the past — of a conversation he and Smith had about how he would eventually walk away from being the head guy of the Buckeye football program.
"Frankly, the way he left, which was unfortunate, he did leave it in great shape. Academically we were on an unbelievable trajectory and we were winning," Smith said. "We had gone to more BCS bowl games than anybody else. Circumstances under which he left was not obviously what we wanted or what he wanted, but he did leave the program in good shape."
The circumstances Smith speaks of is Tattoo-gate, the scandal that pulled the program's — and eventually Tressel's — feet out from under him. He was forced to resign in May 2011 after his involvement and the 2010 season had to be vacated, but has since bounced back in a big way in Northeast Ohio where he grew up. He's back at Youngstown State, where he won championship after championship as the head coach of the Penguins before heading to Columbus.
"I have the highest respect for him and what he did, and it's unfortunate how it ended," Smith said, who oversaw Tressel's exit from the program and eventually hired Urban Meyer after a 2011 season many Buckeyes want to erase from memory. "When you talk about his legacy, his legacy is not that moment in time. His legacy is the hundreds of guys he impacted in a positive way."
Smith strolled back to the individual conference rooms where media could speak to Tressel and the other 2015 inductees, looking to give a hug to the man he knew way before even bringing him to Ohio State.
There's no animosity between the two men. Not a chance.
"He's still one of the best people I've ever worked with," Smith said. "I just enjoyed every moment I had an opportunity to work with him.
"When you think about it, one of the best all-time."
Tressel's coaching résumé speaks for itself, a legacy he carries with him wherever he goes. Now at age 62, though, he's allowing himself to look back on the great times he had leading the Buckeyes to national prominence time and again.
And, to have more conversations with Smith and others whose lives he impacted.
But there's still that one that happened many moons ago that neither he nor Smith got to see come to light: How and when he wanted to leave Columbus.
"Everyone always talks about legacy. I always felt that part of your legacy inevitably will do after you left. What shape did you leave it in?" Tressel said, before calling 2011 an "enigma" due to the emotional strain involved within the program. "That's why it's been fun to watch what's been going on over the past three or four years."
