It's 2002. As Ohio State kept finding ways to win on the football field, head coach Jim Tressel made his team a promise: If the Buckeyes managed to cap the season with a national championship, he'd get cornrows.
It was certainly a big if. But the Buckeyes kept winning.
Tressel's team started fast at 3-0 before eking out a win against Cincinnati in late September. They followed with three easy wins over Indiana, Northwestern and San Jose State. Then came another nail-biter, but the Buckeyes escaped Wisconsin on the road, 19–14. Another close game would follow, a 13–7 win over Penn State, before a blowout win over No. 19 Minnesota to move to 10-0.
Then came a trip to face Purdue in West Lafayette. Trailing 6–3 and facing a fourth down from the Purdue 37-yard line with 2:00 remaining, Tressel gambled.
And then Holy Buckeye happened. This cornrow promise was getting real.
Ohio State won two more heart-stoppers, a 23–16 overtime affair against Illinois on the road, and a 14–9 win over Michigan in Ohio Stadium to complete the regular season 13-0.
All that remained between was No. 1 Miami. No big deal. The Hurricanes were riding a 34-game winning streak and entered the BCS National Championship Game as 11.5-point favorites.
You know how that ended. This team of destiny would go on to top the Canes 31–24 in two overtimes and Jim Tressel in cornrows was going to be a real thing.
And it did happen. As one former player tells us:
“One day at 6 a.m. offseason workouts, he shows up with a wave cap on and took it off and there were the cornrows. It was fantastic. But it only lasted for about an hour and to my knowledge, no photos got out.”
It's a tragedy that this took place in the pre-smartphone era and we have no photos or video of the incident, but we did the next best thing, hiring a police sketch artist to help us imagine what James Patrick Tressel looked like in cornrows that cold winter morning:
Magnificent.
While we're on the topic, now would be a great time to remind Urban Meyer of the tattoo he promised to get for his team winning it all last season. We'll be happy to publish photos, Coach.
